Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 60768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
She’s not a bad person. She’s stuck in something bigger and uglier than she lets on. I can feel it in my gut.
I wanted to tell her that right then. I wanted to pull her back against me, kiss the hurt off her face, and say I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. That I’ve been lost in her, that I still am. That tasting her, feeling her come apart, had nothing to do with bargaining and everything to do with how badly I want her. But she was already turning away, rushing up the stairs like she couldn’t get away fast enough. Her heels clicked hard against the hardwood, each sharp step landed like a little stab in my gut.
I stand frozen in the entryway for a long minute, heart still hammering, cock still painfully hard in my slacks, the taste of her still coating my tongue and lips. The house feels too quiet around me. I drag a hand down my face, mutter a low curse, and force myself to move. If I stay here thinking about the way her thighs shook around my head or the broken way she moaned my name, I’ll lose my mind.
I head straight for the office.
The triple monitors glow to life when I power everything up. I drop into the chair, crack my knuckles, and start the hack Serafina wants. My fingers move on autopilot at first, slipping through the outer layers Maddox had built years ago. I map the dummy systems, spot the tripwires and false data trails. It’s clever work. Progress bars fill slowly. Reports generate. Everything looks perfect from the outside.
But I can’t focus. Not after tonight. Not after watching that mask snap back over Orchid’s face like a steel door slamming shut.
I open a side window and start digging into Orchid. Quietly. Carefully. I know I can’t do a full deep dive without tripping alarms, but Serafina has brought me in for a reason. She probably doesn’t have anyone good enough on her payroll to handle real dark-web level work. That gives me a narrow window.
I run every search I can think of. Name variations. Partial prints pulled from the safehouse system logs. Scraps of facial recognition from the cameras. Nothing. It’s like she doesn’t exist. No social media history. No old employment records. No traffic tickets, property listings, or anything that would tie a normal person to the real world. She’s a ghost. Clean, professional, and completely erased from every database that matters.
That only makes me more certain there’s a story there. Someone has gone to enormous trouble to bury her past. And someone like Orchid doesn’t end up as Serafina’s enforcer unless she’s got a damn good reason. Or a damn bad one.
I sit back, staring at the blank results, and make a decision. I need to reach out. I need to know what the team knows. I need to know if they’ve found Enley yet.
I navigate to an old, buried message board Ozzy and I used to haunt years ago, back when we were just dumb kids screwing around with code and conspiracy theories at three in the morning. It’s ancient, barely maintained, hidden behind layers of dead accounts and forgotten forums. The kind of place no one would ever think to look. I log in with an old handle I haven’t touched in forever and drop a single line into the private thread we used to share.
P here. Need to talk. Blackmail situation. Enley.
I wait, heart pounding harder than it has when I had Orchid pinned against the wall. Minutes tick by in agonizing silence. Then the cursor blinks and a new message appears.
O here. Holy shit. You okay?
Relief hits me so hard my shoulders sag against the chair. Ozzy. Alive. Online. Still on my side. Hopefully.
I type fast, fingers flying.
Blackmailed hard. They made me kidnap Salem’s dad from the hospital. Have Enley hostage. Forcing me to hack Maddox core. I stopped the second I saw what it was. They’re using her to make me burn the team from the inside. I’m in a safehouse outside town. Orchid’s the handler. She’s not what she seems. There’s more to her, but I can’t risk Enley. Tell me you’re close.
Ozzy’s reply comes quick, but he doesn’t rush.
Good to know you’re not dirty. We thought… well, nevermind what we thought. We’re close. Traced the phone. Got a solid hit on a warehouse district near the river, then another ping from some restaurant. We think we have Enley’s location narrowed down to two possible sites. Maddox has dummy systems layered all over the core. Do the hack. Feed them junk data. It’ll look completely real from their end. Buy us time. Lay low and don’t do anything stupid that could get Enley hurt.
I let out a long breath, some of the weight lifting off my chest. They know I’m not dirty. That’s the most important thing. It’s smart. A dummy hack. Of course Maddox would have that in place. The man plans for betrayal like other people plan Sunday dinner.