True Love Waits

When Evelyn saw the pic Calvert sent her, she quickly turned her screen off. She didn't want Carlos to catch a glimpse of it.

Too late! Carlos had seen it anyway.

Evelyn was a little embarrassed about it. She shifted in her seat and went quiet.

She wouldn't talk about it unless Carlos brought it up.

Carlos' face darkened. 'No wonder we haven't seen much of Sheffield. He's two-timing my daughter! I think another lesson is in order.'

Just then, Evelyn's phone buzzed as another message came in. This time, she was smart enough to keep her phone away from Carlos, balancing it on her leg under the table. She'd wait till she had a chance to check her messages away from prying eyes. When Carlos wasn't looking, she checked the top bar for notifications. 'His ex-girlfriend,' the message read.

She took another look at the picture. The woman held Sheffield's hand, looking up at him. It seemed that the two were talking about something.

The message was from Calvert.

She tried not to show any emotion as she turned the screen off again. She knew Calvert was trying to stir up shit between her and Sheffield. But that didn't make it hurt any less.

Sheffield had been busy for awhile now. He didn't even have time to see her, but he did have time to see his ex-girlfriend.

Evelyn was in a trance as the meeting continued. She had no clue what the others were saying. Her thoughts were a million miles away.

But none of this escaped Carlos. He knew his daughter better than anyone, knew something was bugging her. He ended the meeting early, a frown on his face.

When everyone left, only Carlos and Evelyn remained. "I'm surprised at you, Evelyn. Losing your cool over a random pic?" he asked.

Evelyn was confused. 'What does Dad mean?'

"I'm not trying to mend anything between you and Sheffield. But has he torn down those walls already? You were always the ice princess. And now a picture gets you upset." It wasn't just here. She was distracted at work, too. That angered him.

nodded,

guy you gave your heart to. While you were working, he was with another gal. You might want to chew on that. Do you still love him? Do you still trust him? Those are

left, and Evelyn was alone with

Sheffield was around Dollie, she was all over him, not the other way around. A photo didn't matter at all! Was it really

Sheffield was exhausted. He'd performed a couple surgeries and it was quite late. Evelyn was the only thing on his mind. But before he could leave to see her, he got a

the materials. And he had

for a while in the car, and finally

straight to the study. He booted up

Three days later

the place was illuminated by glowing screens. A chaotic, caffeine-fueled corner, where two thirds of the patrons were logged into the

was popular among the young, so were the cheating

the market. Players using it would be able to get massive amounts of gold, as well as level up quickly. Everyone liked it. It was difficult, if not impossible to detect, so server-side anti-cheating protections were no help. The sales reached a fever pitch. The designer made hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Within days,

the cheating program. He asked the developers to step up

failed. It was like trying

report it to his superior. One thing led to another, and eventually

thought, Carlos contacted Star Anise and asked him to figure out

hundred million," replied Star

million," Carlos

a millionaire already, and might eventually become one of the richest men in the world. Of course, that's not the point. You

Lead Designer, and Lead Programmer, the leads had their own teams consisting of character artists, world artists, creature artists, writers and quest designers, and 3-D modelers. A composer had to be brought in for the music, and they needed video game sound designers to create entire libraries of custom sound effects. And 5.5 million lines of code later, they

everything they did was for nothing. Carlos' reply was to

a day, Star Anise had coded a client-server firewall and a way to identify whether the program had been used. He updated the heuristics used to identify cheat programs and viruses, making it more robust. He also patched the subtle alterations the program made to

of the online

him. It was possible that he would

either Matthew or Sheffield. Those were the only two who braved his wrath to

knew his son; Matthew was unlikely to be behind this. So,