Friday was supposed to be the last day of work, but we decided to have the office party in the morning so the staff could have the afternoon off for their Christmas shopping and for the other people who lived in the provinces to catch their rides.

The moment I stepped out of the elevator, I was greeted with the heavenly scent of cinnamon, chocolate, and coffee. My eyes involuntarily closed as I inhaled the smell of Christmas goodies. I felt like I was one of those cartoon characters enticed by the smell as it tickled my nose with a come hither finger. The next thing I knew, I was standing in front of a table with gingerbread, cinnamon buns with cream cheese, pastries, and festive cookies and biscuits. Coffee, hot cocoa, and alcohol-free eggnog were being prepared at the other end of the table.

"Wow, cinnamon Santa?" I asked, picking a biscuit. I wanted to take a cinnamon bun, but it would ruin Santa's beard. "Yo, Bart, give me some of that hot chocolate with marshmallows, will you?"

"The party hasn't started. What the hell?" Bart refused to give anything.

"Who are you supposed to be?" I sniggered at my lousy joke. He was dressed in a pitiful attempt to be a Who.

"What the hell are you supposed to be?" he retorted with a bored look. I wore a gray sweater over my white dress shirt, and a green and white tie.

"I'm a wizard 'arry!" I said, roughly imitating Hagrid. Only, I was a Slytherin.

"You can't even get your own cocoa," he scoffed.

"Watch me," I winked. My grin widened when I spotted a female office worker on the cocoa stand and asked her for a cup. She added more marshmallows than necessary, which annoyed Bart even more.

"Accio cocoa," I beamed, showing him my mug full of marshmallows.

"You're a jerk, you know? You're not even in proper costume, and you're eating up the snacks two hours before the party."

"Perks of owning the company," I said smugly. I headed back to my office with two gingerbread men and a warm drink. Breakfast is served.

"Good morning, Mr. Ace," Noelle greeted me. I stopped in my tracks and stared at her outfit. She was dressed in a red robe with white fluffy things around the hem and a thick black belt with a large gold buckle. And she had a Santa hat on.

"Are you supposed to be Santa? Or the missus?" She slapped my arm and blushed.

"Oh, ho, ho! Do I know who Santa is? Does he have tantalizing, stormy gray eyes?" I teased, and she blushed harder. She covered her face with the documents she was holding and laughed. I left her at her desk, still red as a tomato.

When I opened my door, I was mildly surprised to see Jaxx there, red robe hanging open with no hint of Christmas spirit on his face. I would've laughed if I weren't so busy being annoyed to see that he was not alone. Their faces were grim. It was rather sad to see a frowning Santa, but then it was Jaxx.

"Gentlemen?" I placed the hot cocoa on the table and found a clean sheet of paper for my cookies. No, I do not do saucers.

"Lorena called this morning to complain about a glitch in their app, which was working smoothly for the past months." Jaxx's eyes never left Jacob's. "It seems we have a little hyperactive software developer in our IT Department."

"I told you I will get to the bottom of it," Jacob replied, his jaw clenching.

"That's another issue. It has been going on since last month, and you did not tell us. You swore the security measures you undertook for that program was almost impenetrable," Jaxx accused. No one was backing down from glaring and it seems as though I was there to be a referee.

"It was at that time, and I said 'almost.' Not 'fully' impenetrable."

"But that was only months ago, Jake. How could someone hack into it so quickly? And what was so interesting about their app that needed to be hacked?" Jaxx continued his accusatory tone while I scrutinized Jacob's face, trying to see any minute detail that might give me a clue.

"Jaxx, what did she say was the problem?" I asked.

"That woman is dumb as a shoe. But this was not the first complaint I got. I asked our dear colleague here what seems to be the problem, but he said he was unsure. Can you imagine that?" Jaxx was spitting out sarcasm with a siding of words.

"He made the system, and yet, he isn't sure. Maybe you can help us. You were, after all, a high-paying information security analyst." This time, he broke their stare and looked at me. His eyes were not asking. They were deadly.

This wasn't solely his problem. It was mine, too. He would deal with Jacob while I would deal with the breach. All three of us headed to Jacob's office, but I refused to sit and stay there. Call me petty, but I would rather sit and work in Bart's office while they were around.

Jaxx had to leave for the office party shortly after, and just as he was about to leave me with Jacob, I announced that I needed to work alone. I didn't want anyone waiting and hanging around in the area. If this was indeed an internal problem, no one had to know that I was working there.

I had Jacob and Jaxx swear not to tell a soul that I was working at the department. I also instructed Jaxx to drag Bart out of the building and make sure he didn't return to his office until I left. Nobody was to know what I was up to.

It would only be Jacob's fault if someone found out because I was more than one hundred percent sure Jaxx wouldn't screw us over.

Instead of enjoying the festivities and having that tasty cinnamon bun, I was stuck one floor below dealing with a similar shit as that of the Echivarria breach we had early this year. This was a little more complicated, but as soon as I found the IP address under a thousand layers of VPNs, TORs, and other encrypted routing services, I knew where the breach was and practically what was going on under our noses.

It was clear as day that the one who did it was not a simple computer programmer. Everything was ingenious, from the sheer number of ERSs used to conceal the IP address to the complexity of the firewall created to protect the breach. This took a lot of experience to master and a lot more guts to do it again.

The cool December breeze blew on my face when I stepped out of the building at three in the morning. I did not realize I had been in front of the computer the whole day until Brigs called, asking how the party went. Still, I continued after our short conversation because I had to finish hacking our own system. I was dead-set on not going home until I figured it out or until my brain would stop functioning, whichever came first.

I still didn't have a car, so I walked back to my condo. As I was close to the building, I noticed a tall man leaning on the lamppost, smoking.

Jacob. Just what I fucking needed, another headache.

He looked down at his phone as I neared the building, so I decided not to call him if he didn't see me, well and good. If he did, well damn, merry Christmas to me.

"Ace." I stopped in my tracks and closed my eyes.

My back was towards him, so he could not see my face though I half-wished that he did. Then he would see how unwelcome he was. I didn't face him immediately. I was contemplating on just moving forward and not talking to him, but he called me again. This time, I could tell he was just a few feet behind me.

His voice was cold and yet pleading. It was soft but too loud for the ache in my chest.

"Yes?" I sighed deeply, still not looking at him.

He gently pulled my arm and turned me to face him. I didn't resist, but I did not look at him. I was tired, and despite everything that he did—every stupid, rash, harsh thing that he had done – I could not find it in me to throw a punch at his beautifully angular jaw. Maybe because it was Christmas, or maybe because I was just too drained... or I'm still just in denial.

"Can we talk in private?" His eyes were burning holes in my cheek, but to hell with that. I would rather have holes in my cheek than gunshots in my head.

"What for?" my voice was emotionless, but my eyes were beginning to sting. I bit the inside of my cheek.

"I need to tell you something. I need to explain something."

"Jacob, I'm so fucking exhausted. I just came from the office, working on something that should not have happened. But you know what I found out after going through all those ghost IP addresses and ERSs and analyzing what just happened?" I chuckled humorlessly.

"I found out that I do not need an explanation. Not from you, not from IT, not from anyone. Because I had already found the answers to my questions in the seventeen hours that I was sitting in front of an emotionless, voiceless, inanimate object."

My voice was shaky by the end of my rant, and it wasn't because it was cold. I was hurt and angry and in complete and utter disbelief at what I had just found out. I fought to keep the tears from falling while I stared into the deep blue sea of regret as hard as I could, conveying my disgust and everything else I felt at that time – fear, pain, disenchantment. Resignation.

"Ace, please, it's not what it seems."

"Objective evidence does not lie, Jacob. People do."

I turned on my heel and went straight to the elevators. I heard his footsteps behind me but stopped somewhere between the door and the reception. As the doors closed, I saw him standing in the middle of the lobby, helplessly staring at me.

"Merry Christmas, Jacob." It hurt to say it, but I had to. Just like everything else I was going to do from that moment forward.

The moment I closed the door to my condo, I leaned my back against it and slowly slid down to the floor. Tears were rolling down my face, but I could not be bothered to lift my hand and wipe them. I did not realize how emotionally, physically, and mentally draining the day was until I saw Jacob's eyes helplessly begging me to listen to him as the elevator doors closed between us.

"Found it, fixed it, dealt with it." I sent a quick text to Jaxx, updating him on what I had done.

♤

Do you know the feeling of being so tired you cannot even sleep?

I lay in bed for almost thirty minutes, tossing and turning. It was frustrating as hell, and I literally prayed for sleep to just take over me before the sun rose. But as luck was not on my side for the past weeks, I remained awake.

I sat back up and retrieved the pieces of evidence in my safe. If sleep would not grace me, I might as well make use of the time wisely.

I studied the cards in front of me, trying to understand what their next move would be. I mentally plotted the timeline of everything that had happened and everything that I knew. There has to be a pattern to their attacks. I just had to see their motives. There would only be two more major moves to this game, and each would merit the last two cards of the hand: the king of spades and the ace.

Whoever they were, they were lying low for the Christmas season, but I was pretty sure the moment January one struck, something big was going to happen. And that was going to end in completely silencing everyone at The Blitz that night.

The next day, or rather, a few hours later, Brigs was at the lobby at nine in the morning. When I opened the door, he lifted two bags of fast-food takeout.

"I come in peace and got us some breakfast. You still like waffles?" he asked as he began to lay the boxes on the table. The smell of maple syrup and bacon filled my kitchen, clouding my irritation and converting it to hunger.

"Yeah, still do. But good god, Brigs, I'm so fucking sleepy. Don't be surprised if I fall asleep midway." I sat across him at the breakfast nook, staring at the food. My salivary glands were working, but my limbs and my brain refused to cooperate.

"Do you want me to feed you?" he joked but put up a fork with a slice of waffle, drizzled with maple syrup, topped with whipped cream and fruit.

"My brain is malfunctioning right now. I overused it yesterday, I'm afraid." Instead of feeding me, he handed me the fork so I could shove the food into my mouth. It was at least the last step to feed myself, and I was glad I could accomplish at least that.

And he did that until I decided I wanted to sleep again rather than eat.

"I don't mean to be rude, bro, but I've been staring at you for the past hour, and I don't even understand or remember what we're talking about." He burst out laughing.

"I've only been here for half that time, man. But I'll take care of this, and you go back to sleep." He always understood, and he took good care of me. It was a shame I could not be more than he wanted.

"Anyway, I'm heading to QC later to be with my family. You need a lift to El Valle?" He cleared the rubbish and even wiped down the table.

"Yeah, sure. What time will you leave?"

"What time do you think you'll wake up?" he smirked as he washed his hands while I sat there idle, hair sticking out in different directions.

"You know what? Don't wait for me. I don't know what time I'll wake up. I can take a cab or Grab or something." I refused to plan my day. The only plan I had was to sleep and go home to Valle when I woke up, whatever the time was.

"Are you crazy? Everybody's going Christmas shopping today. You won't be able to get a cab. Come on, don't be an idiot. I'll be back at three. Whether you're done sleeping or not, I'm dragging your ass out of this place and taking you to Pasig," he said. "Sounds like a plan?"

I nodded slothfully before almost toppling over. I caught myself right before my face imprinted on the breakfast table. "Yup, sounds like a plan."

♤  ♡  ♧  ♢