Page 44 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

I pulled a chair closer for her, shifting the laptop between us before moving to the kitchen. “I’ve accessed the administrative directories, but the file structure is massive—thousands of entries with only numerical designations.”

I returned with coffee and a sandwich, setting both firmly beside her. “Fuel up,” I said, watching her eyes dart across the screen, already completely focused on the mission.

Maeve’s fingers continued their relentless rhythm on the keyboard. Not even a pause.

I leaned against the table, waiting. Nothing.

“Maeve.” I tried again, deliberately placing my palm flat on the keyboard, blocking her access. “The sandwich isn’t decorative.”

“Give me a second,” she muttered, trying to angle the screen away from my hand.

I moved my hand to the top of the screen, a deliberate threat. “Eat now, or I’m shutting this down.”

Her head snapped up, eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “You wouldn’t.”

“Already calculating how fast I can close the lid against how quickly you’ll try to stop me.” I met her glare, unblinking. “My reflexes are better than yours even when you’re not running on empty.”

A low growl vibrated from her throat—the sound startlingly feral coming from someone her size.

It resonated through me, awakening something equally primitive that recognized and responded to the challenge.

She seized the sandwich with unnecessary violence and took a defiant bite, maintaining eye contact like a battle of wills.

“Keep eating,” I said, not hiding my satisfaction.

Her eyes narrowed over the sandwich, and I caught the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth—not quite a smile, but close. She took another bite, and I watched the struggle play out behind those sharp eyes—pride warring with practicality. Practicality won, but only narrowly.

I took the chair beside her, close enough that our thighs brushed. The contact sent an electric current through me, a reminder of how her skin felt against mine. I shifted imperceptibly closer, drawn to her warmth by some force I could neither name nor fight.

We lost track of time as afternoon faded to evening, neither of us bothering with lights. The laptop’s blue glow became our world, punctuated only by the rhythm of keystrokes and Maeve’s occasional muttered profanity that sometimes pulled an unexpected smile from me.

As darkness claimed the room, our shared isolation intensified, creating a strange intimacy. Each accidental brush of her arm or knee against mine became something I anticipated, casual contact that registered more powerfully than it should.

I rolled my shoulders, easing the tension built from hours of staring at the screen. Maeve’s eyes tracked the movement, lingering on the play of muscle beneath my shirt before darting back to the screen .

“Fucking hell,” she muttered, typing another search string. “Nothing again.”

The room had become a cave of shadows, the windows transformed into black mirrors that reflected only our frustration and the screen’s glare. Her coffee sat forgotten, a cold accusation. “How is this even possible?”

“As I said…there’s a lot of data stored there, making the one we actually need accessible harder,” I pointed out.

Brock did his best to keep his operation hidden.

When we worked together, many of our clients requested my hand specifically for killing, but Brock’s talent lay in other departments, whether I wanted to admit it or not. Unfortunately, this was one of them.

Maeve looked up at me, desperation sneaking into her gaze.

“Try Xavier’s prisoner ID number,” I suggested.

Maeve’s fingers paused over the keyboard. “Already did. Three times.”

I kept my expression neutral despite the frustration coiling like barbed wire around my spine.

Without conscious decision, my hand settled on her shoulder, thumb instinctively finding the hard knot of tension at the base of her neck.

She leaned into the contact—a fraction of movement that felt like surrender from someone so fiercely independent.

Maeve typed “JD-2741” for the dozenth time. Zero results.

“God damn it!” She slammed the laptop shut with enough force that I flinched—a reaction I recognized as new, born in the moments since knowing her. “We’ve tried everything—Reaper, JD-2741, Blackout, Specter, Prima—nothing! ”

She shoved back from the table, dragging both hands through her hair. The tremors had returned to her fingers—microscopic vibrations I could detect even from this distance. Her body betrayed what her determination wouldn’t acknowledge: too much strain, too little recovery time.

“We need to try a different approach entirely,” I said, standing. I stretched, muscles bunched tight from hours of inactivity. The movement narrowed the space between us, our bodies aligning as though following some invisible current.

Maeve stared at the laptop, then exhaled slowly. “One more drive. Then we rethink.”

I connected the fourth drive to the port. This one had a different security architecture—not necessarily higher-level, just constructed differently. The drive whirred to life, files appearing on screen with a different organization than the previous three.

“What’s this?” I clicked on a folder that caught my attention :“Medical Assessment.”

These files used an entirely different naming convention—each beginning with “CV” followed by numbers.

“CV-587, CV-342, CV-901…” Maeve read aloud, her voice shifting from frustration to focus. Her entire posture changed as she leaned toward the screen, the hunter scenting prey .

I opened a random file. The document contained detailed medical data—blood panels, psychological profiles, and physical capability assessments.

“Intake assessments,” Maeve said, scrolling through pages of clinical notations.

Her voice carried the edge of someone seeing a pattern emerge from chaos.

She leaned closer, her hair falling forward to brush my arm, releasing the faint scent of my shampoo on her skin—a detail that registered with disproportionate intensity.

I checked the timestamps. “These are initial evaluations—before conditioning.”

“So the CV numbers are assigned when subjects first enter the program.”

I nodded, scanning the folder structure. In a subfolder labeled “Administrative,” one document captured my attention: “Subject Designation Protocols.pdf”

“Here,” I said, opening it. My arm crossed hers as I reached for the touchpad, and I registered her caught breath at the brief contact—her reaction triggering my own. “This might explain the naming system.”

The document loaded—an internal procedures guide. Maeve leaned in, her shoulder pressing against mine as we examined the text. The contact grounded me somehow, a fixed point in the darkness.

“Three-tier naming system,” she read, her voice quickening. “Intake: Original initials plus Physical Assessment Code—that’s the CV numbers. Clinical Viability. ”

“Conditioning phase: designation plus numerical sequence,” I continued, something cold settling in my chest.

“JD,” Maeve said, striking the table with her palm. “Just Directive. That’s what you were when I found you. JD-2741.”

“And operational: Field designation only.” Reaper. Not even a person anymore—just a function.

Maeve sat back, her expression transforming as the implications hit. “They erase your identity in stages. Even in their files.”

The revelation hit like a fist to the solar plexus. JD-2741 was never meant to be an identity at all—merely a transitional designation between the person I was and the weapon they had created.

“We’ve been searching wrong,” Maeve said, her fingers already moving across the keyboard with renewed purpose. Her fingers brushed against mine as she worked, the contact lingering a beat longer than functionality required. “We need to cross-reference the CV numbers with the JD designations.”

“We need to find who I was,” I said, the words emerging from some place deeper than conscious thought.

Maeve nodded, determination replacing defeat. Her eyes met mine, filled with fierce protection that created an unfamiliar pressure in my chest. “Let’s find your name.”

We tried several approaches, but the cross-referencing algorithms failed one after another.

“This isn’t working,” Maeve muttered, frustration bleeding back into her voice. The screen’s glow transformed her features, hollowing her cheekbones and turning her eyes to midnight.

She bit her lower lip, thinking. The sight drew my attention, the memory of those lips against mine momentarily more compelling than our search.

Her expression suddenly shifted. “What if we search by what we know about you physically?”

“Meaning?”

“Height, blood type, distinguishing marks—they would have documented everything during intake.” She shifted toward me, energy returning to her movements as the possibility took shape. She fixed me with a gaze so intent it felt like hands on my skin. “How tall are you?”

“Six-foot-three,” I answered, watching her fingers fly across the keyboard.

“Blood type?”

“O negative.”

She entered the data, adding male gender, age range, and other identifiers she’d observed. Her shoulder rested against mine as she worked, as though the contact helped her think. Her warmth registered as something I hadn’t realized I craved until it was offered.

“Let’s try this,” she said, hitting enter.

The search ran for several seconds. Then a single result appeared: CV-587.

“Got something,” Maeve whispered, as though speaking too loudly might make the file vanish.

We both instinctively leaned closer, our bodies aligned from shoulder to elbow.

Beneath the table, her hand found mine—fingers lacing through mine with an intimacy that felt more significant than our previous physical encounters.

I tightened my grip on her hand, using her as an anchor against whatever truths waited on the other side of this file.