ROOTS AND RIVALS ONE [REVISED] Ayara hates cliches. As a Management Scientist, she believes every disaster can be solved with a clean spreadsheet and a bit of Linear Programming. She also knows the #1 rule of survival: Never fall for a man who isn't a statistical possibility. But her eyes couldn't just look away the moment she sees Eoghan in front of everyone. He makes that rule impossible to keep. And as their arguments grow more heated and as the office doors stay closed longer, she starts to realize that the only thing more dangerous than their fighting is the silence that follows it. But Ayara isn't just running from a crush. She is the eldest of three siblings raised by a family who didn't give hugs but rather objectives. Mechanized to be a "Problem-Solver" in a family that functioned like a criminal syndicate, Ayara was taught that every human connection is just a leverage point. Now, she faces the most dangerous calculation of her career. If she lets Eoghan in, does she break the cycle of her father's gates or is she just optimizing her own destruction? In a world where trust was a trap and love was a vulnerability, can a woman trained to be a machine survive the chaos of being human?