Is this destiny?

~ Los Angeles, White corp. annual meeting ~

Thursday, October 24, 5:32 PM

Alexander excused himself and went to the restroom.

He locked himself in a stall and got a laptop out of his bag.

Within few minutes, Alex accessed internal network of White corp. and started the execution of his script. After confirming that tool is corrupted and two services are failing, he erased traces of his login history and disconnected from the network.

With this, his work is done. His last favor to Eva.

He sent her a text: "I did my part. He will be delayed. The rest is on you. Don't call me again."

Alexander left the restroom without waiting for a response.

…

5:48 PM

Jeff is on the stage, delivering his closing speech and thanking everyone for attending the event with wishes for another successful year (and more) ahead of them.

Aiden checked his phone and frowned. He stepped away and made a call.

"Problem?", Sarah asked when she saw Aiden's expression.

"Yeah…", he exhaled. "Two services are down. Ops tried fixing it, but they can't figure it out."

"Bad timing." Sarah stood up and looked down. Number of people are leaving the venue in order to avoid the crowd… but that only means that the streets and parking lots will be crowded already. "It will take forever to reach the office or home. You will need to fix it from here."

Aiden nodded and grumpily went to reach his laptop. He wanted to spend rest of the evening enjoying dinner and then pampering Sarah. Not debugging some production issue.

Sarah followed him and powered up her laptop. "I will help you."

Aiden smiled and leaned his head on Sarah's shoulder while waiting for his laptop to establish a connection to White corp. internal network.

…

6:11 PM

Jeff returned to the VIP room.

Sophia and Felix are ready to leave but are waiting for Jeff to thank him for the invitation.

Oscar and Elanor left as soon as the event ended. They will catch up with Jeff next day.

Steve and Bridgette left with Sophia and Felix. They will have a reservation for a dinner together. Aiden and Sarah were supposed to join them as well, but due to this issue they are debugging, they told them to head out first.

"Did something happen?", Jeff asked as he approached Aiden and Sarah who were looking at lines of code on their screens.

Aiden nodded faintly before responding. "Yeah. Two of my services went down. We figured out that it's because one tool failed and everything is back up, but we can't find the caused the problem."

Jeff frowned. "Can't you look into it tomorrow?"

Aiden sighed. "The relevant information will be buried with newer one, and the logs might recycle by then. It's best if we look it up right away… Don't wait for us."

Jeff checked time on his wristwatch. "This place will be open until eight. Do you need more time than that?"

"We don't know." Sarah responded. She knows that these things can easily take hours, even with two of them working together on it.

"OK. I will call the manager to let him know you two are here.", Jeff made a call and after that gave a number to Aiden. "If you stay longer than eight, let him know."

…

7:23 PM

Aiden pushed the laptop away from him and leaned back into the sofa's backrest. "I think we got whatever we could out of this."

Sarah agreed with him and summarized: "We know it's done on purpose by sabotaging the tool in a way that will make two services fail… The failures started at 5:33 PM, and there are no traces of a trigger, so whoever is the culprit was online at that time. The outside firewall is intact, which means that it was an inside job."

Sarah sighed and rubbed her temples. "This was done by someone who has access to the internal network, and knows how to erase traces which contain login information, and someone who is familiar with the codebase and the system…"

Aiden nodded in agreement. "Operations team members don't know how to do this. That leaves your and my teams."

Sarah shook her head in disbelief. It's not that she does not believe what Aiden said, but she has a hard time understanding why would anyone from their teams sabotage a tool on purpose. Those are their tools, and they collaborate on many of them. It should be their pride when they work without a hitch.

"They were all here at the event. Whoever did this, needed privacy for at least few minutes. It should be easy to see who left his or hers seat around 5:30 PM." Sarah exhaled. "Why would anyone do this? A prank?"

"I don't know. But I know that it's late. Tomorrow we can talk with each of them individually and confirm who left their seat at that time. Now… Let's head back."

Sarah stood up with Aiden to pack up. There is nothing left to do here, and they can brainstorm all the 'why' possibilities later. Maybe they even figure out who did it.

On the way out, Sarah saw few security cameras in the hallways and pointed them to Aiden. "We can check these and see who left their seat."

Aiden smiled and praised her: "Observant."

Aiden held the door open for her, like a true gentleman. It made her happy that a man like Aiden treats her so nicely.

Aiden wrapped his arm around Sarah's shoulders, pulling her closer and kissed her temple.

"Are you hungry?", she asked when they left the coliseum.

"Not really." Aiden frowned. "That junk food keeps me full. You?"

"Let's eat when we reach home.", Sarah suggested.

Aiden agreed and reminded her: "If you are hungry let me know." 

The streets are almost devoid of people. This is a mostly business neighborhood with offices who are open from 9 AM to 5 PM. Work hours passed, and it's still early for night-partygoers who will probably not come this way anyway. Nightclubs are in different areas of the city.

Streetlamps illuminate patches of the sidewalk, and the atmosphere is very romantic. Well, in Sarah's opinion, everything is romantic, as long as she is with Aiden. He is the one who carries romantic sparkle with him.

Aiden is trying not to think about tomorrow, but he can't help it. Because tomorrow Sarah will do a test and let him know the result. Well, even if he thinks about it, he will not talk about it. He promised to Sarah to wait until tomorrow. And he is confident that she can feel his anxiousness, but as long as he does not bring it up, it will be fine. Ah! He needs to distract himself or he will go crazy until tomorrow.

Aiden got cordless earbuds out of his pocket and offered one to Sarah.

Her eyes lit up when she placed it in her ear and a slow tune started. Sarah smiled. The street which seems to exist only for two of them is already romantic, and this music makes it enchanting.

Aiden took her hand in his and made her twirl few times slowly before pulling her toward him.

His dark eyes penetrated deeply into hers, reaching her soul… and she forgot to breathe.

Aiden can see in the way Sarah is looking at him how much she loves him, and he felt his emotions swell… and he had to express them somehow, or he will be in danger of falling apart.

"I love you, Sarah Hill.", his deep mesmerizing voice shook her core. "The rest of my life belongs to you because no one can ever take your place in my heart."

Aiden lowered his head slowly and kissed Sarah on the lips. It was a light and gentle kiss, but it conveyed the depth of his feelings.

He rested his forehead on hers. The amazing feeling of Sarah holding onto him was amplified by a slow tune shared between two of them.

Aiden is happy that Sarah is smiling, and he hopes that she understands how much she means to him.

---

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