Keeley lay quietly on the soft, pristine white hospital bed. The dangerous red flush of her fever had finally faded.

Inside the clear IV tube, the medication dripped steadily into the blue vein on the back of her hand.

Holland had taken off his suit jacket. Wearing only a dark dress shirt, he sat in the single leather armchair right beside her bed.

His deep eyes were fixed on Keeley's face, unblinking, as if trying to carve her features into his very bones.

Stripped of his polite, academic mask, his eyes boiled with a dark, greedy possessiveness.

He slowly leaned forward. He reached out with his long fingers and gently brushed away a few stray hairs sticking to her forehead.

His movements were agonizingly gentle, carrying a reverent carefulness that completely contradicted his usual ruthless dominance.

In her sleep, Keeley seemed to sense something. Her brows pulled together slightly, and the fingers of her free hand twitched.

Holland instantly flipped his hand over and wrapped her small, cool hand entirely within his large, warm palm.

In the middle of this quiet moment, Holland's private phone sitting on the marble nightstand suddenly let out a harsh vibration.

Holland's eyes turned to ice. He quickly picked up the device and glanced at the caller ID. It was an unknown number, but his photographic memory immediately recognized the digits—it was the exact same contact number printed on the tacky gold-embossed resume Emilee Harper had shoved in his face earlier.

To prevent the noise from waking Keeley, he pressed answer and brought the phone to his ear without saying a word.

Emilee's sickeningly sweet, fake voice immediately came through the speaker, calling him "Mr. Klein."

She aggressively tried to sell herself, hinting at an invitation to dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant tonight.

Then, her tone turned sly and conspiratorial. "I'm sure you appreciated Keeley's technical work, but between you and me, Mr. Klein, a junior who only knows how to bury her head in code will never help you network or close deals. Some of us actually understand how to move in your world."

Hearing this, the corner of Holland's mouth curled into a smile of pure, cruel contempt.

He turned his head to look at Keeley, who was still sleeping peacefully. A fierce protectiveness surged in his chest.

Using a low, arrogant, and freezing tone, he mercilessly cut off Emilee's rambling.

"I don't need networking advice from a stranger who confuses a resume with a dinner invitation," he said. "And the fact that you think my interest in her code is technical tells me you understand nothing—neither code, nor me."

He coldly announced that his time was extremely expensive, and he had absolutely zero tolerance for desperate, talentless climbers attempting to bypass professional boundaries.

"If you ever approach me—or Keeley Jackson—again, I will personally ensure your resume is blacklisted from every tech firm on the East Coast," he stated softly, his voice dripping with lethal warning.

Emilee was so shocked she lost the ability to speak, only managing to let out an awkward, choked sound.

Holland didn't give her a single second to recover. He pressed the end call button.

With practiced ease, he dragged her number straight into the block list, permanently cutting off the annoying woman's fantasies.

Having disposed of the trash, he tossed the phone back onto the table and returned his full attention to Keeley.

He lowered his head and pressed a soft, highly restrained kiss right above the vein on the back of her hand.

Keeley's long eyelashes fluttered. She slowly forced her heavy eyelids open.

The soft but bright spotlight above her made her instinctively raise her hand to block the glare.

A sharp prick of pain shot through the back of her hand. That was when she realized she was hooked up to an IV drip.

As her vision cleared, she looked around and realized she was in a ridiculously luxurious hospital room that looked like a five-star hotel suite.

Memories flooded back into her brain. She snapped her head to the side and saw Holland sitting on the sofa next to the bed.

Keeley woke up instantly, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. She struggled to sit up.

Holland immediately uncrossed his legs and stood up. One large hand pressed firmly against her shoulder to keep her down.

With his other hand, he picked up a glass of warm water and brought it to her lips, ordering her to drink.

Keeley stubbornly turned her head away. She reached over with her free hand, trying to rip the IV needle out of her vein so she could leave.

Holland's reflexes were terrifying. He grabbed her thin wrist, his grip so tight she couldn't move an inch.

A violent physical struggle broke out on the bed. Keeley's breathing turned ragged.

With red-rimmed eyes, she furiously demanded to know what he wanted and why he was haunting her life like a ghost.

Hearing this, Holland laughed out of pure anger. A freezing curve appeared on his lips.

He leaned down, his face inches from hers, and brought up how she had run away like a coward four years ago without a single word.

Keeley's heart contracted painfully. She fired back, accusing him of his suffocating, psychotic controlling behavior back then.

They tore at each other's old wounds. The temperature in the room dropped to freezing, the air thick with the smell of gunpowder.

During the heated argument, Keeley swung her trapped arm wildly, trying to push him away.

Thud.

The back of her hand accidentally slammed into the glass of water Holland was holding.

The glass tipped over. More than half of the warm water splashed directly onto Holland's chest.

The water instantly soaked through his expensive custom silk tie and his dark gray tailored shirt.

The screaming match in the room stopped abruptly. Dead silence fell over them.

Keeley stared at the wet mess on his chest, sucking in a sharp breath. Her body froze.

Holland looked down at the wet fabric clinging to his pectoral muscles. His chest rose and fell heavily.

He slowly looked up. A highly dangerous, predatory light flashed in his dark eyes.

Surprisingly, he didn't explode. Instead, he slowly used one hand to pull the ruined tie off his neck.

He tossed the wet tie onto the white bedsheets. His tone was lazy, but it carried an undeniable, crushing weight.

He stated that the tie was a discontinued, handmade Italian piece. As compensation, he demanded Keeley spend the entire day tomorrow acting as his personal assistant.

Keeley gritted her teeth and refused. She said she would pay him back in installments, but she would never sell him her time.

Holland let out a cold sneer. He casually brought up the internship position at Nexus Innovations that she had been killing herself to apply for.

Faced with this naked threat of being blacklisted from the industry, Keeley closed her eyes in pure humiliation. She was forced to agree to the unequal treaty.

Late yesterday afternoon, Holland's driver had dropped Keeley back at her Columbia dorm after her IV finished.

The second she pushed the car door open, her phone buzzed. It was a direct order from HK.

The message stated that her first task as his assistant was to send a photo checking in at a specific coffee shop at exactly 8:00 AM tomorrow.

At the end of the text was a link to a highly precise countdown timer app.

Staring at the ticking numbers on the screen, Keeley felt a suffocating sense of surveillance. It was exactly like four years ago.

She clenched her jaw, didn't reply, shoved the phone into her coat pocket, and practically ran into her dorm.

When she opened the door, Anjelica and her friends were still making maddening amounts of noise.

Keeley didn't have the energy to fight. She dug out her noise-canceling headphones, put them on, and climbed into bed to sleep.

The next morning at 7:30 AM, Keeley's alarm went off right on time.

She groggily opened her eyes and reached for the phone on her nightstand.

The countdown timer HK sent was glaring on the screen. She only had thirty minutes left to make the check-in.

Looking at those bleeding red numbers, the rebellion and resistance inside Keeley reached a boiling point.

Holland's arrogant, threatening face from the hospital room flashed in her mind.

She took a deep breath. She decided right then that she would never again become a puppet on his strings.

Keeley's thumb swiped aggressively across the screen, shutting off the loud alarm.

To make sure she wasn't disturbed, she flipped the physical switch on the side of the phone to silent mode.

She tossed the phone to the foot of her bed like it was a burning piece of coal.

Then, she pulled the heavy wool blanket over her head, closed her eyes, and went back to sleep.

She was going to tear a hole in his rules. Sleeping in was her ultimate display of contempt.

Because her body was still recovering, and the headphones blocked out the world, Keeley actually fell into a deep sleep.

When she woke up naturally, the sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains was blindingly bright.

Keeley rubbed her sleepy eyes, crawled to the end of the bed, and grabbed her cold phone.

The second she pressed the power button, the lock screen exploded with notifications.

There were exactly twenty-seven missed audio calls from HK, and over a dozen text messages that grew increasingly violent in tone.

The final message was sent at 9:30 AM. It contained only two short, freezing words: Consequences await.

Keeley looked at the clock at the top of the screen. It was 10:15 AM.

She hadn't just missed the check-in; she had slept through her first, unimportant elective class.

Looking at Holland's furious digital footprint, a cold smile touched Keeley's lips. She felt a sharp thrill of revenge.

She slowly kicked off the blanket, got out of bed, and walked to the bathroom to wash her face.

She tied her long hair into a messy ponytail, grabbed her backpack, and headed out for her 11:00 AM core advanced computer science class.