Page 26 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)
We leave the diner a little past midnight, the streets slick with recent rain.
Her arm brushes mine once as we walk—unintentional, but not unwelcome.
She’s more withdrawn than usual, her eyes shadowed and distant, like she’s still somewhere back in that booth, chewing on what I said about the van. Or maybe what I didn’t say.
When we reach her building, I stop a step short of the door. I don’t push, don’t ask to come up. Instead, I tuck my hands into my coat and wait.
“Thanks for the walk,” she says, her voice soft but sincere.
“Anytime.”
She hesitates for a moment, then disappears inside. I don’t move until the door clicks shut.
I don’t follow her home, not physically. I already know the layout of her place better than my own. I know where the shadows fall across her floor at night, where she tosses her keys when she walks in, and how long she spends in the bathroom before convincing herself to sleep.
Still, I make it back to my apartment around 12:47 a.m., my mind still whirling.
I sit before the wall of monitors and bring the screens to life.
The bakery’s exterior flickers up first, vacant and dull under dim streetlights.
Another screen shows the building across from hers, angled just right to capture the front entrance and the narrow corridor leading to her apartment.
Three more screens light up.
One shows her living room, dark and untouched since she left for work this morning.
Another, the kitchen, is faintly illuminated by the glow of the refrigerator light, where she paused earlier for a bottle of water.
The third is the bedroom feed, dim but clear, the room bathed in soft amber hues from her bedside lamp.
She’s up, pacing. Her silhouette glides past the closet, then the dresser. She runs her fingers through her hair, her shoulders tight with something too close to fear. Finally, she sits on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands, motionless.
I don’t blink. Not once.
She has given me her number, let me walk her home, and listened when I said someone was watching her. She’s closer. It’s not enough, but she’s closer.
Still, something itches beneath my skin.
I switch screens, pulling up archived footage of the break-in. The figure moves with too much confidence. No wasted movement. Leaving no trace.
I pull lab access logs. There are unauthorized entries using her credentials again. This time, it’s deeper. Someone’s digging.
I should tell Rourke.
But I don’t.
Because if Rourke finds out, Celeste becomes an asset. A liability. And I don’t want to see what they’ll do to her.
So I encrypt everything and lock it down.
My phone buzzes.
It’s a masked number.
I answer, already bracing myself. “Yes?”
“You’re late,” Rourke’s voice crackles through the line.
“I was handling something.”
“You’re going to the South Facility. Breach report just came in. Physical. Minor. But it needs cleaning up.”
I’m already grabbing my coat. “I’m on my way.”
He hangs up without another word.
The timing isn’t right. It never is. But I lock the door, take one last look at Celeste on the monitor—curled in bed, safe for now—and I leave.
This isn’t just about keeping her safe anymore.
It’s about keeping her mine.
The drive to the South Facility is long and dull, a winding stretch of nothingness lit by sparse streetlights and the occasional passing truck.
I keep one hand on the wheel, the other loosely holding the tablet resting on the passenger seat.
Every few minutes, I glance down at the live feed from her apartment.
She’s still sleeping.
Good.
The breach turns out to be exactly what Rourke said—physical, contained, and irritating. A storage room was pried open, and two pieces of restricted scanning tech were lifted. It was likely someone trying to build leverage, maybe sell it off-market. But it’s the way it was done that sticks with me.
It’s clean.
No prints and no camera tampering. It’s like a ghost walked in and out.
Sound familiar?
By the time I finish cleaning the trail, issuing memos, and rerouting security protocols to create plausible gaps in the timeline, it’s nearly 7:30 a.m. I scrub my hands in the tiny sink in the break room, staring at my reflection in the smeared mirror.
I look tired and unmoored. But not weak.
Weakness is trusting the wrong people. And telling Rourke would’ve been a weakness.
I make it back into town a little before eight. The streets are beginning to buzz, and the sky’s the color of old steel. As I pass the bakery, I glance up at her window. Her curtains are drawn now. Good. She’s learning.
I don’t go home.
Instead, I head to the clinic, just in case she shows up early.
Just in case I can see her first.
She arrives a few minutes past eight. I spot her through the glass entryway, her silhouette framed by the clinic’s sterile lights. She moves slower today, tight and coiled, like sleep didn’t do what it was supposed to.
I step out of the shadows near the end of the hallway, casual enough not to startle her. “Morning.”
She pauses, and her gaze flicks up to meet mine, guarded. “Kade.”
“You alright?”
She nods, then adds after a brief pause, “Didn’t sleep much.”
I offer a sympathetic smile. “Me neither.”
We walk down the hall together, unspoken rhythms forming between our steps. As we approach the lab wing, a tech brushes past, nodding to us but not stopping. The world spins on like everything’s normal.
But it’s not.
“You ever feel like this place is too quiet?” I murmur.
She doesn’t look at me, but her voice is firm and certain. “All the time.”
I hold the door open for her, and her fingers graze mine as she passes through. Intentional? I don’t know. But I catalog the touch all the same.
She disappears into her office, and I linger outside for a beat longer than I should, the buzz of tension coiling in my chest. Not everything about last night sat right with me. And as much as I don’t want to push her too far too fast… I know I’ll have to test her soon.
Not just her trust.
But her limits.
I settle into my usual corner of the lab. But not the security terminal. That would raise flags. Instead, I pull out my own system—silent, untethered, and untraceable—and open the data stream I isolated last night.
The ghost signal.
It pulses like a heartbeat through the archive logs. Whoever it is, they’re not just copying Celeste’s credentials. They’re mapping her digital presence, tracking her queries, and recording her timestamps.
I dig deeper, deeper than I should.
Then I find it.
A remote sync signature buried beneath a trail of dummy IPs. It shouldn’t be there. It’s clever. It’s meant to look like a server redundancy, but it’s a device signature, not a server log.
A name flickers up, encrypted and truncated. But I know the style.
Harper.
I freeze.
Harper was never this sophisticated. Not unless she had help. Or was working for someone else.
Which means there’s another player. One with access. One willing to burn her trail through Celeste’s credentials.
I sit back and drag a hand down my face.
This isn’t just about protection anymore. Someone’s planting breadcrumbs in her digital trail and setting her up to look compromised and unsafe.
It’s not enough to shield her. I’ll need to dismantle their leverage and discredit them.
I’m still thinking through my next move when the door clicks behind me.
Rourke.
His expression is unreadable, his eyes scanning the room before landing on me. “You’re early.”
“Didn’t sleep.”
He doesn’t question it. Instead, he steps closer, lowering his voice. “We may have a leak. One of the new interns. Harper flagged inconsistencies before she left.”
My pulse stutters.
“Before she left?” I echo.
He nods. “She disappeared. She was spooked. If you see anything unusual, report it. I want this cleaned up.”
I nod slowly. “Of course.”
He lingers a second longer, his gaze too sharp. Then he walks off.
I close the monitor.
Harper’s gone, and she left behind a trail too calculated to be innocent. Someone is staging a trap using Celeste’s data.
I slide the tablet back into my bag, stand, and stretch like it’s just another morning.
But it’s not.
This is the first day of a new game.
And I’m done playing defense.