Chapter six

PETER

The data on my triple-monitor setup was a flawless layout of corporate acquisitions, algorithmic risk assessments, and encrypted cybersecurity protocols. The Ambrose Group was on the verge of finalizing a forty-million-dollar merger with a tech firm in Manhattan, and by all logical parameters, my attention should have been entirely anchored to the glowing spreadsheets.

Instead, my brain was locked in a localized, agonizing loop.

Thursday, 9:14 AM.

The exact frequency of her voice when she called me a dictator. The precise shade of furious crimson that had stained her neck, bleeding up past her sharp collarbones into her cheeks. The scent of her—unmistakably sweet, like vanilla and baked sugar—cutting through the clinical, expensive leather and espresso notes of my kitchen.

My Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory was an asset in the boardroom, but tonight, it was a glitching surveillance camera playing the same tape over and over. I could still feel the phantom heat of her breath against my lips from when she had leaned across the quartz island, completely unfazed by the threat I posed, fiercely declaring that she didn't need me.

I checked the digital clock in the corner of my primary monitor. 10:42 PM. Sunday.

Her deadline was exactly one hour and eighteen minutes away. She hadn't signed the paper contract I’d left on the counter, and my administrative server logged zero downloads of the Ambrose Core tracking application from her device. For three days, she had actively engaged in a childish game of silent treatment. On Friday and Saturday night, my driveway sensors registered her ancient hatchback pulling in at exactly 10:59 PM. She had sat in her idling car for a full sixty seconds, deliberately making sure her headlights flashed against my living room windows before killing the engine. A blatant, petty middle finger to my eleven o'clock curfew.

She was playing a game with a man who didn't know how to lose.

I leaned back in my large leather chair, pinching the bridge of my nose as the memory of my conversation with Jeremy flashed forward. She’s a little too trusting, Pete. Naive. Then, the darkness of my own past tried to claw its way up—the phantom smell of copper, the dark stains on a cream European rug.

I cut the memory off with a brutal, practiced mental firewall. I didn't let the past breathe. I suppressed it. I managed it. Just like I was going to manage Phoebe Lawrence, whether she liked it or not.

A sharp, red alert box suddenly fractured the sea of corporate data on my center monitor.

My posture went rigid instantly. It wasn't an Ambrose Group corporate notification. It was a localized network alert from the encryption bubble I had thrown over the neighborhood wireless towers the morning I moved in. A digital anomaly. A burner cell phone signature had just pinged the tower closest to our street, routing through a spoofed IP address.

A second later, a secondary sensor on my dashboard flared. An encrypted data packet interception. The burner had just sent an SMS message to Phoebe’s phone number.

Before my brain could even cross-reference the digital footprint to track the location of the burner, the sleek black iPhone sitting next to my keyboard began to vibrate. The screen illuminated with her name.

I snapped it up, pressing it to my ear. "Phoebe. Your deadline isn't for another—"

"Peter."

The word was barely a sound. It was a ragged, trembling gasp of air that immediately sent a violent spike of adrenaline straight into my bloodstream. The witty, defiant, sunshine-infused girl from Thursday morning was entirely gone. In her place was the raw, unedited sound of terror.

"Phoebe, talk to me," I commanded, my voice dropping into a low, lethal cadence as I stood up from my desk, my body moving on pure instinct.

"Someone's... someone's outside," she whispered, her voice cracking so violently I could hear the tears threading through it. She was hyperventilating, her breaths coming too fast, too shallow. "They sent a text... Peter, they know about the red lace bra. They said I look better with my hair down. And... oh god, someone is trying the back door handle. I can hear it scratching."

The clinical, corporate billionaire entirely disintegrated. Every calculation, every boundary, every ounce of restraint I had cultivated over the last nine years vanished, replaced by a cold, predatory rage that burned white-hot.

"Lock your bedroom door. Get in the closet. I am coming," I said.

I didn't wait for her response. I tossed the phone onto the desk, grabbed the tactical tactical-grade tactical flashlight and the compact, specialized kinetic baton from my drawer, and breached my own front door in one fluid, explosive motion.

The humid Sunday night air hit my face, but I didn't feel it. My senses were dialed to an unnatural, hyper-focused frequency. I cleared the distance between our houses across the dark, shared lawn in less than four seconds, my running shoes making absolute zero noise against the damp grass. My eyes scanned the perimeter of her house as I approached from the blind side, mapping the shadows with military precision.

The back door.

I rounded the corner, my weapon drawn, my jaw clenched so hard the muscles in my face ached. The porch light was dead—deliberately unscrewed, my brain noted instantly. A shadow darted away from the back entrance, a dark, bulky figure moving toward the thick tree line that bordered the edge of her property.

I sprinted after him, closing the gap with terrifying speed, but the intruder had a head start and a waiting vehicle hidden on the unpaved service road beyond the woods. The roar of a low-end engine tore through the quiet night, tires screeching against gravel as a dark sedan peeled away into the darkness, its headlights completely blacked out.

A string of lethal, silent curses crossed my mind. I didn't chase a phantom vehicle into the dark. My primary objective wasn't apprehension; it was asset protection.

I turned on my heel and marched back to her house. The back door handle was warped, scratched deeply with a metallic tool. The screen window to her kitchen had been cleanly sliced open from the bottom up. The breach was real. The threat was no longer an anonymous variable on a digital screen. It was physical.

I bypassed the ruined back door, strode around to the front, and used the emergency spare key Jeremy had given me to throw the door open. The house was dark, suffocatingly quiet, save for the faint, frantic sound of shallow breathing coming from the upper level.

"Phoebe," I called out, my voice clear, commanding, and deliberately projecting an aura of absolute security. "The perimeter is clear. I'm coming up."

I took the stairs two at a time, my movements controlled but urgent. When I reached her bedroom, the door was locked. I gave it a firm, double knock. "Phoebe. Open the door."

The lock clicked. The door swung inward, and the sight of her hit me like a physical blow to the chest.

She was trembling so violently she could barely stand, her fingers white where she clutched a heavy, wooden hairbrush like a weapon. She wore an oversized t-shirt, her pale legs bare, her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders in a soft, chaotic cloud. Her cat-like eyes were wide, glassy with unshed tears, swimming with a vulnerability that looked utterly alien on her usually vibrant face.

The moment her eyes locked onto mine, the wooden brush slipped from her fingers, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor. She didn't say a word. She just took a ragged step forward, her entire body collapsing into my chest as if her legs could no longer support her weight.

My arms closed around her automatically, pulling her tight against my frame.

She was so small. So deceptively fragile. Her forehead pressed into the crook of my neck, her small hands clutching the fabric of my black button-down shirt as if it were the only anchor keeping her from being swept away by the dark. She was sobbing silently, her chest heaving against mine, her skin radiating a terrifying, feverish heat.

"I've got you," I murmured, the words feeling foreign on my tongue, but my grip only tightened. I buried one hand into the soft cloud of her dark hair, anchoring her head against my shoulder, while my other arm locked around her waist.

For a man who hated being touched, for a man who prided himself on keeping human interaction restricted to legally binding contracts and emotionless physical releases, the feeling of Phoebe Lawrence falling apart in my arms was entirely overwhelming. It triggered something primal deep within my chest—a dark, possessive necessity to destroy anything that dared to make her look this way.

I let her cry for exactly two minutes, my eyes scanning her bedroom over her shoulder, cataloging the details. Her phone lay on the bed, its screen still illuminated with the stalker's text message.

Slowly, I eased her back, keeping my hands resting firmly on her trembling shoulders. I forced her to look at me, my ocean-blue eyes locking onto her tear-streaked face.

"Look at me, Phoebe," I commanded softly.

She blinked, swallowing hard, her long lashes wet with tears. "He... he was right there, Peter. He was at the door. If I hadn't called you..."

"He's gone," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, absolute register. "I chased him to the service road. He had a car waiting. But he is not coming back tonight."

"I should call the police," she whispered, her voice small, her fingers still loosely clutching the cuffs of my shirt. "Jeremy said... Jeremy said it was just Jeffery being a jerk, but Jeffery doesn't use words like that. Jeffery doesn't slice window screens."

"I am the police tonight," I countered, my tone leaving zero room for argument. "My security team is already routing the cell tower pings to trace the burner phone's point of purchase. I am having a forensic unit look at the back door handle in the morning. But you are not staying here."

She blinked, her stubbornness trying to spark through the fog of her terror. "What do you mean? I can just lock the doors, I can—"

"You are not staying in this house, Phoebe," I cut her off, my voice sharp enough to slice through her remaining defenses. I stepped away from her, walking straight to her closet, pulling a duffel bag off the top shelf, and throwing it onto her bed. "The perimeter of this residence has been physically compromised. The lock on the back door is warped. The kitchen screen is destroyed. You are entirely exposed here."

"I can stay with Steph," she argued weakly, though she didn't move to stop me as I began pulling random changes of clothes from her drawers and tossing them into the bag. "Or Kiara—"

"Steph is a liability who can't even manage her own curfew, and Kiara is currently in Manhattan," I deadpanned, cross-referencing the exact details she had given me on Thursday with perfect HSAM accuracy. "Neither of them possesses a high-tech security grid or armored glass. You are moving into my penthouse downtown. Tonight. Right now."

"Peter, please—"

I stopped, turning to face her fully. I closed the distance between us until I was looming over her, my sheer physical presence filling her vision. The cold, analytical mask of the CEO was gone; the dangerous predator she had challenged on Thursday was standing right in front of her.

"The independent college-girl routine ends tonight, Phoebe," I said, my voice a low, dangerous vibration. "You told me on Thursday that if you got hurt, it was on you. You were wrong. I gave your brother my word. I committed to your physical safety. That means your options are gone. You can walk out to my car on your own two feet, or I can carry you out to it. Decide now."

She stared up at me, her chest heaving, her bottom lip trembling. She looked at the heavy duffel bag on the bed, then back to my unflinching face. For the first time since I had known her, the eternal sunshine in her eyes completely flickered out, yielding to the reality of the danger she was in.

"Okay," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

"Get your shoes," I said.

Ten minutes later, the house was completely locked down, and I was guiding her out the front door. I kept one heavy hand firmly on the small of her back, steering her through the humid night air toward the sleek, predatory shape of the McLaren Artura idling in the driveway. She looked incredibly small wrapped in a dark hoodie I had forced her to put on, her head ducked low.

I popped the trunk, tossed her duffel bag inside, and walked her to the passenger side, opening the door for her. She slid into the expensive leather interior without a single sarcastic comment or witty remark—a silence that, to my own irritation, I found deeply unsettling.

I closed her door, walked around to the driver's side, and slid into the cockpit. The cool, masculine scent of spice and leather enveloped us, a stark contrast to the damp, terrifying atmosphere of her compromised home.

I shifted the car into drive, the powerful engine letting out a low, muted purr as we pulled out of the driveway, leaving the quiet streets of Capitol Hill behind. I navigated the twists and curves of the dark roads leading toward the city center with steady, controlled movements, my hands firm on the steering wheel.

I glanced to the side. Phoebe had curled her legs up onto the leather seat, pulling her knees tightly to her chest. Her eyes were fixed on the rain-splattered passenger window, watching the blurred neon lights of Seattle flash by in a streak of brilliant color.

Slowly, the exhaustion of the adrenaline crash caught up to her. Her eyelids fluttered, growing heavy, until her head finally dropped against the leather headrest. Within fifteen minutes, her breathing evened out into the slow, deep rhythm of sleep.

I stopped at a red light downtown, the city skyscrapers towering above us like pillars of glass and steel. I turned my head, my unflinching gaze locking onto her sleeping face. In the dim, ambient glow of the dashboard lights, she looked entirely peaceful, the terror of the evening smoothed away by slumber. A stray lock of dark hair fell across her cheek.

My fingers twitched against the steering wheel with an insane, irrational urge to reach over and tuck it behind her ear.

I forced my gaze back to the road as the light turned green, accelerating into the private parking garage of my high-rise penthouse. I had spent my entire life eliminating variables, creating clinical, structured environments where emotions couldn't breach the firewall. I had designed a perfect life built on logic, corporate dominance, and calculated revenge.

But as I pulled into my private bay and killed the engine, looking at the girl sleeping soundly in my passenger seat, a cold, heavy truth settled deep in my chest.

I had just let the most dangerous variable in the world straight into my fortress. And I had absolutely no intention of letting her go.