Page 70

Every orgasm and argument and unspoken word between us.
And I’m not doing it for vigilante justice or clicks or praise.
Not even for revenge. I’m doing it forhim. For my mom. For the sister I’ll never meet. For what they took from him. And because I’ve seen the man beneath the silence and the dominance—the one who keeps telling himself this ends in thirty days but touches me like I’m his salvation and his forever.
I blink back heat as the final bypass loads.
Thirty more seconds.
I whisper into the comm, “Final approach.”
“Good girl,” Dante’s deep voice croons back in my ear. Calm. Controlled. God, I love that voice. “Update me on progress.”
“Five percent left. I’m ghosting all trace logs and IP masks. Vesper won’t even know they’ve been scraped off the face of the earth.”
A pause. Then, softer, “Be careful, little thief. Be cocky only when you’re in my arms again.”
My heart slams against my ribs as I press the final keystroke and watch the data flood in.
Names. Dates. Laundering routes. Assets. Victims.
Yes, S—” My breath catches when I see mine. But that’s not what draws a chilling blade down my spine.
My mother’s.
There, in the cold, clinical lines of Vesper’s archive, is everything: her full name. Her photograph. A red-stamped classification mark:DISPOSAL—ACQUIRED.A timestamp from years ago. Coordinates from the hospital where she died, a victim of a vicious mugging we all knew wasn’t a mugging. It wasn’t twisted fate. A case of the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was them.
And not just her. My dad’s name. Cross-referenced. Surveillance flagged but not activated. Meaning they were watching him too. Watching me. They’ve been tracking me since I was a teenager. Before college. Before hacking. Before Dante. They had a file on me. They’ve known for weeks.
Maybe longer. Maybe they wanted me to end up here.
“Dante,” I whisper, throat tight. “They knew everything about me. About my parents.”
Silence. Then, “I know,” he replies, low and furious. “I suspected. Your mother’s code name appeared too many times to be a coincidence.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you. Or scare you until we had definitive proof.”
My laugh is brittle. “Too late for that.”
There’s a beat of silence. Then, “Get out of there, Dahlia. Now.”
“I’m pulling the core archive?—”
“Now. They know you’re in there. They’ll be onto you in seconds.”
Fuck this. Fuck them. Ten seconds. All the time I need to take what I need and send my most lethal code.
Then I shove the drive into my boot, yank my gear into the bag, and slip out from behind the panel. The hallway’s eerily quiet.
Footsteps. Not Dante’s.
Shit.
I dart down the servant passage, heart hammering as I hear voices calling in a language I don’t recognize. I slide the hidden panel open—straight into Dante’s arms.