Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 76

I gave a short laugh. “He’s the candidate. I’m part of the communications team. I think that’s called ‘doing my job.”

Tasha nodded slowly, still smirking. “Sure. If you say so.” She pushed off the frame and walked off, her tone light but something darker flickering behind her eyes.

That night, I was on my third round of inventory checks when heard the copy room door click shut behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know it was him.

“Richard,” I said without looking up.

He didn’t answer right away. Just stood there, and I felt the tension rolling off him in waves.

Finally, he spoke. “Tasha needs to be watched.”

I turned, slowly. “You think she knows something?”

Richard’s jaw tensed. “Not yet. But she wants to. She’s watching you.

Too closely.”

I swallowed. “She asked me a question today. It felt… loaded.”

“Keep your guard up.”

He didn’t move to touch me, didn’t lean in close, but the air between us crackled with everything unsaid. He looked like he wanted to, though.

He always did. Then he left, without another word.

The rest of the night unraveled in slow dread. I stayed behind to triple check the file room reports, tension chewing at the back of my neck.

The building had emptied out, the lights dimmed to half power, the hum of the air vents the only sound.Around 1 a.m., I heard it, a noise. Soft. Subtle. The click of a drawer. A shuffle of papers.

I moved silently toward the records office. The light was on. The terminal glowed red.

SYSTEM LOCKOUT. CREDENTIAL ERROR.

And the name on the screen? Mine.

Panic lanced through me. My name. My access.

I stood frozen for a full ten seconds before my hand moved. I didn’t think. I just called him.

He answered on the second ring. “Where are you?”

“Records office. Someone just tried to access the system. With my credentials.”

“ll be there in twenty minutes. Stay there. Don’t touch anything.”

Twenty minutes later, Richard was in the building. He didn’t come alone.

Nathan arrived with him, face grim, steps sharp. The three of us gathered around the monitor. I explained what I saw, voice taut with nerves. The log-in attempts. The failed access. The timing. The panic.

Richard stared at the screen in silence for a long moment.

“Someone’s trying to frame you.”

My throat tightened. “It has to be someone with admin-level access.”

He nodded slowly. “Or someone who’s getting help from someone who does. Either way, they knew what they were doing.”

Nathan began reviewing the digital logs, fingers flying across thekeyboard. Richard circled around to me, lowering his voice.

*I’m assigning this to you. Quietly. Go through all internal access patterns. Search everything. Don’t leave a single entry unchecked.”

I nodded. I will.”

He touched my arm. His eyes were softer now. “No mistakes. Be careful.”

I worked until nearly three a.m. My eyes burned. My head throbbed. I drank two full cups of stale breakroom coffee and powered through hundreds of system logs, looking for anything that felt out of place. By the end, I had a list of names. Possible overlaps. Patterns.

When I finally packed up and made my way to the parking lot, I wasn’t surprised to find him waiting there. He leaned against his car, coat collar turned up against the wind, hands buried in his pockets.

Jenny looked up slowly, eyes moving over me like a scanner. Her gaze caught on my shoes-flats instead of my usual boots-then on the slight wrinkle in my blouse, the faint bags under my eyes. She didn’t smile.

Not really.

“Still no boyfriend?” she asked sweetly. “Pathetic.”

The two girls beside her burst into peals of laughter that weren’t even subtle. I felt my face go hot.

“I was just thinking,” I said, pushing through it, “that maybe we could grab lunch today. Off campus, just us. Like old times.”

Jenny arched a perfectly shaped brow, her tone somewhere between amusement and pity. “Sorry. Swamped. Maybe another time.”

And then she turned back to the packets, flipping through them like I hadn’t spoken. Like I hadn’t tried. Like I didn’t exist.

I stood there a second too long, swallowing hard, then turned and walked away. I didn’t make it far before I heard her again-louder this time, clearly meant to be overheard.

“Loneliness makes some girls reckless,” she said to her friends.

Another round of laughter. This time, sharper.

I didn’t stop walking. I climbed the stairs to the third floor with my jaw clenched so tightly it sent shocks of pain up into my temples. My heart was pounding, not because Jenny had said no, l’d expected that.

Honestly, I hadn’t even asked her out of genuine hope.

The lunch invitation was a calculated move, a clumsy attempt to look like I still cared, to throw her off the scent of the thing I was actually terrified of her discovering. But what she said afterward, the laughter, the reminder of everything I had lost, scraped at something raw inside me that hadn’t healed.

Because I wasn’t fragile about her rejection. I was fragile because l didn’t recognize myself anymore. Because I was walking around with a secret relationship carved into my skin and an identity that no longermade sense, watching the girl who used to be my sister-in-everything turn me into a cautionary tale. I had no home base, no steady ground. I had no Jenny, and I didn’t even have the comfort of being hated for the right reasons. I had nothing to anchor me but a necklace hidden under my shirt and the ache it represented.

I made it into the executive bathroom, locked myself in the farthest stall, and sat down hard on the closed lid of the toilet. My hands were shaking uncontrollably as I pressed them to my knees, trying to ground myself in something, anything.

I held my breath until my vision blurred, hoping the feeling would pass, that I could just ride it out, but the tears came anyway. Hot, relentless, and quiet. I didn’t sob. I didn’t make a sound. But my whole body trembled as I cried into the silence, tears soaking into the collar of my shirt while the walls stayed mercifully still around me.