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She held his gaze for a heartbeat longer. “I’m not yours to protect, Finn. Not anymore.”

He nodded once. “You keep saying that and yet here you are.”

Before she could reply, a buzz cut through the room—his private line. Donal. Again. Finn froze mid-step, spine locking, hand curling into a fist at his side. The vibration seemed to echo louder than it should have, humming against the hardwood like a warning shot.

Finn answered. “Talk.”

“We’ve got movement. Someone tried to ghost through the secondary access. Didn’t get far, but it’s coordinated. Could be a probe.”

Finn’s blood went ice cold.

“Triple lockdown,” he ordered. “No one in. No one out. I want eyes everywhere. And prep the tracker drones.”

Donal’s voice was tight. “Already done.”

The line went dead.

Keira’s face had lost its color. “They’re here?”

“Not yet.” He turned to her, voice absolute. “But they’re coming.”

And this time, if they got close—he’d show them exactly who they were fucking with.

CHAPTER 5

KEIRA

She followed Finn in silence, her mind still wound tight from their latest clash. The tension between them hadn’t eased—it had only gone subterranean. Whatever this next room held, she braced for it to be another reminder of how thoroughly he controlled every variable. No more open confrontations, no raised voices. Just a walk through shadows and surveillance—where every step was likely being logged, tracked, and analyzed. She didn’t need to see the blinking lights or hear the hum of hidden tech to know Finn had eyes everywhere. The deeper they went, the more the air crackled with the quiet hum of systems at work, watching, recording, controlling.

He led her through the kitchen, past the back door, and down a narrow flight of stairs she hadn’t noticed before. The air cooled as they descended, heavy with the quiet hum of electronics. She didn’t ask where they were going. Part of her didn’t want to know—because knowing meant facing how deep this rabbit hole really went. Finn didn’t speak.

Halfway down, he glanced over his shoulder and said, almost offhand, “You said you wanted to work again. Figured it’s time I gave you the tools.” He didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t haveto. He simply led her deeper into the bowels of the brownstone, into a room she hadn’t seen—she’d been out cold when he brought her here last night, and this was the first time she was seeing anything beyond his kitchen and bedroom.

Keira stood at the threshold of what she assumed was some kind of surveillance control room and exhaled a slow, disbelieving breath. A solid wall of monitors blinked back at her—thermal imaging, street cams, even interior feeds from various parts of the brownstone. Her gaze ticked to the upper-left screen, which showed a live shot of the main floor space—just past the kitchen’s edge, near the back door and stairwell.

The same narrow flight of stairs she’d just descended—tucked behind the kitchen and almost hidden if you didn’t know to look. It made sense that Finn would want the entrance to his surveillance bunker as unobtrusive as possible.

Still, the sight of it on a screen, looping her own movements back to her in real time, was deeply unsettling. It mirrored her vulnerability in ways that made her skin crawl, and the repetition of her own movements—seconds delayed—only heightened the sense that nowhere in this house was truly private.

“You’ve got cameras inside the house?” she called over her shoulder.

“Mostly in the common areas, and I can have them turned on and off at will,” Finn’s voice came from behind her, calm and maddeningly unapologetic.

Keira’s stomach gave a lurch, a cold ripple crawling under her skin. She hated how fast it twisted—discomfort giving way to something else entirely. Unease. Vulnerability. The idea that he could watch her without her knowing made her feel exposed in a way that wasn’t entirely about privacy—it was about power. And how easily he still held it. “And only while you’re a target. Standard protocol.”

She turned to face him. “That’s not surveillance. That’s stalking with a Wi-Fi connection.”

One eyebrow arched, that ever-present smile barely tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You’re not wrong.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Oh great, so we’re just owning our control issues now? Is that what we’re doing?”

Finn crossed the room with slow, purposeful steps. He didn’t crowd her, but his presence was like gravity—heavy, inescapable. “You want honesty or comfort?”

She scowled. “I want autonomy.”

“That’s not on the table while Riordan’s breathing.”

God, he was infuriating. Sexy, arrogant, utterly maddening.