Page 13

SUTTON

I take one step toward the stairs before instinct kicks in.

The shriek of the alarm still rings in my ears.

Deacon’s voice echoes like a loaded threat.

And that buzz under my skin—hot, high-voltage, tangled in the memory of his mouth on mine—hasn’t faded.

It’s not just adrenaline. It’s instinct—the kind that curls in my gut and whispers in my blood, telling me I won’t survive if I play small, if I hide.

That flight isn’t an option—not when the fire is already at the door.

I’m not running.

I spin on my heel, heart hammering, and grab the Glock from the console table.

My fingers close around the grip with a certainty that surprises even me—smooth, familiar weight anchoring me in the chaos.

My bare feet hit the floor with purpose as I move toward the front of the house, the low hum of adrenaline curling tight through my veins.

No more waiting. No more hiding. If something’s coming, I’ll meet it face-on.

Deacon’s already at the door, back rigid, weapon drawn, jaw locked.

The tension in his frame is a live current, vibrating with fury barely held in check.

He doesn’t glance my way, but I feel the heat of his wrath radiating off him, thick enough to taste—gunpowder and thunderclouds.

Still, I move in beside him, Glock steady in my grip, pulse pounding in my throat like war drums. Because whatever’s waiting outside, I’d rather face it shoulder-to-shoulder than cower behind him.

His snarl is low, lethal. "I told you to go upstairs."

"And I chose not to."

He turns. Slowly. Like thunder stalking the edge of a storm—controlled, but seething, just shy of explosion.

His eyes drag over me—barefoot, hair tangled, breath still shaky from the kiss we haven’t dared unpack—but his gaze lands on the Glock in my grip.

A flicker of surprise, then calculation.

Like he’s reassessing everything, including whether I’m safer beside him. .. or in the crossfire.

"Stay behind me."

Not an apology. Not approval. But in his world, this is permission. A silent contract forged in heat and chaos. It’s not comfort—but it’s control. And for now, it’s enough.

He checks the panel, pulls up the feed from the front porch. Deacon exhales. "A rose."

A chill skates down my spine, sharp as ice and threaded with dread, like the whisper of a blade just before it lands.

I press closer to the screen. "They’re taunting us."

"No. They're taunting me."

I whip toward him. "Oh, that’s rich. You think this is about your ego?"

"It’s about you. Which makes it my problem."

His voice is low, razor-edged—like it could cut skin if I flinched.

But I don’t. A pulse of heat rolls through me, fury and something darker curling in my chest. My knuckles tighten around the grip of the Glock, grounding me.

I meet his eyes, steady and defiant, unwilling to be the woman who folds in the face of fire. Not now. Not ever.

"Then maybe you should try listening instead of playing caveman. Because I have something."

He finally looks at me. Really looks. And it’s like grabbing hold of something raw and electric—his gaze a jolt straight to the spine, hot with tension, crackling with the things we haven’t said and the need neither of us can seem to shake.

"Talk."

I keep my voice even. "I dug into the bank accounts tied to the shell companies. There’s a pattern. At least six overlap with properties tied to the Devil’s Den. And one of them? It’s a shell that paid Sookie five grand. Two weeks before she died."

His brows pull together. "For what?"

"That’s the thing. It’s listed as a media consultancy. But the shell company is registered in the Caymans. Totally fake. Whoever’s behind this was either paying her off... or paying her to shut up."

He goes quiet. His eyes cut away, jaw tight, the muscle ticking like he's holding back a hurricane. And damn if that doesn’t just make him hotter.

It’s the brooding, the barely leashed rage, the way his restraint crackles like a live wire under his skin—it shouldn't be sexy, but it is. Irresistibly, maddeningly so.

I press. "She was working on a story. She was getting too close. And someone made sure she stopped."

Deacon scrubs a hand down his face. "You think that’s what today was? You chasing Sookie’s ghost?"

"No. I think I was chasing the people who made her a ghost."

His gaze sharpens, narrowing with lethal intent. "What happened at the mall?"

The question punches the breath from my lungs.

For a beat, all I can hear is the echo of my own pulse, loud and frantic in my ears.

That same relentless gaze that pinned me to the wall now demands truth with the weight of a loaded weapon.

My stomach tightens—not from fear, but with the punch of something raw and urgent, like my whole body is answering a question I didn’t know he was asking.

I need him to trust me. And the realization carves its way through me with the same intensity as the heat simmering in his eyes.

And, God help me, how impossibly sexy he looks when he's brooding like this—intensity radiating from every line of his body, rage simmering under the surface like a storm barely leashed.

It's a dangerous distraction. And I nearly made it worse.

I pause. Just a second—a flicker of hesitation, a stutter in my breath—but he sees it, reads it like a headline.

The way his gaze sharpens, zeroing in on that blink of guilt, makes my pulse lurch.

Heat coils low in my belly, furious and unnerved, because of course he catches it. Of course he always sees me.

"Don’t."

I sigh. "Some guy recognized me. Drew his weapon before I could blink. I didn’t provoke it. I barely spoke. He just... went cold."

His jaw clenches. "Had you not gone to Freeport alone, there's a very good chance it wouldn't have happened."

"There's no way to know that, Deacon. It was broad daylight. Public. I was armed."

"And if I hadn’t shown up?"

My silence is answer enough.

"Damn it, Sutton. You could’ve been killed."

"I know!"

It bursts out of me—louder, rawer than I meant, sharp with guilt and grit—but it lands. His expression cracks just slightly, like he wasn’t expecting the honesty behind the rage. For a second, something flickers—hurt, regret, something he masks too quickly—but I see it. And it makes my chest ache.

I lower my voice. "I know. Okay? I miscalculated. But I also found something real. There were signs someone had been using the place as some kind of front and recently. If we follow the money trail back…"

"We?"

His voice is dangerous now—low and taut, like a tripwire just waiting for the wrong move.

It ripples through the air, darker than thunder, sharper than glass, and it sends a pulse of heat straight to my core.

I hate how much it affects me, how sexy he is when he’s furious, how that quiet fury coils in my stomach like a live wire I don’t dare touch but can’t stop watching spark.

"Yes. We. Because I’m not stepping aside while you play hero. Sookie was my friend, and this is my research and my life."

His chest rises and falls in sharp bursts. Then, softer: "You have no idea what you’re up against."

I meet his stare. "Then show me. Don’t shove me out. Don’t lie to protect me. Show me."

Something in him fractures—a clean break from the fury that’s been grinding beneath his skin. Not gone, just transformed. It settles into something heavier, quieter. A vow made in silence. Not surrender. Not even compromise. But the moment when wrath hardens into unwavering resolve.

"You’re right. You can see things we can’t. You pulled a pattern together in days that my team’s been chasing for months."

I blink. Not at the words—but the tone. Respect.

Admiration, even. I’m used to being underestimated, sidelined, treated like my ideas are a footnote at best. But Deacon?

He looks at me like I matter—like what I see, what I know, carries weight.

And damn if that doesn’t shake something loose in me I didn’t know was locked down.

I’ve been dismissed, doubted, underestimated by men like him more times than I can count.

But Deacon? He sees me. It hits harder than I expect, and I hate how much I want more of it.

He continues, voice low. "But the Reaper is real. This isn’t just hacking into someone’s tax shell. This is blood. And you are absolutely in his sights."

I swallow the knot rising in my throat. "So teach me how not to die."

He huffs something between a laugh and a growl. "That’s not how it works."

"Then make a new rule. Because I’m not stepping back."

His hand lifts, hesitating in the charged space between us—then falls, fingers curling into a fist at his side like he’s afraid touching me might detonate whatever fragile control he's clinging to. The silence between us buzzes, thick and electric, heavy with everything we want to say but can’t, everything that might tip us over the edge if either of us moves an inch closer.

Finally, he nods. Once. "Fine. But from now on, you stay with me. You don’t move without telling me first. And you never, ever go in alone."

I raise a brow. "So I’m allowed to breathe without permission, or...?"

"You’re allowed to give me a heart attack once a week. Max."

"Deal."

I expect him to pivot. To walk away. But instead, he steps closer, eyes locked on mine with an intensity that slides under my skin like silk over a blade.

It’s the kind of look that pins me in place, all heat and warning, and my breath stutters—because whatever restraint he's holding onto is fraying at the edges, and some wild, reckless part of me wants to see it snap.

"You scared the hell out of me today."

The words are simple. Quiet. But they unravel me.

"Good," I say. But it comes out breathless.

He leans in close—so close I can feel the warmth of his breath skimming my lips, the tension between us a taut, invisible tether.

His heat seeps into me, setting every nerve alight.

But he doesn’t touch. Doesn’t kiss. Just hovers there, and it hits me like a wave—this fierce, aching awareness that he could claim me with a single breath, and yet he doesn’t.

That restraint? It says more than any heated promise.

It says he’s holding back not because he doesn’t want me, but because he does.

And that—God—that shatters something brittle in my chest and makes the ache almost unbearable.

letting the moment swell until it’s unbearable—thick, electric, and pulsing with everything we’re both holding back.

Then he pulls back, tension riding the line of his shoulders, jaw clenched like he's holding back more than just words. There’s a beat—too long to be casual—where his eyes flick to my mouth, then down the line of my throat, like he’s still warring with the instinct to claim and the need to protect.

But instead of closing the distance again, he turns—deliberate, restrained—and resets the alarm with a sharp tap.

The space between us hums, unresolved, the kind of silence that screams louder than any fight.

That’s when the feed flickers—a stuttering glitch across the screen like a heartbeat skipping a beat. The smooth roll of security footage jags, halts, then surges forward again with a fractured blur of pixels.

I catch it first. "Wait. Rewind."

The footage stutters, then clears, catching the figure mid-motion.

The hooded intruder lingers longer than expected, like they're savoring the moment.

Gloved fingers trace the doorframe with an eerie deliberation, almost reverent.

Then, with practiced precision, they press a device no larger than a key fob beneath the eave, tucked just beside the security cam—deliberate, brazen, and unmistakably strategic.

Deacon swears, loud and vicious. "Tracking beacon. Maybe a jammer—short-range signal disruptor, likely blocking outgoing feeds and camera uploads. Which means we’ve been blind for who knows how long—and whoever did this was close enough to walk right up to the house and stay invisible while they tagged us. We’re blind and tagged."

My skin crawls—like invisible insects skittering under the surface, sharp and insistent, impossible to ignore. A cold sweat prickles the back of my neck, every instinct screaming that we’re not alone anymore. That we’ve been touched. Marked.

He turns to me, eyes sharp and burning. "Get your laptop. We need to sweep every inch of this place. And then we need to plan our next move."

"Move? Where?"

He doesn’t answer. Just pins me with a stare so fierce it strips the air from my lungs—raw, blistering, and unrelenting.

It’s not just fire. It’s a vow forged in steel and fury.

A silent, feral oath that dares the world to come for me—because he’ll burn it down before he lets anyone get close.

And for the first time, I believe him. Completely.