Code and Crown Chapter 1

My boss sent me to a weeklong advanced engineering seminar at a tier-one tech giant on the company dime. On my bike ride back to the office, my phone buzzed with an automated notice informing me that I had been terminated.

I had to laugh. Sending an engineer for high-level technical training only to fire her the moment she finishes? It was essentially using company funds to upgrade my personal skill set.

Capitalists are notoriously unpredictable, and I had no desire to waste energy deciphering his thought process.

The only reasonable response was to book a first-class ticket down to the Florida coast, let the ocean breeze wash away the indignity of corporate betrayal, and enjoy an unexpected vacation.

Yet the moment my sandals touched the sand, my phone rang. It was my boss, followed immediately by an urgent repository push on our internal server.

"I need you to patch this deployment error. Send the clean build to my inbox by tonight."

I summoned the sweetest, most professional customer-service smile my vocal cords could manage. "Of course, Austin. I’ll get right on that."

The second I hung up, I popped the SIM card out of my phone and flicked it straight into the turquoise waves.

Right behind my beach lounger, a woman’s sharp, snide voice drifted over the sound of the surf: "See? You fired her and she still jumps the second you whistle. I told you, Paige is completely obsessed with you..."

The name sounded awfully familiar.

Right. Because Paige Hall is me.

* * *

With the winter holidays just around the corner, every department in the building was running on sheer adrenaline and lukewarm cold brew.

As the lead backend architect—and, frankly, the only woman holding the technical infrastructure together—I hadn't had the time to put on mascara in three days. My dual monitors were covered in Jira tickets, and my mind was actively calculating the five-figure retention bonus Austin had better wire to my account before the fiscal year closed.

Just as I resolved a critical pipeline bottleneck, Austin summoned me into his glass-walled corner office.

"Paige. Your technical throughput has been exceptional lately," he said, leaning back in his ergonomic leather chair, his expression an impenetrable mask of executive calm. "I’m sending you to Apex Systems next door for their elite distributed systems seminar."

I stood in front of his mahogany desk, my brow furrowing slightly.

Apex was the premier tech giant in the valley. But our startup was in the middle of a massive pre-holiday migration. We were chronically understaffed. Pulling your core engineer off the floor for external training right now made zero operational sense.

Unless... this was the prelude to a layoff?

I immediately dismissed the thought. I built this architecture from the ground up. If I walked out that door, the core server pipeline would flatline within forty-eight hours.

I took a breath, deciding to test the waters. "Austin, if I step away for a full week during migration—"

His phone cut me off with an urgent, upbeat chime.

He glanced at the screen, and the stoic, serious CEO instantly dissolved. A sickeningly soft, conspiratorial grin spread across his face as he brought the phone to his ear.

"Hey, babe," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "Yeah, my assistant handled the dinner reservations at the yacht club... Whatever you want, honey. We’ll..."

The gold-plated pen in his hand twitched against his desk pad.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. In the four years I’d known Austin Hayes, I had never once seen him act like a lovesick teenager.

The call went on. I was trapped—it felt awkward to stay, yet rude to walk out mid-sentence. I gently set the training enrollment form on the corner of his desk, planning to slip away quietly, when Austin suddenly jerked his head toward me.

His eyes were cold, his tone dripping with sudden irritation. "Why are you still standing here? Take the paperwork and get out."

The air left my lungs for a second. A sharp, hot spike of fury flared in my chest. What had I done, exactly, besides show up every day and keep his company afloat?

Fine. Wonderful. I have an equal-opportunity hatred for self-important founders whose IQs drop the second they get a girlfriend.

I swallowed the bile, picked up the folder, and walked out without another word.

Ten minutes later, I packed my custom mechanical keyboard and my high-spec laptop into my messenger bag, unlocked my bike from the rack downstairs, and pedaled over to the Apex corporate campus.