Chapter 10

**ARIA**

PERIMETER BREACH DETECTED.

I stared at those three words for a full second before my brain caught up with what they meant.

Then the alarms went off.

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it'd break through.

I scrambled out of bed, hands shaking by my sides, and that was when I heard it. Somewhere in the penthouse, not far, the explosion of glass shattering.

A window.

My room went dark except for the red emergency light that flickered on above the door.

I stood in the middle of the room trying to remember how to breathe.

Then my door flew open.

It was the security man from yesterday, and he was not the unhurried person of yesterday. He was in panic.

It made my blood run cold

His eyes moved around my room in one sweep before landing on me.

"Stay behind me," he said. "Don't speak. Don't stop moving."

"What is happ—"

He shot me a glance that was enough to make me shut up.

He pulled me into the corridor.

Every shadow was wrong, the alarms were so loud I could feel them in my back teeth. Daniel moved fast and I kept up because the alternative was being left alone there and I was not doing that.

We made it halfway to the east stairwell before Daniel stopped so suddenly I walked into his back.

Three men were at the end of the corridor.

They were not staff.

All three of them armed. All three of them looking directly at us.

But at me specifically.

Oh no.

One of them, the one in the middle, looked at me and smiled.

It was the kind of smile that had nothing warm in it.

"There she is," he said. "Kane sends his regards."

Daniel pushed me behind him and pulled out a gun.

What happened next was fast and ugly.

I pressed my back against the wall and tried to make myself as small as possible while Daniel handled the first man.

The second man moved to get around him and I thought very clearly of how my lifeless body would look in a corridor I had walked through only nine times in my life.

Then Marcus came from behind them.

I had not heard him coming. Nobody had. One second the corridor was three men, Daniel and me. But now Marcus was simply there.

Relief washed over me instantly even though I was still pretty much in danger.

Then the dynamic of the entire situation changed.

Marcus was methodical in a way I had no reference point for. Not violent exactly, or not only violent. Efficient. Like he was solving a problem that happened to involve people who did not want to be solved.

The first man went down hard.

The second turned and Marcus was already ready for that.

Then the house security reached to grab the third.

But not before he twisted free and ran.

Back toward the broken window he had come through, and then he was gone and the corridor was just us and two men on the floor, the alarms still screaming.

Marcus looked at me. A quick assessment, head to toe.

"Are you hurt?"

"No." I was not sure if that was true but nothing was bleeding so I said it anyway.

He nodded once and spoke into the earpiece I had not noticed he was wearing. Then he positioned himself between me and the direction the third man had gone.

Within a few minutes Jade appeared.

He came through the corner at the end of the corridor and that was when I understood immediately what he had meant when he told me something was about to go wrong.

He was not in his suit jacket. Shirt sleeves, top button open, hair messy like he had been somewhere and moved fast to get here. But it was his expression that stopped me.

Not the cold control I had seen.

Not the contained fury from his office.

It was something I didn't have a name for. And it didn't look good.

His eyes found me before they found anything else in that corridor.

He crossed the distance between us in a few strides and his hands were on my face before I even noticed. Tilting my head. Checking my temple, my jaw, the side of my neck.

"Are you hurt?"

"No," I said. "I'm not hurt."

He did not stop immediately. His hands moved to my shoulders and stayed there and he looked at me with an expression I couldn't read.

I became aware that I was shaking. Not a little. My whole body, a fine tremor I could not control, my hands and my arms and somewhere deep in my chest.

His grip on my shoulders tightened slightly. Not painful. Just present.

"The third one got out," Marcus said from behind him.

Jade did not look away from me. "I know."

"Do you want me to—"

"In a minute."

Another moment where he just looked at me. Then he exhaled, slow and controlled, and something in his face settled back into something more familiar. He dropped his hands from my shoulders.

"Did they come for me?" My voice came out quieter than I intended.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Yes."

The word landed like something heavy in my chest.

Somehow I knew that I was a piece in something much larger than my father's debt. But knowing something abstractly and hearing it said out loud in a red-lit corridor by a man whose hands were still warm on your shoulders were two completely different things.

"But why?" I asked finally.

He didn't answer.

But I saw the way his jaw tightened at my question.

Why couldn't he give me an answer?

Marcus cleared his throat.

Jade turned then, finally, and the two of them spoke in low voices about perimeter sweeps and security audits and what the third man's exit route told them about how they had gotten in. I stayed where I was against the wall and let my breathing come back to normal.

Eventually the alarms stopped.

The silence after them felt enormous.

Jade turned back to me.

"You're moving into my room tonight," he said.

I looked at him.

"Where I can see you," he added. "Where I can keep you safe."

A few days ago I would have had something to say. Would have argued till day break.

But now...now that this happened?

I could only accept.

"Okay," I said.

Something moved through his expression. Brief and unguarded and gone before I could properly see it.

He turned toward the corridor.

"Come with me," he said, not looking back.

I pushed off the wall and followed him.

My hands had almost stopped shaking by the time we reached the stairs.

Almost.