At three o'clock, Frieda carried a heavy stack of finished reports down the hall.
She walked toward the glass doors of the hardware R&D lab. She needed the lab supervisor's signature.
She pushed the glass door open.
A loud, frustrated groan echoed through the room.
Jax Kress, the wealthy heir who had been parachuted in as a technical consultant, was sitting at the main workbench. He was violently running his hands through his expensive haircut.
He stared at a microscope and a monitor displaying jagged red wave patterns.
"This makes no sense!" Jax yelled at the screen.
Frieda walked past his bench to drop the files on the supervisor's empty desk. As she walked by, her eyes flicked toward Jax's monitor.
Her brain reacted before she even realized it.
The complex wave patterns didn't look like confusing lines to her. They looked like a language she had spoken her entire life. The McNeil family's terrifying, innate genius for logic and structure fired up in her blood.
Frieda stopped walking.
"This part of the waveform... is it supposed to look like that?" Frieda asked quietly, pointing at a tiny, almost invisible spike on the red line. "It doesn't look like the reference diagrams I saw in the manual."
Jax spun around in his chair. He glared at her. He saw the girl who usually fixed the printer.
"Excuse me?" Jax snapped, his ego bruised.
Frieda didn't back down. She walked right up to his bench. She picked up one of the loose microchips lying on the anti-static mat.
She shoved it under the microscope and rapidly twisted the focus dial.
"Look at the edge of the casing," Frieda suggested, her voice hesitant but observant. "There's a tiny speck right there. Is that normal?"
Jax frowned, leaning over to look through the lens. His breath hitched.
"See that microscopic discoloration?" Jax muttered to himself, his eyes widening. "That's a laser burn mark. Someone sanded off the old serial numbers and re-stamped them. These aren't military-grade chips. They are refurbished garbage."
Jax's jaw dropped as he realized what her sharp eyes had just uncovered. He shot up from his chair like he had been electrocuted.
He shoved Frieda aside and frantically typed a command into the testing software to run a deep destructive stress test.
Five minutes later, the progress bar hit 100%. The screen flashed red. FAILURE.
Jax stared at the screen. His breathing turned shallow.
He slowly turned his head and looked at Frieda. The annoyance in his eyes was completely gone. It was replaced by absolute, raw awe.
He reached out and grabbed both of Frieda's shoulders. His fingers dug into her denim jacket.
"You are a genius!" Jax practically shouted. "You just saved us millions in breach of contract lawsuits! How did you see that?"
The other engineers in the room stopped working. They stared at Frieda with wide, respectful eyes.
Out in the hallway, Lorna Ash was walking by.
Lorna was Preston's younger sister. She wore a skin-tight designer dress and held a cup of hot coffee. She had been trying to sleep with Jax for six months.
Lorna glanced through the transparent glass wall of the lab.
She stopped dead in her tracks.
She saw Jax Kress. The billionaire heir. He was holding Frieda by the shoulders, staring at her with intense, glowing admiration.
Lorna's hand tightened around her coffee cup. The plastic lid popped off. Scalding hot coffee splashed over her knuckles.
She didn't even flinch.
Her eyes locked onto Frieda. A dark, venomous jealousy exploded in her gut. It twisted her insides into painful knots.
How dare that trailer-park trash touch the man she wanted?
Lorna slammed her half-empty coffee cup onto the top of a hallway trash can. The plastic shattered. She spun on her stiletto heels and marched away, her face twisted in pure hatred.
Inside the lab, Frieda calmly took a step back, forcing Jax to drop his hands.
"Tell Preston you found it," Frieda said flatly. "Keep my name out of it. I don't want the attention."
Jax looked confused, but he nodded slowly. He watched her walk away, his eyes filled with intense curiosity.
Frieda pushed the glass door open and stepped into the hallway.
She nearly collided with Tammy Boggs, Lorna's aggressive little assistant.
Tammy sneered at Frieda, looking her up and down like she was a piece of dirt. Tammy let out a loud, mocking scoff and walked away.
Frieda's stomach tightened.
She walked back to her desk. Her hands felt cold. She knew the Finch family. She had just painted a massive target on her own back.
