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The surveillance hub is alive, a flickering shrine to controlled mayhem.

Caffeine, circuitry, and my own quiet brand of fury.

I haven’t left this room in thirty-six hours, and I’m starting to smell like regret and war crimes.

I’m in sweats and a fitted T-shirt that might’ve been clean in a previous life.

My Glock is on the desk, along with an uneaten protein bar that’s dissected in half like a murder scene.

The monitors glow in front of me like pale blue ghosts that don’t blink. But I do, though. Barely.

One of the feeds catches my eye. It’s of her bedroom balcony.

Lyra. She’s standing there in nothing but a robe and those stupid, perfect heels, looking like she’s about to walk a Milan runway instead of pacing through hell.

The wind curls her hair around her face as smoke trails from a cigarette she doesn’t even like.

She’s all angles and elegance, even when she’s broken.

She looks like she’s made of glass and venom. I want to go to her. God, I want to go to her.

But there are things that need cracking first. I’ve been on this for hours… days even, and I can’t seem to stop the online hate.

My fingers return to the keyboard, a blur of motion and consequence. The laptop screen is lit up with thread trails from burner forums, encrypted nodes, and onion routers. This isn’t just code. It’s a warpath.

I’m not just deleting distribution links anymore. I’m erasing footprints, ghosting the digital battlefield, cleaning up the crime scene, and rigging the floorboards with C4. One click at a time, I’m rewriting reality like a vengeful coder on a bender.

Bot lists? Gone. I isolate every known IP that ever hosted, downloaded, or reposted the video, even if it was just cached in someone’s browser for two seconds, and blacklist them.

Then I take those IPs and feed them into cybersecurity forums where the admins treat spam threats like personal vendettas.

Within hours, those assholes won’t be able to log into a Facebook page, let alone their bank apps.

Leaker nodes have been stripped and exposed. Some of these idiots thought VPN hopping would protect them. Amateurs. I triangulate soft metadata leaks between timestamps and encrypted pings, then ping their home routers with so much phantom packet traffic that their firewalls cry for mercy.

Declan’s trail leads back to an abandoned domain he tried to scrub six months ago. I revive it like a necromancer, upload a honeypot to trace who still accesses it, and disguise it as a portfolio site. Anyone who opens it gets a keylogger laced into their system. Surprise, motherfucker.

Pierce Holdings’ HR portal now has a hidden packet injector running in the background.

It’ll send fake internal alerts about “suspicious behavior” tied to one of their VPs, someone Declan’s very cozy with.

Just enough to trigger an internal audit.

It’s the corporate version of lighting a match near a leaky gas line.

I’ve also made sure to bury a single malformed transaction into Harper’s shell LLC’s quarterly report—a tiny inconsistency flagged by one sleepy bank clerk.

But algorithms notice. The federal system’s already pinged it.

That account is going to lock down so hard tomorrow that she’ll need a Pentagon clearance to buy coffee.

Click, type, drag, drop. This is music. A symphony of revenge played in keystrokes and heat signatures.

I don’t break rules. I rewrite them.

I drop a backdoor into Declan’s brand management app, something shiny he probably overpaid some Silicon Valley dropout to build.

It waits, quiet and patient, like a landmine in a gilded hallway.

His next press release is going to blast out screenshots of his most desperate, drunkest DMs. And for flair, a GIF loop of a goat licking a window.

That sweet Harper’s email now ghosts every outgoing message to her ex-agent, the one she betrayed on a fashion PR deal three years ago. He’s still bitter and heavily armed with screenshots. Let’s see what he does when he gets his hands on her new client list.

This isn’t self-defense. This is the kill switch, and I’m the hand that’s pressing it.

One line of code at a time, I’m burning the world that’s trying to bleed her.

And every time I hit “execute,” I whisper her name like a spell. Lyra.

She was supposed to be bleeding, right?

But they forget that I clean up messes with fire.

The room is shrinking around me by the time I peel myself away from the screens. Dusk slips in through the surveillance room’s narrow windows, painting everything in that in-between shade, the kind that makes the world look like it’s holding its breath.

I’ve done enough for now. The battlefield’s rigged, and the fire is set. All that’s left is waiting for the match to drop.

But I can’t fucking wait anymore.

I need to see her. I need to breathe the same air as her.

My body’s sore in all the wrong places, my shoulders stiff from unease, my fingers twitching from too much caffeine and too little food. I roll my neck, grab the USB stick from the table, and slide it into my jacket pocket.

It holds everything. Names, IPs, bank trails—the ugly truth coded into strings of evidence that could dismantle reputations and bankrupt bloodlines.

I don’t bring my gun with me. Because I don’t need it right now.

The stone chips crunch beneath my boots as I make my way to her wing of the estate, each step slow and measured.

At this hour, the place feels abandoned. The servants are asleep, and with Evander gone, they’ve likely taken to slacking off, not that I blame them.

Peace is a rare thing in this world. I’ll take it where I can find it.

When I reach Lyra’s door, I don’t knock. I don’t call out. I just stand there and wait.

A long minute passes. Then the knob clicks. The door cracks open, just enough for her to appear.

And… fuck.

She looks like war and ruin.

Her robe clings to her like it has forgotten how to fit. The belt is loose, her collarbone sharp and exposed. Her hair is unbrushed, and there’s a smear of mascara under one eye like a battle scar. She looks exhausted and hollow, but her eyes still burn. And she still looks beautiful.

She stares at me like she’s deciding whether to let me speak or burn me alive where I stand.

“Unless you’re bringing a flamethrower,” she says, her voice flat and empty in that terrifying way that makes her sound like a stranger, “I don’t want advice.”

I don’t retreat. I don’t answer. I just reach into my jacket, pull out the USB, and hold it out between us like it weighs more than it should.

“This has everything,” I say, my voice steady and low. “The servers. The firms. Names.”

She doesn’t move or blink. She doesn’t even reach for it. She just stares through me, her eyes glossy but dry, like her body hasn’t decided if it’s allowed to cry yet. And her stillness and quiet shred through me harder than any scream.

Then, softly, almost like it hurts her to speak, she says, “Leave it here.”

Her voice cracks on the word here , and my hand flexes instinctively, like I might step forward, push the door open wider, and close the fucking space between us. But she turns, her shoulders tight like glass that’s about to splinter. She doesn’t look back or check if I’ve obeyed.

She just closes the door quietly and gently, like she’s sealing herself into something she doesn’t think she’ll ever come back from.

I set the USB down, but I don’t move a step. I want to leave and respect her wish, but I can’t seem to. I can’t just leave without talking to her.

“Lyra.” My voice scrapes out before I can stop it. It’s raw and husky.

Through the door, I hear a breath hitch and fabric rustle.

I press my palm flat against the wood, as though it’ll make a difference.

“Lyra,” I say again. Softer now. “Please. Talk to me.”

Nothing. Then… the door creaks open just enough for her to look at me again.

But this time, her eyes are different. They’re not filled with fire or rage; they look like she’s in pain. And not the kind of pain that explodes, but the kind that sinks.

Her chin trembles, and her lip folds between her teeth. She’s trying not to cry, but she’s failing.

“Don’t,” she whispers.

I swallow hard. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t make me need you right now.”

Fuck.

Her words hit me like a body blow. I take a step closer, but she shakes her head quickly, defensive and desperate.

“I can’t talk. Not now. Not with you. Not with anyone.” Her voice wavers, breaking on the word you . “I’m not strong enough to hate you.”

I open my mouth to say I don’t want to walk away . To say I’m still here . To say I never wanted to leave you, but I had to. I had to control the online world . But I don’t because I know the words won’t fix what this week has done to her.

She wipes at her face with the sleeve of her robe, her mascara smearing in a jagged line under her eye.

“I feel like I’m drowning, and you’re just… standing there, holding the rope. Not throwing it.”

“I’m not,” I say quietly. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I can’t stand looking at her like this, helpless and disappointed.

“I’m not standing still,” I tell her.

“Then where the fuck were you?” Her voice rises, finally. “Where were you when everything came down? Where were you when they turned me into a goddamn punchline?”

“I was destroying them,” I say, my teeth clenched. “While you were breaking, I was burning their names off the map. Right here… downstairs. I didn’t leave, Lyra.”

She breathes hard through her nose, trying to reel it all back in. Clearly trying not to fall apart on her doorstep in front of the one person she can’t afford to fall apart in front of. Me.

I want to reach for her.

I want to pull her into my chest and hold her until the storm inside her breaks.

I want to press my lips to her forehead and tell her she’s safe.

But I don’t.

Instead, I say the only thing I know she’ll believe.

“I’m not asking you to let me in,” I say. “Not tonight. Maybe not ever. But just know I’m not leaving.”

She looks up at me again. And there it is, just for a split second, the Lyra who always laughs with wild joy and moves like trouble with a heartbeat.

Then she closes the door again. Gently. But this time, she doesn’t lock it.

I stare at the wood grain, my pulse pounding like I just came out of a firefight.

I could knock again. I could force my way through the cracks she’s trying to seal. But she deserves a choice.

So I turn around.

I force my body to walk. Quiet and controlled. I take one step at a time down the path, my hand cold from the absence of Lyra’s touch..

If she doesn’t want protection… I’ll become the consequence.

And God help the bastards who try to touch her again.