Page 37

TWENTY-SIX

Killian

It felt anti-climactic at first. After all the planning, the sleepless nights, the obsessive double-checking, we pressed the button.

And just like that, the first wave of packets were gone—routed to the agencies, the whistleblowers, the watchdog groups.

They were curated batches of evidence, each tailored to its recipient.

We held back on Lassiter. For now. Not because we didn’t have enough to bring him down—we did—but because this was Jamie’s part in this.

Holding back on his packet of information was the strategy.

Timing. Optics. One wrong step, and he’d slither free.

I told myself we were being smart. Tactical.

But deep down, I knew part of me wanted him to feel the walls closing in.

To hear the whispers and wonder when the axe would fall. To sweat .

He had to know. Somewhere, somehow, he’d feel the ground shift beneath his feet.

Inside the Cave, the tension was suffocating. No one spoke louder than they had to. Caleb moved like a man possessed, setting up a slow-drip media schedule from his command post at the center of the table. We had weeks of drops prepared—carefully tiered levels of exposure.

And then, it started.

The first article went live barely three hours later.

“Corruption at the Highest Levels—More to Follow”.

By the evening: “FBI Regional Director Arrested After Armed Standoff in New Mexico.”

Another one followed close after:

“Senator Huxley Taken into Custody on Federal Trafficking Charges.”

By the end of the day, headlines littered the media landscape. Bank seizures. Resignations. Sealed indictments. The machine was grinding forward, slow but inevitable.

I stood with my hands braced on the edge of the board, watching the news feeds flicker in real time.

The air in the Cave felt heavier with each headline.

My palms were damp against the edge of the board, jaw tight, heart punching a slow, deliberate rhythm behind my ribs.

This was justice in motion—but it didn’t feel like triumph.

Not yet. Not until everyone on the board was done.

And even though I hated Jamie not being next to me, my team was covering everything.

I was due in court in the morning, playing the game, acting as if I didn’t have a thing to do with the chaos. Jamie wasn’t here because he had his own war to wage, his own planning to finish—and that was on him and the guys at Redcars. Different battlefield. Same war.

Lassiter wasn’t in the headlines, but he had to be watching. The storm was coming. And he had nowhere left to run.

At midnight, fueled by coffee and the righteous relief things were getting done, I sat back in my chair and asked for a status update from everyone.

Caleb leaned over his screen, tapping in a flurry of keystrokes before speaking up.

“I’m having to stagger packet delivery via rotating proxies.

If we keep pushing from the same source points, they’ll trace the origin within twenty-four hours.

I’ve already started load balancing the uploads through Tier 3 mirror servers, but we’ll need to reroute the media drops again tonight. ”

No one argued. I didn’t understand what he was doing, it was all magic, but I bet Jamie would get it. We trusted Caleb with this—the digital battlefield was his domain. If he said the infrastructure needed retooling, it did.

He added without looking up, “I’m also drafting a fallback path for the final dump. If Lassiter gets away when we release his file, I have a hard-coded trigger tied to two separate keys—mine and yours.”

I nodded slowly. It was overkill. It was necessary.

The elevator security pinged, and when I looked, there was my Jamie, staring up at the camera as if he owned the place. Just seeing his face knocked something loose in my chest. I cleared his access immediately, heart rate ticking up as the elevator began its climb.

By the time it dinged, I was already at the door. The second it opened, I pulled him close—my hand curled around the back of his neck, grounding, grateful.

“What are you doing here?” I murmured into his hair, not letting go.

He shrugged, a sheepish smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Would you believe me if I said I can’t seem to go a night without you?”

I pulled back enough to look at him, hands still resting at his waist. “You just want to know what we’re doing,” I teased, shaking my head. “So transparent.”

He leaned in close, lips brushing mine. “But also…” he whispered, kissing me, slow and deep. “I genuinely can’t go a night without you.”

The weight in my chest shifted, something warm curling behind my ribs. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed to see him until he was standing right in front of me.

“Hey,” he said and kissed me, wrapping his hands around the back of my head to hold me closer.

“Hey, Pretty,” I whispered and tightened my hold at his waist for a moment.

My heart swelled with the weight of it—how much I wanted him, how much I’d missed him.

And under it, fear bloomed. Because needing someone like this, needing him, wasn’t safe.

Not in this world. Not with everything we were walking into.

But in that moment, I didn’t care. I was his, and if it broke me, then I’d make sure the team was safe, and … so be it..

He tasted so damn good, like warmth and home, and something dangerous I couldn’t quit. I kissed him again, deeper this time, and the way he melted into it undid me. Mine . God help me, he was mine. And I didn’t know what the hell I’d done to deserve him, but I wasn’t letting go .

“You want us to clear the room?” Sonya asked.

We stepped apart after one last kiss.

“Our bad,” I said, but couldn’t help smiling.

“I’ve seen the media storm,” Jamie said and stood by Caleb’s desk, “Bank seizures. Arrests for the other people on the wall. When are we hitting Lassiter?”

Caleb, not even looking up from his screen, called out from across the room, “I have eyes on him—he’s at home, packing a bag, and has already emptied his safe. His wife is asleep, but she took pills, so she’s out.”

“Do you have the location ready?” I asked Jamie, and he just gave me a sharp nod, passing the piece of paper to Caleb, which seemed so old-school given the amount of tech we used.

Caleb entered the details, and three camera views appeared on the screen.

Warehouses, broken windows, no cars, and silence.

I gripped his hand, my fingers curling tight around his knuckles. “You’ve got this, right? You’ll stay safe? Promise me, Pr—Jamie.”

“It’s one of the properties on my list. I have surveillance; I’ve set it up, worked it out. This won’t be chaos, and Rio and Enzo will be there as well.”

“Not Robbie?”

“Never,” Jamie was adamant.

Caleb shot me a look—despite the whole murdering thing, Caleb and Sonya had been quiet, and Levi refused to talk about it, claiming plausible deniability.

“So what happens now?” Jamie asked and crossed his arms over his chest. The burns on his hands were no longer raw, but still a harsh reminder.

The scabs had mostly fallen away, leaving behind tender, pink skin and the shiny start of new healing.

He kept them covered, more out of habit than need.

I didn’t want to see burns on him again.

The thought twisted in my chest, but deep down, I knew what I’d signed up for.

Love didn’t erase compulsion or the past. It didn’t dull the urges or rewrite the wiring in his head.

It wasn’t like my magic cock was going to reprogram him into someone else.

That idea made me huff out a quiet, wry laugh at myself.

“What’s funny?” he asked with a frown.

“I was just thinking about my magic cock,” I deadpanned, and we might have gone on teasing, but my cell vibrated and, at eighteen minutes past midnight, the call we’d been expecting had come in, although I waited a full three rings before answering.

“McKendrick,” I said in my best approximation of someone who’d been woken up.

“Jesus Christ! Have you seen the news?” Lassiter burst out, his voice sharp and frayed at the edges.

“ They’re going to tie me to this, I know it—Jesus, the headlines, the timing—it looks bad.

It wasn’t me, I had nothing to do with any of this.

I didn’t know, but they’ll dig and twist and, suddenly, I’m at the center of this whole fucking mess and?—”

“Woah, woah. Slow down,” I cut in. “Start from the beginning.”

He inhaled, as though he was trying to drag himself back from the brink. “None of what is happening out there is to do with me,” he repeated, a little steadier now. “But I know it’s going to be linked to me. I need you to find out what the fuck is happening. I need a safe place to stay.”

No mention of his wife. So much for the strong family unit.

“I don’t understand?” I lied.

He was spiraling. I could hear it in the pitch of his voice—too fast, too panicked. He was usually slick, controlled, and measured to the point of arrogance. But now? He was unravelling as we expected.

“Fuck! Dran is a personal friend. And Senator Huxley? Fuck, we play golf. Jesus, Killian, help me.”

He was flailing, throwing names and half-formed connections at me as if I were the net that would catch them.

As if he said enough things, one of them would make it all make sense.

But what struck me more was what he wasn’t saying—any absolute acknowledgment that this was his doing.

He was acting like an outsider, like a bystander who happened to be caught in the blast radius.

And he didn’t believe that; he was desperate to pretend.

“You can’t come to me, I have cameras everywhere, home and office,” I said, keeping my tone calm, measured.

I picked up the piece of paper with Jamie’s neat cursive, “There’s a satellite office I use in the warehouse district.

Discreet. No cameras, no digital trail. I’ll drop you a pin. Meet me there in an hour. Come alone.”

“You can help me fix this, right?”

“Meet me and we’ll come up with something that looks like a plan,” I replied, voice dry.

“But this won’t be clean, and it won’t be easy.

You’re an ADA, apparently with friends in low places.

If you want to avoid getting caught up in other people’s mess, show up and tell me everything.

No more riddles, no more theatrics, no more blackmailing me to help.

We fix it or we bury it, and you pay me. Those are your options.”

I hung up and sat there for a long moment, staring at my phone as though it might bite.

Everything about that call had stunk of desperation, of self- preservation, of Lassiter trying to shift his weight before the floor gave out beneath him.

He truly believed I was the guy who could fix this.

Hell, he even wanted me to believe he was innocent, or ignorant, or one of the unlucky ones caught in the fallout.

Fuck him for what he’d done to Robbie—shattered him, used him.

I could still see Robbie that first time we’d met—his body tense, eyes wide, flinching at every noise.

The way he’d curled in on himself when Redcars tried to offer safety.

The raw fear that bled out of him in waves.

That damage had two names: Lassiter and Kessler.

We couldn’t get one, yet, but Lassiter was dead tonight.

Fuck him for the trafficking, for the lives stolen, for every scream muffled by money and power.

Fuck him for the hypocrisy when he worked trafficking cases, the polished lies, the way he hid behind good suits and righteous speeches while he orchestrated nightmares in the dark.

And fuck him most of all for thinking he could crawl to me and pretend he was innocent.

Jamie gripped my arm. “Killian?”

I placed a hand over his. “He’ll be there in an hour. ”

Something flared in Jamie’s eyes—sharp, unfiltered, a mix of focus, excitement, and something darker.

Anger? Anticipation? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

But I recognized it for what it was: intent.

Whatever he saw in this moment, whatever thread he was ready to follow, it meant he was leaving. Soon.

And I could pretend he wasn’t doing this, pretend he and the men at Redcars could let this go.

But that wasn’t him. That had never been us . I knew his whole heart, and I reached for him, cradled his face in both hands, and forced him to look at me, to feel what I was offering him—not hesitation, not fear, but permission.

“Make him pay, Jamie.” He blinked, breath catching. “Make him fucking pay.”