Chapter 4 You're Not Getting Away

Moving into the top-floor risk control office happened so fast it was almost surreal.

Within half an hour, Darcy's computer had been relocated to a private office just outside the CEO's suite. Her new workspace was separated from Asher's domain by a single wall of custom one-way frosted glass.

From Darcy's side, it was just a cold, hard sheet of gray-black mirror. But on the other side, all Asher had to do was look up, and he could see every single thing she did in that risk control room.

It was a territorial cage, blatant and unapologetic.

Darcy settled into the wide black leather office chair, her fingertips gliding across the smooth surface of the polished desk. She could feel it. That gaze cutting through the glass from the other side. Hot. Heavy. Unrelenting. The kind of predatory attention that made the small hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

The old scar beneath her left shoulder was starting to burn. A deep, prickling ache that radiated outward like frost spreading across a windowpane. The primal shudder of being locked in by an apex predator was making her breath unsteady, but she didn't look up. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her flinch.

But her actuary's instincts were already running a routine check on the system environment. The moment she sat down, her fingers moved before her brain had fully caught up, slipping into the underlying communication protocol and beginning her standard sweep. The keyboard clicked beneath her fingertips, code cascading down the screen in a rapid staccato rhythm.

Then her amber pupils contracted sharply.

Running quietly in the background processes, there was an unauthorized program. It was coiled like a viper, silently bypassing the firewall, trying to overstep its permissions and access her original entry records from eight years ago. Her arrival files. The forged documents she'd used to escape the North Barrens.

Someone was digging into her past.

Ice flooded Darcy's veins. Her fingers went still for just a fraction of a second. She didn't raise the alarm. Instead, she began a quiet reverse trace, following the data link with practiced precision. Layer by layer, she peeled back the encryption, tracing the signal through routers and switches, following the stream of data packets all the way to the main server node.

The source: the CEO's core server. Asher Kingston's personal machine.

Darcy's fingers froze above the keyboard. Her expression went cold, her jaw tightening as the realization settled in her chest like a stone. She'd thought Asher Kingston was just keeping her under his thumb out of corporate paranoia. She'd thought the glass wall was just another display of dominance. But he was secretly decrypting her real identity. He was digging into her past.

He was suspicious of her.

Darcy yanked out her data cable, snapped her laptop shut with a sharp click, and rose from her chair. Her heels struck the floor with deliberate force as she strode toward the door.

BANG.

The sensor door slid open. Darcy didn't knock. She walked directly into Asher's private office without hesitation, her spine ramrod straight, her amber eyes blazing with barely contained fury.

The room was dimly lit, the floor-to-ceiling windows dark against the night sky. The air was thick with the sharp, bracing scent of cedar and snow pine. Asher leaned back in his massive leather chair, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. At her entrance, his steel-gray eyes lifted slowly, the cold, distant mask sliding back into place with practiced ease.

"Miss Clark. This is the executive office. Knocking before entering is basic workplace etiquette. I'd expect someone with your attention to detail to remember that."

"Running unauthorized back-end permissions to secretly access a subordinate's private files. Is that Kingston Group's version of workplace etiquette, Mr. Kingston?"

Darcy slammed her laptop down on the mahogany desk, the impact echoing through the silent room like a gunshot. Her voice was cold enough to freeze the air between them. "Or does the CEO of Kingston Group consider privacy a privilege that only applies to people above a certain pay grade?"

Asher looked at the barely contained fury burning in her eyes, and something shifted deep behind his own. A flicker of recognition, perhaps, or something darker. He lowered his hand slowly, leaning back in his chair, studying her with that unreadable gaze of his.

"Ten seconds ago, your personal server was trying to brute-force my encrypted files." Darcy leaned forward, bracing her palms on the edge of his desk, meeting those dangerous steel-gray eyes without flinching. "If you want to dig into my past, you can ask me directly. You don't have to use these cheap tactics. I'm not one of your boardroom puppets, Mr. Kingston. I don't dance on strings."

Asher stared into those clear, defiant amber eyes. Eyes that refused to lower, refused to submit, refused to give him an inch. He tapped his fingers twice against the desk, a soft, deliberate rhythm, and let out a low, humorless scoff.

"Miss Clark. Even an actuary's brilliant mind can get clouded by emotion sometimes. You came in here ready for a fight without checking all your facts first. That's not like you."

He spun his monitor around to face her, his tone flat and unreadable. "Take a look at the protection logs at the bottom of the code. See who actually made the move."

Darcy frowned, leaning in to read the red text flashing on the screen. Her eyes moved quickly across the lines of code, parsing the information with the speed of someone who'd spent years reading data streams.

The retrieval command hadn't come from inside the company at all. It had originated from an external public node just outside the building. And beneath that malicious retrieval command, Asher's highest-level security had already dropped a thunderous lockdown minutes earlier, crushing the tracking trail, reverse-tracing the attacker's location, and sealing off every single piece of data related to Darcy with a digital fortress.

He'd been putting on a show.

On the surface, he'd maintained his cold, ruthless image. But underneath, while she'd been glaring at the glass wall and stewing in her suspicions, he'd been using his top-level permissions to shield her from a lethal intrusion. He'd been protecting her without telling her. Without asking for credit. Without expecting gratitude.

"The Thorne pack's hunters have already made it into the city."

Asher remained seated in his leather chair, expression carved from stone, choosing his words with careful precision as he laid out his "cold logic." But his voice was different now. Slightly rougher. Slightly less controlled.

"They've put a bounty on your file on the black market. They're trying to use the company's backend to pinpoint your location. If I hadn't taken over your data under the pretense of an internal audit, Miss Clark, you'd already be a target on every black-market trading board in this city. I'm curious, though. What kind of trouble did you get yourself into that warrants this level of attention?"

Darcy's heart lurched hard against her ribs. Her pulse hammered in her throat, and for a moment, the walls of the office seemed to close in around her. The Thorne pack was here. In the city. Looking for her.

Before she could respond, her phone buzzed violently in her pocket. The vibration cut through the dead silence of the office like a blade.

Slowly, she pulled it out. The screen lit up with a message from an unknown number. Just a single voice message. With trembling fingers, she hit play.

The voice that came through was low, gravelly, and dripping with cruel satisfaction. A voice she hadn't heard in eight years but would recognize anywhere. The voice of the man who'd torn up their marriage contract in front of both their families and called her worthless in front of the entire pack.

"I found you, Darcy."

Her fingers went numb around the phone. The color drained from her face, her lips parting slightly as the old terror clawed its way up from somewhere deep in her chest.

Asher caught the flicker of panic that crossed her face. Barely a second, but unmistakable. The cold mask he'd been wearing shattered on the spot. The distant CEO was gone. In his place was something far more dangerous. A predator who'd just seen his mate threatened.

He shot up from his chair and rounded the desk in two long strides, his towering frame blocking the light from the windows, casting her entirely in his shadow. His presence wrapped around her like a wall of heat and muscle, and for the first time since she'd walked into this office, Darcy didn't feel the urge to back away.

"Now," Asher leaned down, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous rumble, "do you still think keeping you where I can see you is just a cage?"

Darcy forced the tremor in her chest back down. She lifted her chin and met his gaze, her amber eyes steady despite the storm raging beneath her skin.

"If the Thorne pack is intercepting data, you could just lock the ports. You could shut down external access and seal the system from the outside. Mr. Kingston, that doesn't require you to stay in the office to oversee it personally. You could do all of that from your penthouse without ever looking at me through that glass."

At her words, the raw concern that had just surfaced in Asher's eyes was ruthlessly suppressed. She watched him do it. Saw the exact moment he pulled the mask back over his face. He straightened up, smoothing the cuffs of his suit with deliberate precision, the cold, unreadable CEO persona sliding back into place with practiced ease.

"Miss Clark."

He straightened up, smoothing his cuffs, every inch the cold CEO sliding back into place.

"You're handling thirty million in offshore funds and the full risk control for this merger. Tonight is the final twelve hours of data packaging. If they can't get your file through normal channels, they'll try to hack your settlement chain."

He looked down at her, voice flat and unreadable.

"I don't trust the system. I trust my own eyes."

He paused, letting the weight of those words settle between them.

"You stay next door and close out the accounts. I sit here and make sure no claws from the North get anywhere near my core server."

"That's not a cage, Miss Clark. That's security."

He held her gaze for a beat longer.

"Now. Get back to work."

Darcy tightened her grip on the phone. The ghost of his warmth still lingered on her skin where he'd stood so close.

"Anytime, Mr. Kingston."

She turned and walked out of the office, settling back behind the one-way glass.

On her screen, code flickered and streamed in endless lines. And on the other side of the glass, the man lit a fresh cigar, his gaze never once leaving her silhouette through the haze of smoke.