After driving for about an hour, Mark reached his penthouse. Taking a shower, he changed into his comfortable lounge wear and had his lunch.
He put on a movie to play on his TV, and sat on the sofa but he hardly paid any attention to what was going on in the movie.
His mind went back to what he found on the previous day, evening.....
Preceding day at 7 p.m. in the evening, Mark has just woken up from his slumber. After freshening up, he switched on his high tech laptop and went to his study.
The logo on the back, 'TESA' lit up in a blood red shade, creating a cool colour contrast with the matte black shade of the laptop.
After going through series of authentication he was finally able to access his laptop, which he hasn't opened for a few months after a certain incident.
He has already erased all the access controls given to other remote users for accessing his device. Meaning, only he can use the device now.
And since its a very high end device, no one can easily hack into it, making it one of the world's most secure computer device.
He opened a particular software, containing various codes and complicated data, and started looking at present day's activities around him after he has landed in the country.
As he was going through security feeds and data around the places he visited, he noticed that there were atleast two suspicious entities around those places that were acting very strangely.
He managed to erase all his tracks from wherever he went today in the city and started working on uncovering the other two parties.
Soon, he found out that one of them was extremely discreet and has almost erased all the tracks, similar to how he(Mark) did it, while the other one was equally foolish to scream their presence everywhere without taking any action to hide their tracks.
Fortunately, with his knowledge in hacking and an intense two hours of bypassing securities, he was able to recover some parts of the traces left by the first party, and was surprised to see a familiar face lurking in the shadows.
He immediately deduced who the first person that was following him and thought to himself, 'Hello there, Eagle-eye! Now what are you upto?'
He didn't keep brooding on the fact as he has already achieved his objective. Instead he started searching for the other idiot trying to follow his(Mark's) leads.
And puff! It was like a cake walk for him to find out the other party and hack into each and every device possible of that person.
After another series of investigating, he finally found out who was looking for him, their likes and dislikes and every single thing about them along with their purpose for finding his information.
That's how he was able to intimidate Albert the next day, and Mark already knew who hired Albert in the first place. But he needed a confirmation that it was not a decoy.
He couldn't understand why a young businesswoman was looking for his information as he didn't remember crossing paths with her until he saw a picture of the woman in question.
He was truly mesmerized by what he was seeing, as he kept staring at a picture of Julia Casey.
Present,
He was thinking about those amber eyes that he kept remembering about ever since he looked into those clear orbs, about a year ago.
This extremely beautiful woman Julia, was so low key that there were none of her pictures taken in public, just like how he was.
He had to hack into ALC International's main server to get her basic information, and that's how he concluded she was the same woman who danced with him, at the banquet a year ago in Country E and still couldn't get out of his mind.
Even though Mark was a capable individual, he still had his doubts about himself due to what happened to him almost a decade ago when he was in high school.
Was he ready to put his trust in other person and accept someone wholeheartedly?
Will the other person accept him, considering his flaws and secrets?
Was he capable of loving someone in the first place?
- were the only thoughts running through his mind.
After a moment of vulnerability, Mark managed to compose himself and chuckled playfully, thinking, 'Is destiny playing a game?
Is it simply a coincidence or is it fate, that the person he was thinking about and was going to look for was already trying to investigate him? How Nice!
I must go meet her and say my hello along with a little present for her, considering that I am going to see her after a year'.
He couldn't help but feel a little nervous, as he has never genuinely tried to woo a lady, apart from random flirting he did in previous 4 years that too with ulterior motives of his own. But that's a story to tell for some other time.
Now that he is already here, he might as well face his doubts and take a step forward in his life, without lowering his guard.
'Many people will start hunting me if they come to know that I was the cause of their misery'. He sighed, thinking about all the people he has plotted against and all the damage he had done in the past.
But was he regretting doing it? Hell no! He would have done the same thing again even if the time was turned back, because those people deserved it.
Surprisingly, Mark knew(through hacking, obviously) that Julia was looking for a collaboration with a particular Investment company, and he exactly knew what to do.
Atleast, now he knows what will keep their conversation going!
Mark didn't dare to look into her personal life, as it was a violation of privacy of his potential girlfriend, completely ignoring the fact that he has already violated and compromised that person's organization through his hacking.
After thinking for a while more about his next steps carefully, he switched of his TV, worked a sweat in his home gym, and took a shower.
As soon as he collapsed on his king sized bed, his eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep while thinking about the woman who has taken his breath away from him.