LOGIN“We need to verify the shell’s registration,” I say, already thinking ahead. “If the agent is real, we subpoena. If not—” “—we go to the judge with what we have,” he finishes. He’s already reaching for his phone, thumb flying over the keys. I watch him for a second—his focus, his certainty, the co
I don’t have to look at the clock to know that sunrise is hours away. I just keep working, following the kill trail, and let Lucas match my pace, column for column, word for word. We don’t talk about anything that isn’t the case. We don’t talk about what happened in the corridor, or in the conferen
At this hour, the war room is stripped to its brutal minimums: every light off but the single desk lamp throwing amber like stage blood across a waste of files. The table stretches the length of the glass wall, bare except for what I need: environmental audits fanned out in wind-rose patterns, shipm
Let them come. The sun’s gone predatory by the time I hit my office. It edges past the neighboring tower, scrapes a single beam through the half-closed blinds, and paints the carpet with the kind of hard shadow that only happens when the day is almost over. My chair is turned slightly from the desk
But between my eyes, fractured by the spiderweb in the table’s finish, there is the faintest hint of something wild. The pupil is still a circle, but the color around it is wrong: darker, thicker, almost gold. I watch myself for ten full seconds. I hold the gaze. I do not blink. Then I square my s
When the door finally seals behind the last suit, the hush is absolute. I count three, then five, then seven heartbeats before the footsteps fade down the corridor. Just as quickly as it arrived, the pressure bleeds from the room, and I am alone with the mess that nearly undid me. The conference ta
I let them watch me as I unfurl into motion, as I take my time, a tigress stretching beneath a lazy sun. The documents make a soft, lethal sound as they hit the glass, echoing back to fill the silence. These papers are my arsenal, my map to the battlefield I will carve from this sterile room. I ar
The air thrums with ambition, the kind that leaves marks like teeth on skin. I step into the boardroom, a half dozen pairs of eyes pulling toward me as if gravity's force has just shifted. The glass walls loom like a watchful sky, reflections doubling back on themselves, encasing us in a tower of ou
I gather the pieces of myself and leave the office. My own intentions are as fractured as his. I cannot think straight with the scent of him so fresh, so insistent, so much like a promise. The door swings shut behind me, cutting off the warmth and memory of Derek's presence with surgical precision
I stiffen, a snarl forming at the back of my throat, before I manage to smooth it into something more civil, more human. This is not what I expected, not what I am prepared for. I should have known. I should have known he'd come. "Mara," his voice drawls, easy and confident, but I hear the challeng







