Page 16

“This package ever make it to your logs?” I mutter to the housekeeper, but she’s already halfway out of the east wing, her arms full of linens and attitude. Perfect. Fewer questions that way. I watch her heels click down the corridor until the sound fades into stillness.

The box is small and unassuming. It’s wrapped in dull brown paper and stamped with a red FRAGILE label and a return address in Monaco. There’s no name, just careful cursive handwriting, elegant and old-fashioned. The box is the kind that smells like dusty libraries and secrets sealed with wax.

I intercept it before anyone else can lay eyes on it. Before protocol kicks in and before the housekeeper can scan it into the estate system like it’s just another wine order or imported clock.

My gloves are on before I even realize it—a habit, ritual, and a damn necessity. The blade I carry slices the tape with a satisfying whisper, as if even the box knows to be quiet. I open it carefully. Who knows, the contents might be rigged to explode.

Inside, I find photographs. They’re faded. Some are black and white, others nearly sepia with time, the edges curled like they’re trying to protect themselves.

Lyra’s mother. I know it instantly. Even before I unfold the note tucked neatly inside, even before the scent of old paper and ink hits me like a forgotten perfume.

There’s one in particular that punches the breath right out of me.

She’s barefoot and sitting on a rooftop. Her long hair tumbles over her shoulder in waves. Her mouth is wide open with laughter, her head thrown back. Carefree, wild, and fucking radiant.

Her eyes… those eyes. Lyra’s eyes.

The same fire, same defiance, same fuck-you sparkle that dares the world to try and tame her.

I freeze.

The memories hit hard, viciously, and fast. They don’t come in full scenes.

No neatly packaged conversations or faces.

Just flashes, sensations. A rooftop beneath my back.

A laugh carried off by the wind. Fingers curled tightly around mine, and a kiss that tasted like a promise. Maybe more than that. Maybe everything.

These aren’t the kinds of memories that whisper quietly from the corners of your mind. They scream.

And as the fog clears, I know exactly who the package is from.

Serena.

Lyra’s estranged aunt. The woman she’s never spoken to. Not in all these years. But the gifts still come, always unannounced but always significant. Never flashy or branded. And yet, they mean more to Lyra than any designer handbag ever could.

I knew it the moment I saw the way she clutched Isola’s journal that day in the treehouse. It was like it was sacred.

Whatever’s in this package, it matters. Because Serena never sends anything that doesn’t.

I shove them down. I always do.

Half the photos go straight into the incinerator. Flames curl around the edges like eager mouths. The past turning to ash, frame by frame. Some ghosts don’t deserve a resurrection.

But that rooftop one? That one I keep.

I slide it into the hidden compartment behind my bookshelf. My private quarters. A place even Lyra hasn’t tried to breach. Yet.

“She never even knew what was missing,” I whisper, and my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.

Time slips. It might be minutes or hours. I don’t track it. I just sit, staring and breathing. Drowning in memories.

Eventually, I leave the room before I lose my mind.

The estate stretches out before me like a museum of sins, polished floors, expensive furniture, and curated shadows. I walk through the main hall and toward the living room.

The living room is the crown jewel of the estate.

It’s all clean lines and curated wealth.

Two charcoal gray couches, massive and angled just so, sit beneath towering windows that spill sterile daylight into the space.

Blood-red pillows break the monochrome, a punch of color like fresh wounds.

A glass-and-steel coffee table anchors the room, sleek and lonesome.

The fireplace, ornate and unused, looms on the far wall beneath an abstract painting that probably cost more than my entire armory.

It’s modern and clinical. Impossibly perfect.

And there she is.

Lyra.

She’s curled like sin incarnate on one of the couches, a robe draped carelessly around her frame.

One shoulder is bare, catching the light like a dare.

Her legs are folded beneath her, her smooth skin disappearing beneath the hem of the robe.

Her hair is messy in a way that makes it worse, like she just rolled out of a man’s bed, and the bed was mine in another life.

A leatherbound book rests in her hands, probably untouched for decades until she decided it matched her aesthetic. Her eyes skim the page, but I can tell she’s not reading.

She’s waiting. For me.

She doesn’t look up as I approach, and I almost walk past.

Then, she asks, “Anything interesting in the mail today?”

Her voice slices through the air, casual and bright, like she’s asking about the weather.

I stop walking. My back straightens, my pulse still off-kilter. “Nothing important.”

She looks up.

That smile… It’s not kind, polite, or even curious.

It’s satisfied. Like she already knows what was inside the package.

Her smile deepens. She turns back to her book, but I know she’s watching me beneath her lashes.

The room is silent and heavy. And for the first time in a long time, I feel off-balance. Like maybe I’m not the only one playing this game. Like maybe the girl I’m protecting is the one I need protection from.

I give her one last look before retreating back to my den.

XXX

The studio feed flickers in my peripheral vision like a warning shot. Even before the image sharpens, I know it’s her.

Studio 3—her favorite battlefield.

I set my coffee down, which is already going cold, and lean forward. The camera adjusts, grainy in the dim lighting, but clear enough to show Lyra in motion.

She’s barefoot, her hair tied in a haphazard knot that’s barely holding, and a long tank top clinging to her like a second skin. Paint is everywhere—across her hands, her arms, her collarbone. And a smudge streaks across her throat like a bruise made by color.

She’s painting like she’s trying to win a war against herself.

Music blasts through the feed, distorted rock with violent undertones. The kind of sound you use to drown out memories. Her body moves with every strike of the brush, sharp and erratic, like she’s not just applying color but tearing something out of herself with every stroke.

Reds. Blacks. Electric blues. The canvas looks like it’s bleeding.

She’s alive in there, feral and untamed. She paints the way most people scream. And for a moment, I forget to breathe.

Because this side of her is different. It’s not the same coiled tension she walks around with. There’s something almost free in her tonight. Something unburdened. Or worse, determined.

The camera angle catches her mid-laugh, her lips parted, chin tipped up, and eyes gleaming with something I don’t recognize. It doesn’t look like rebellion anymore.

It looks like pure strategy. I narrow my eyes. What the hell are you planning?

Just then, my phone buzzes. The screen lights up with a number I haven’t seen in years. It’s unlisted.

But I know it like the barrel of my sidearm.

Marcus Bellamy.

The man who taught me how to shoot, lie, and disappear. The man who once dragged me out of a blown op in Prague with a shattered shoulder and a kill list five names deep.

If Marcus is calling, it means something’s bleeding.

I answer, “Creed.”

His voice crackles through the speaker like sandpaper. “Still playing house?”

“Still creeping around encrypted networks like a ghost?” I throw back at him.

He huffs. He doesn’t laugh, not really. Just a gruff exhale that says, I’m too old for your shit. “I don’t call for nostalgia, Silas. We’ve got a problem.”

I sit up straighter. My body reacts before my brain catches up. “Talk.”

“There’s a file. Your file. It’s moving,” Marcus says.

“What do you mean it’s moving?”

“I mean, someone in D.C., someone with clearance and quiet gloves, is poking into sealed operations. Not new ones. Old, classified deep. Caracas, Vienna, the mess in Marrakesh that you still pretend didn’t happen.”

My throat dries instantly, and my fingers flex. “Impossible,” I rasp.

“That’s what I thought. Until your psychological evaluation pinged in three servers. It’s not flagged but copied. Someone’s building a profile.”

Every inch of me tenses.

“You sure it’s not internal?” I ask.

“Not a chance. This is external. FBI.”

The word lands like a goddamn sledgehammer. My heart doesn’t beat faster. It stops entirely.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Marcus adds. “The activity’s tied to an inquiry opened under personal protocol. It’s not through official channels, which means someone’s digging without permission. They’ve got a reason.”

My gaze flicks back to the studio.

Lyra has stopped painting. Now, she’s just standing there and staring at the canvas like it’s whispering back to her. A thin trail of paint drips down her forearm.

My stomach knots. “I think I know who it is,” I mutter.

“Yeah?” Marcus drawls. “The girl you’re shadowing?”

“Not directly. Probably someone she pulled in.”

“Well, I have a name. Elijah Blake,” he says. “That name ring a bell?”

Who the fuck is Elijah Blake? The floor tilts under me.

“You’ve already traced it?”

“I don’t sleep much, Creed. He’s clean on paper, ex-quant, now working cyber intel. But he’s had multiple encrypted exchanges this week with contacts inside the Bureau. And he pulled up your operational alias yesterday.”

I close my eyes, my jaw tight. “Fuck.”

“Didn’t think the girl would play that card?” Marcus asks like he’s disappointed but not surprised.

“She’s pissed, and she’s smart. But I gotta say, I underestimated how far she’d go.”

“Well,” Marcus says. “Now you know.”

“What do I do?”