The Weapon She Didn’t Know She Was

Chapter 2

“Is she any good?”

The words on the page burned into my retinas. Three years ago Damian Cross had asked the same question about me in a darkened hotel suite after we closed the Harrington account right before he pinned me to the wall and proved exactly how good he thought I was. Now the question was about me again, only this time it came from a man who used to wake up with my hair across his chest and now looked at me like a liability he couldn’t quite discard.

“My brother doesn’t do anything without a secret motive,” Damian said, arms crossed tight over his slate-gray suit. He leaned forward, anchoring me to the leather chair with that cold, assessing gaze that somehow still made my pulse skip the way it used to when he would watch me undress. 

“If Nathaniel wanted you here before I even looked at your résumé, you aren’t just an employee to him.”

I slammed the folder shut. The heavy cardstock cracked against my knees. 

“Then what am I?”

“A piece he’s moving on a chessboard.” Damian stood, buttoning his jacket with slow, deliberate precision that felt almost intimate the same careful control he once used when he unbuttoned my clothes. 

“The only question left is what game he’s playing. And whether I already lost the opening move the night you walked out of my bed and never came back.”

My fingers dug into the edge of the folder. Three years of unpaid overtime, stolen credit, and the memory of how it felt to be the woman Damian Cross actually wanted flared hot in my chest. 

“I didn’t take this job to be anyone’s pawn. And I sure as hell didn’t take it to be your second chance.”

“No one ever does.” He walked around the desk and stopped just inches from my chair. Close enough that I caught the clean, sharp scent of him expensive and controlled, the same scent that used to cling to my sheets. 

“But you’re in the room now. Two choices. Walk away, call it a strange first day, and find an agency that isn’t a war zone between two brothers who both know exactly how you sound when you come. Or stay, take the salary… and take the division.”

“That isn’t much of a pitch.”

“I’m not selling anything.” A cold, humorless twitch touched the corner of his mouth, and for a second I wondered what that mouth would feel like if it ever softened the way it used to against my throat. 

“I’m giving you the truth. That’s already more than my brother will ever offer you. He still wants what was mine. He always did.”

“I’m staying,” I said, standing so we were eye to eye. The air between us felt charged, heavy with every night we had once shared and every reason those nights had ended. 

“But make one thing clear to both of you. I am not a weapon. And I am not the woman who used to wait for you after midnight.”

Damian studied my face, eyes scanning for hesitation the way a man might search for a weak point he planned to claim later exactly the way he used to look at me when he decided he was going to have me, arguments be damned. 

“Good. The division you’re inheriting is rotting from the inside out. You’ll need every single inch of that spine. The same spine that let you leave me.”

The elevator ride down to Special Projects felt like dropping into a vault. Damian walked me out himself, a silent, possessive gesture that drew sharp, whispered glances from the assistants. His shoulder brushed mine once, deliberate or accidental, I couldn’t tell only that my skin remembered the weight of that same shoulder above me in the dark.

“One last warning,” he said as the brushed-steel doors began to slide shut. 

“Whatever card he handed you. Whatever late-night call you’re tempted to make. Remember that Nathaniel has never done a kind act for free. Everything is a transaction. Including the nights he spent trying to take you from me.”

“And you’re different?”

“I’m honest about the price tag,” Damian answered, and the doors closed on the intensity in his eyes the same intensity that had once made me believe I was more than a temporary conquest.

The Special Projects floor was a graveyard of abandoned ambitions. Empty desks. Dusty monitors. A dead fern slumped in the corner. My new office sat at the end of the hall, the air tasting of stale carpet cleaner and neglect. Three years ago I had been the rising star who thought she could have Damian Reyes without becoming another casualty of the Reyes brothers’ private war. Now I was the woman walking into the wreckage they had left behind.

A single thick cream envelope waited in the center of the bare glass desk. No postage. No return address. Just my name in the same rushed, ink-bled handwriting from the card hidden in my purse and from the notes Nathaniel used to leave on my desk when Damian was out of town.

I ripped it open.

You’re going to hear a lot of lies about me today. Most of them from him. Before you decide who the villain is, have dinner with me. Seven o’clock. The Foundry. Let’s see if you can handle the real story. Or if you’re still the same girl who used to look at me like she wanted to be caught.

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

I meant what I wrote. Seven o’clock. Wear something that isn’t armor for once, Ivy. I’d like to actually see you. The version of you that used to forget which brother she was supposed to want.

By six forty-five the black silk of my dress felt like a trap and a dare all at once. It clung in places I usually kept covered, and every step reminded me I’d followed his request—the same way I used to follow late-night texts I should have deleted.

The Foundry glowed with low amber light and the rich scent of expensive bourbon. Nathaniel sat at a corner booth, collar unbuttoned, a half-empty glass turning slowly between long fingers. He didn’t stand when I approached, but his eyes tracked every movement with an intensity that made the bare skin of my neck prickle the way it used to when he watched me across rooms Damian thought were safe.

“You actually came,” he said, voice low and rough with approval. He slid a second glass across the dark wood. 

“I wasn’t sure if the woman who walked out on both of us still knew how to say yes to danger.”

“I came for answers.” I sat across from him and left the drink untouched, though my pulse was already racing the same way it had the first time he kissed me when Damian was supposed to be on a flight. 

“Why did you buy my employment history from my old boss three weeks ago?”

The lazy smile vanished. He leaned across the table, face entering the small circle of candlelight, close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his dark eyes and feel the heat of him the same heat that had once made me stay in his kitchen long after I should have gone home to his brother.

“Because I needed to know if you were strong enough to survive my brother,” he whispered. 

“And because three years wasn’t long enough to forget how you looked when you chose him… and then chose yourself instead.”

“And what did you decide?”

“I decided you’re perfect.” His fingers brushed the edge of my wrist light, deliberate sending a sharp jolt straight up my arm and down my spine. The touch lingered a second too long, like a promise and a reminder of every line we had already crossed. 

“But you’re looking at the wrong folder, Ivy. Damian didn’t hire you to save Special Projects. He hired you because he needs someone to take the fall when the SEC audit hits next month. The same way he once needed someone to love him without asking too many questions.”

The room tilted. My hands gripped the table so hard my knuckles turned white. 

“What audit?”

Nathaniel leaned back, eyes flashing with quiet, dangerous triumph. 

“The one he hasn’t told you about. Look under the table.”

My hand dropped into the shadows. Fingers brushed a cold metallic square taped securely beneath the wood, right beside my knee.

A live audio transmitter.

Nathaniel stared straight at me, lips barely moving as he mouthed the final words.

He’s listening right now. Just like old times.