Is this destiny?

 ~ White corp. HQ ~

1:31 PM

In the office space occupied by Sarah's team members…

Alexander (aka Alex) is getting his things. He is preparing to go with Marcus and Pierre to the company event.

Everyone has their preassigned seats, so they are not in a rush to go there, but they still want to reach the event before 2 PM.

Seats are assigned in such a way that allow team members to be seated together.

Sarah's full team has five members: Marcus, Lee, Harry, Alexander and Pierre. Their seats are adjacent to the seats reserved for Aiden's team members. Aiden's team currently has four full time members: Fox, Daniel, Duncan and Arianna.

Just as he got up to leave, Alexander's phone rang. He frowned when he saw the caller's ID.

"I told you not to call me when I'm at work.", he coldly said as soon as he picked up the call.

"I need you to do something for me.", female voice responded, ignoring his displeasure.

Alex was outraged by her request. Does she have no shame? "One MORE favor?"

Alex sat back into his chair and lowered his voice. "I already told you where his assigned parking is. That is enough."

She was unwilling to give up. Yes, he told her the location, but she realized that is not enough. She needs more…"There are too many people present. I couldn't approach him."

"You want to approach him?" Alexander was unable to hide his displeasure. Why is this woman always asking for trouble? Will she ever learn?

"You said you just want to see him!", he angrily reminded her.

"Just to say that I'm sorry for everything.", she explained.

As much as she sounds sincere, Alex doesn't trust her. Not when it's related to Aiden. She already broke so many rules and put herself in danger, what is a little lie compared to all that?

"I don't believe you.", he flatly said.

No matter how cold Alexander sounds, she is confident that he will help her, like he did many times before. "You don't need to believe me. I need this from you…"

"Eva…", he interrupted her. "For the sake of our history I helped you, and even kept your existence hidden from the family. Don't push it. You know that I'm putting my neck on the line by not telling them about your whereabouts."

Alexander is aware that she is taking advantage of him, and he is more than ready to draw the line. She is getting more outrageous. Why is she not considering his safety?

Eva is not ready to give up on this. Not when she is this close. Only few minutes ago, she saw Aiden! Yes, he was with that despicable woman, but she saw him. She was unable to hear his voice due to the street noise, but he was only few steps away… only few steps and she could touch him.

"Do this one more thing for me and you will never hear from me again.", she said in a shaky voice.

Alex heard her pleading tone mixed with determination and felt that his resolve is wavering. Like many times before, he is giving in to her request. He exhaled. "What do you want?"

Her enthusiasm was impossible to hide. "Event ends at six. But the streets will be too crowded when everyone leaves at the same time. I need you to delay him."

Alex inhaled sharply and it took him few seconds to respond. "Delay him?"

Eva does not see the problem with that. And she knows that Alex can do it. He is the smart one, skillful, resourceful. Whatever she has on her mind, he can deliver. "Make him leave after everyone else. Then the streets will not be so packed, and I will get a chance to speak to him. Please… I promise that this is the last thing I'm asking from you. Ever. Please…"

"I will see what I can do. I need to go now.", Alexander ended the call and exhaled.

This woman will be the end of him. If the family finds out about her, they will come and take her away in an instant. Her lingering around is a liability. And if they find out that he knew about her and kept quiet, he will be in trouble as well.

Why did he agree to hide Eva's existence to begin with? Yes… because they grew up together. And there was a time when he had some feelings toward her. Does he still have any feelings? He is not sure. But he knows that he can't make himself report Eva because he knows that she betrayed the family and neglected her task. They will have no mercy and her ending will not be swift.

He sighed at the memory of how Eva looked at him when she asked him for help the first time. And she didn't ask for much… just to pretend that he didn't see her. That was her only request, at first. And this will be the last thing he does for her.

How will he delay Aiden to stay longer after the event? Alex knows that Aiden is in charge of number of tools and services at White corp. … If he sabotages one of those, Aiden will need to investigate. But what will make him stay at the event and not get him to come to the HQ building? Timing and urgency. If he gets those two right, Aiden will not have the time to change locations and he will need to deal with the issue on the spot, from there.

Alexander remembered Sarah. Knowing the relationship between those two, there is a high probability that she will stay with Aiden until he is done with his task. She might even help him with the issue at hand… but that is not his problem. His task is only to delay him. If Sarah joins Aiden or not, that is for Eva to figure out. After all, she wants only to talk with Aiden, right?

"Alex, are you coming?", Pierre's voice pulled Alex out of his thoughts.

Alex paused. "I just remembered something… go ahead without me. I will join you there."

Marcus gave him a knowing look. "You will miss the beginning, and all the good freebies will be gone if you are late."

Alex smiled. "Thanks for the reminder."

His smile faded as soon as Pierre and Marcus were out of sight.

Alex unlocked his computer and started typing swiftly on the keyboard. He needs to find a tool which is important enough for the operations team to call Aiden to handle the emergency without delays… and to find a way to sabotage it without leaving a trace… and he needs to make all this happen toward the end of the event, so that Aiden is delayed.

Alex helped out Aiden's team members more than once with their code reviews and he is familiar with most of their codebase. It didn't take long for Alex to find a tool which will serve its purpose for tonight's sabotage. He swiftly wrote a script to disrupt the execution of that tool. The cascading effect will cause interruption to two other services which are monitored by the operation's team. This will be perfect. But he can't place a trigger for the script execution into the system, that is easy to trace. He will execute script manually and make sure that all traces of his activity are erased before Aiden gets into the system to investigate.

Alex checked the time. It's close to 2 PM. He needs to rush, or he will miss his chance to grab those good freebies everyone is talking about.

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