Chapter 155 - Cyber Battle

In the master bedroom, the soothing sound of running water stopped when Damien turned the faucet off after he finished preparing an aromatic bath for Katherine. He wanted to make sure that she was comfortable despite what was happening online.

"Your bath is ready." He walked up to the bed where she was sitting and staring at the floor. He knelt down in front of her and hooked his fingers on her chin to make her face him. "Hey… You haven't said anything since."

She curled the corners of her mouth upward to reveal a smile. "That's because I don't know what to say…"

"Well… one would be mad if this happened to them. Are you mad?" he asked, wondering if he could at least help her figure out her thoughts.

Katherine shifted her gaze to the side as though she was thinking deeply. "At first, I thought I was… but… now, I don't really know if I am. I mean… is that weird?" she wondered. "I don't know anything about my past… I don't have a family. I don't have a proper identity to uphold. So what reputation is ruined?" she chuckled sadly.

Damien couldn't really imagine how tough it must be for her to have these feelings and thoughts. "You must be frustrated…" he muttered as he slid his hand to hold hers. 

Standing up, he brought her to her feet and brushed his knuckles on her cheek. "You should stop thinking that you don't have a family. You have me… I'm your family." He leaned in and placed a soft kiss on the corner of her mouth. 

He needed to fix the matter at hand as soon as possible, so he led her to the bathroom so that she could soak in the bath before heading towards his study.

As soon as he entered, he dialed Zero's number. "What's the situation?" he asked as soon as the hacker answered his call.

"Your majesty," Zero said on the other line, and tapping sounds of a computer keyboard was evident in the background.

"What's the situation? Have you taken down all the articles?" Damien sat on his desk and turned on his laptop.

"It's almost done… I'm also trying to take down the websites just like you ordered. But… your majesty, did you hire someone else aside from me? Because if you did, I'm a little hurt," Zero muttered while munching on some french fries. "I thought I was your only one."

Damien furrowed his brows upon hearing what he said. "What are you talking about? I didn't hire anyone else."

"Oh…" Zero smiled briefly before he continued. "I see… I thought you did. But if you didn't… then who is this f*cker?"

"What do you mean?" Damien tried to type keywords on the search engines and there was a significant change in the results compared to how it was several minutes ago.

"Well, when you called up earlier, I got to work right away. When I tried to access one of the websites that released the article, there was another DDoS attack that I didn't initiate sending data packets to the web server—"

"Hold up, Zero. Speak English," Damien interrupted, suddenly feeling a headache creeping up from the jargon that the other was spouting.

Zero sighed as if he was talking to someone dumb. He kept forgetting that most of the time, he was smarter than most people. But this was his favorite and most generous client so he reminded himself to be more polite and used easier terminologies. "What I'm saying, your majesty… is that someone else is trying to clean the internet free of the scandalous articles of you and your girl."

Damien's hand froze as he tried to understand what Zero was saying. "Who is it?"

"That… my man, I'm not willing to try and find out. I got skills and all but I don't want to risk my systems crashing if that hacker decided to attack mine. I'm a prideful and skillful person but I know when to concede. Whoever this is… his level is definitely higher than mine. You should see the codes—"

"Zero," Damien called his attention, shutting the other up. "For now, just continue what you're doing." 

When the phone call ended, Damien leaned on the backrest of his office chair and stared at his computer screen. 'Whoever this was, why was he doing this? Was this to help me… or Katherine?'

…

Somewhere 3,000 km away…

"Ha! Eat that sh*t! How dare you say mean things about my Queen?! You twat!" Styles bit out while his fingers danced on the keyboard rapidly just before he stretched his arms up and took a sip of his coffee, a smile playing on his lips as he declared his own victory.

"What has gotten you so fired up?" Falcon sauntered towards him and placed a sandwich and a cronut on his desk, making Styles feel even more delighted.

"You know what, Falcon… You and my Queen are so similar. You take care of me and know how I like my sandwich. I even get a cronut! I am such a lucky handsome man." He grinned before taking a huge bite of the Italian Sub. "Mmm… C'est très bon!" he muttered, appreciating the sandwich in French.

"It's not like I made those. Good thing we have a deli shop downstairs." Falcon chuckled, sitting next to Styles to see what he was working on. "What happened?"

"Oh, the bot I made years ago with a script to conduct a constant search for anything related to  Katherine online returned a result and it looked like someone was deliberately sabotaging her. Man, this is like high school… a queen bee trying to defame or bully whoever she finds was a threat." Styles shook his head before taking another bite of his sandwich.

"Have you taken everything down?" Falcon scanned Style's monitor but only understood half of it while the rest was gibberish. 

"Mostly… I think the Resort King hired someone to do a clean up too. I just left the rest of it to that guy. The one I'm messing with was the very first one who released the article." Styles dusted his hands before typing on his keyboard.

"I checked everything and left this guy as the last one. After his first post got deleted, he posted another one and he is still at it until now. I need to scare him. He probably thinks he's so clever with his 'anti-malware' software. Pfft." Styles snickered like he heard the funniest joke in the century.

"So what are you doing now?" Falcon asked.

"I'm waiting for him to open his email and click the link that I sent him." Styles excitedly waited in front of his computer.

Meanwhile, the man whom Lexi hired had just returned from a bathroom break when he sat down on his chair. He was in his mid thirties and was an online columnist who had no fear of making write-ups to boost traffic to his website. So when Lexi called him a few hours ago, asking for a return of favor and even topping it with cash, he could not refuse.

Receiving an email notification, he opened the message and found an enticing headline that said: "Tips on how to CHEAT the Stock Market and be a millionaire fast!"

Next to it was a link that looked legit, his mouse cursor immediately hovered over it as his eyes sparkled upon seeing the line. He had been unlucky with trading and was desperate to gain back what he lost. So without hesitation, he clicked on the link and as soon as he did, his computer screen went black… and the camera on his laptop turned on.

His eyes went wide when the screen of his laptop started flickering until words suddenly came out:

[Greetings, Cody. You have just made the biggest mistake of your life. Do you want to save your life? If so, shout: Yes. But if you don't, we will release all the files from your 'Confidential' folder]

Back at Styles and Falcon's lair, Styles threw his head back as he laughed. "Who the hell names confidential folders as 'confidential'?" he shook his head, waiting for the man to respond to his threat.