Page 9

KEIRA

S he 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 have to.

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.

The worst part? A piece of her still wanted to trust him.

The same part that remembered nights bound to his bed—breathless, aching, pushed past limits she hadn’t known she had.

And she hated herself for it. Hated that some part of her had been so easily swayed by her uncle, who’d almost seemed to enjoy watching her walk away, knowing the truth would cut too deep for her to stay.

She crossed her arms. “So what, I’m under house arrest?”

Because it sure as hell felt like it—even if he’d wrapped it in reassurances and disguised it as concern.

Reinforced digital freedoms, though she suspected those came with invisible strings.

A carefully offered car and driver, if she played along.

All the tools she could ask for—but the walls were still his, and the lock fit her far too well.

It was still a gilded cage. And she’d always known how to spot a lock, no matter how polished the metal.

“I prefer the term protective custody.”

“Oh well, when you say it like that...”

He gave her a look, the kind that said he wasn’t in the mood for games but would absolutely indulge them if they helped him keep her safe. Which only made it worse.

“You said something about work?” she asked, remembering the offhand comment he’d made earlier upstairs—something about giving her space to earn, under supervision.

It hadn’t registered at the time. Now, with a full tech command center blinking at her, it was clicking into place.

She asked, changing the subject before her mouth could outrun her sense of self-preservation.

Finn nodded toward the other end of the room.

A sleek workstation hummed to life with a touch of his hand, the screens flaring on with a soft glow that lit up the corners of the dark space.

"Everything’s clean. Secure server, isolated network.

You’ll find encrypted access to the darknet, shell profiles for contracting, a dedicated crypto wallet, and a virtual airgap kill switch if you need to wipe fast. It's configured to your known aliases and can spin up fresh ones if you need. "

He stepped back, arms crossed, watching her with that unreadable calm that drove her insane. "Keyboard’s weighted the way you like it. Optical trackpad, military-grade firewall, your preferred font settings. Even the background code was set to dark mode."

She stared at the station, something sharp and uncertain twisting low in her gut. This wasn’t just tech. This was intimacy. It was a man who remembered every keystroke she favored, every quirk of her digital habits—and had rebuilt them from memory like it was nothing.

He hadn’t just given her tools. He’d built her a temple—silent, precise, and carved from memory.

Every detail, from the slight tilt of the monitors to the backup redundancy in the drives, screamed of someone who hadn’t just remembered her habits but had honored them.

Revered them. Like a worshipper rebuilding an altar to a goddess who’d once ruled his world.

And damn him, part of her still ached for the devotion buried in every byte.

Her jaw ticked. “All yours, you mean. Let’s not pretend I’m not still inside your cage.”

His voice dropped. “I’m not pretending anything. You asked for a way to work. I gave you one. Full sandbox access. Nothing leaves without your key.”

That actually gave her pause. She stepped toward the terminal, fingers hovering over the keys like it might bite.

Her breath caught, just a little, the muscle in her jaw tightening.

He’d remembered everything. The keystroke responsiveness, the anti-glare coating on the monitor, the exact layout of a workspace that once felt like home.

It was like slipping back into a life she'd buried—and finding it still warm.

The setup was impressive—overkill, really.

But efficient. Brutally efficient. And that efficiency made something tighten low in her belly.

She wasn’t sure if it was awe or unease—or the terrifying possibility it was both.

The thought that he could know her this well, down to the granular quirks of her work rhythm, wasn’t just unsettling.

It was invasive. Intimate. And it scraped against a raw nerve she hadn’t realized was still exposed.

She glanced sideways, suspicion flickering beneath the casual tone. “What’s the catch?” She didn’t trust gifts—not from him. Not when control often came dressed like kindness.

“No catch.” He shrugged. “I just want to know if you’re building a firewall or burning one down.” His tone held that razor-thin line between warning and challenge—meant to rattle her, or maybe test if she still knew how to rattle him back.

Keira huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “You always were good at knowing just when to push and when to back off.”

“And you were always good at pretending you didn’t like it.”

Her cheeks flushed. Dammit. She looked back at the screen, forcing her voice to stay cool. “So, what—are you gonna be watching me while I work, too?”

“I have better things to do than babysit your keyboard.”

“Oh, right. Like glowering at poor Donal until he develops a stress ulcer.”

“He’s already got one. Nothing to do with me.”

“Uh-huh.”

They fell into a silence that wasn’t quite comfortable but no longer sharp-edged—tense, but tolerable. Keira sat, her fingers flying over the keys with muscle memory that surprised her.

She toggled through system diagnostics, sifted through access logs, poked around the sandbox, and ran a couple of fake intrusion tests just to be sure.

The hum of the machinery under her fingertips, the subtle warmth of the monitors, and the faint electric tang in the air all wrapped around her like a second skin.

This wasn’t just work—it was homecoming, laced with unease.

The architecture was flawless. Not just functional—it was intuitive, like the machine could anticipate her next move before she made it. It felt like sitting down to an instrument she hadn't touched in years and still knowing the song by heart.