Chapter 2

Whispers spread through the company like wildfire.

People said I had a cursed aura—that I was ruining myself, and soon, anyone near me.

They said the tech genius was nothing more than bad luck.

That evening, Julian and Serena showed up at my lab together.

Julian looked thinner, his brows knit tight with manufactured grief. He sighed, speaking first.

"Stella, I think... maybe we're just not meant to be."

His eyes darted away, avoiding my gaze.

"Serena's readings, and everything that's happened lately...

I'm not superstitious, but I'm genuinely terrified.

If this keeps going, I'm afraid one day you won't survive it."

Serena nodded frantically beside him, tears spilling on cue.

"She's right, Stella. Julian is only doing this to protect you.

Let's just take some time apart and see if the bad luck clears up, okay?"

Serena reached out to take my hand, but I pulled away.

I watched the two of them perform their little duet.

One was the man I had vowed to love forever.

The other was the best friend I once would have bled for.

They had no clue that because I built that tarot website, I had root access to the entire backend server.

Yesterday, Julian claimed he had a late business dinner. Having some rare downtime, I logged on to do server maintenance.

While scanning for malware, I stumbled across an encrypted chat log between the two of them.

[Serena: Are you here yet?]

[Julian: Five minutes, babe.]

A bitter laugh escaped my lips, my vision blurring with tears.

In the company's infancy, broke and stripped of resources, I solved every single technical bottleneck by myself.

Once, after working seventy-two hours straight, I collapsed on the office floor.

Julian held me just like that, calling me his baby over and over, swearing that meeting me was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

Another ping snapped me back to reality.

[Serena: You're brilliant. Making her think she's genuinely cursed works a hundred times better than anything we could say. That Stella is a brainless nerd. She doesn't understand anything outside of code.]

[Julian: Relax, just one step left. Once she initiates the breakup, we can go public cleanly. The core source code is still in her hands. We have to secure it.]

[Julian: People like her have too much pride. The second she believes she's bringing bad luck, she'll leave faster than anyone. She'll think she's making a noble sacrifice, completely blind to the trap.]

At the very end of the thread were explicit, intimate photos they had sent each other.

I sat in front of my screen from sunset to sunrise.

For over a decade, Julian and Serena had been the center of my world.

I never knew how to play social games or flatter people, and my brutal honesty pushed everyone away.

Even when my parents divorced, they fought over who got my younger brother, leaving me behind.

Only the two of them had smiled and said:

"Can't help it. Geniuses are always lonely. As long as we get you, that's all that matters."