LOGINDevin’s POV I find Eve in the nursery. She looks up when I enter, her face pale in the dim light. "What happened?" "Change of plans." I close the door behind me and sit beside her. "Marguerite gave us new intel. The warehouse is a trap. The Petrov we have been hunting is a decoy. The real mastermind is somewhere else, and if we raid the warehouse, a dead man's switch will release everything. Every document. Every secret. It will destroy the company and everyone connected to it." Eve is quiet for a long moment. Then she nods slowly. "What do we do?" "We go to the bank. Marguerite gave me a key to a safety deposit box. It contains documents that will lead us to the real Petrov. We have twelve hours." "Then we should go now." "No." I take her hand. "You stay here with the boys. Priya is here. Solomon's people are here. This is the safest place for you." "I am not letting you go alone." "You are not. Solomon is coming with me. Henderson, too. We will be back before you know it."
Devin's POV Solomon assembles his team in the living room of the safe house, and the space that felt so cramped just hours ago now feels like a war room. Maps cover the coffee table. Blueprints of the warehouse are taped to the walls. Men and women in tactical gear move through the house with quiet efficiency, checking weapons and reviewing routes. I stand by the window with my arms crossed, watching the rain streak down the glass while Marguerite walks Solomon through the layout one final time. She speaks with the calm authority of someone who has spent years navigating the darkest corners of the network, and despite everything I feel about her, I cannot deny that she knows what she is talking about. "The east entrance is the only viable entry point," she says, tapping the blueprint. "The north and west sides are monitored by motion sensors, and the south entrance is reinforced with steel. The east door is used for deliveries and leads directly to a service corridor that runs alo
Eve's POVMarguerite Chen stands in my hallway like a ghost that refuses to stay buried, her silver hair dripping rainwater onto the floor and her coat soaked through from the storm outside. She looks like she walked here through the wind and the rain, which she probably did, because Marguerite Chen does not do anything by halves. Not even showing up uninvited to the safe house of the woman she helped terrorize."You have got to be kidding me."The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, and I do not even try to reel them back in. I am tired and scared and holding two crying babies, and the last person I want to see right now is the woman who helped Croft build the network that has been trying to kill my family."Eve." Priya's voice is careful, measured, the voice she uses when she is trying to keep me from doing something I might regret. "She says she has information.""I am sure she does. She has had information for months. Years. She had information when she was sitting in my
Eve's POVSebastian's cry cuts through the house like a siren.I lift him from the bassinet, his tiny body rigid with distress, and press him against my shoulder. He screams into my neck, his fists beating against my collarbone. Across the room, Theodore watches from his bouncy seat with wide, worried eyes. He stopped eating two hours ago. His bottle sits on the counter, curdled and forgotten."Shh," I whisper, pacing the length of the small living room. "Shh, baby, I have got you."He does not stop. He never stops anymore.The walls press in. The windows are covered with heavy blankets, blocking out the gray winter light, and the single lamp in the corner casts shadows that shift and dance with every step I take. I have not left this house in eleven days. I have not breathed fresh air or seen the sky or spoken to another human being besides Devin and Priya.Devin.He is in the kitchen, his back to me, phone pressed to his ear. His voice is low and urgent, the same tone he has used fo
Devin's POVThe explosion tore through the building like a living thing.I heard it before I felt it, a deep and terrible roar that shook the ground beneath my feet and rattled the windows in their frames. Then the shockwave hit, throwing me against the wall of the van with a force that knocked the breath from my lungs. For a moment, there was nothing but noise and chaos and the smell of smoke and burning debris.Then silence.I pulled myself upright and stared through the windshield at the building where Solomon's team had entered less than ten minutes ago. The top three floors were engulfed in flames, orange and yellow tongues licking at the dark sky. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer with every passing second."No." The word came out as a whisper. Then louder. "No. No. No."I was out of the van before I knew what I was doing, running toward the burning building. Henderson caught me before I made it ten feet, his arms wrapping around my chest and holding me back."You ca
Devin's POVThe black car stayed in the rearview mirror for three miles before it finally turned off the highway.I did not relax until it disappeared from sight. Even then, my hands stayed tight on the steering wheel and my eyes kept flicking to the mirrors, watching for any sign that we were being followed. The road ahead wound through the mountains, the trees thick and dark on either side. Eve sat in the back seat with the boys, her voice low and soothing as she fed Theodore a bottle."Whoever was in that car, they did not follow us," she said, reading my mind as she always did."For now. But they know we are on the move. They will try to find us again.""Then we make sure they cannot. We disappear. Completely."The old man's cabin was even more remote than I had expected. It sat at the end of a long dirt road, surrounded by dense forest and a frozen pond that gleamed in the winter sunlight. There was no electricity and no running water, just a wood stove and a hand pump and a stac
Devin’s POV The moment Eve's voice cracked on the other end of the line, I knew that walking misdemeanor had finally done what I had been silently hoping he would do since the day Eve told me she was engaged. He had removed himself from her life in the most catastrophic way possible, and while I
Eve’s POV If I’d known I would see my stepsister’s legs wrapped around my fiancé, I would have worn high heeled shoes that would have doubled as a weapon. Instead I stood in the cottage doorway in ballet flats as the three of us were frozen in a tableau so absurd it could have been a Renaissan
Devin’s POV I stood in Eve's kitchen after she left for her appointment with Marguerite Chen and stared at the coffee maker for five full minutes without seeing it. She'd said she needed to do this alone. I understood that about her, the fierce independence that sometimes tipped into self-destruc
Eve’s POV Scratch what I said about not being desperate. I was desperate enough but not shameless enough to ask Devin to marry me. I spent the rest of the day doing what any reasonable woman in my position would do. I walked into every boutique between the judge's office and the river, tried on







