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 nothing more than a short private corridor. Two heavy black sensor doors stood independently on each end, close enough for easy communication, but without any visual intrusion. No glass wall. No constant surveillance. Just a clean, professional separation.

Darcy was reasonably satisfied with this arrangement. At least the man had kept the promise he'd signed just half an hour ago. Private office, work only, no crossing boundaries.

She settled into the wide black leather chair, her fingertips gliding across the smooth surface of the polished desk. The leather was still new, still holding that faint industrial scent of fresh upholstery. The air still carried the faintest trace of cedar. The territorial presence of a top-tier Alpha covered almost the entire floor. Even through the corridor, the old scar beneath her left shoulder throbbed with a dull, persistent heat.

She pressed her hand against her shoulder for a moment, then quickly pulled her focus back. She couldn't afford to be distracted.

Her actuary's instincts were already running a routine check on the system environment. The moment she'd sat down, she'd slipped into the underlying communication protocol and begun her standard sweep. It was second nature to her. Every new workstation, every new system, she tested its boundaries before she trusted it. Her fingers blurred across the keyboard, code cascading down the screen like a waterfall of green text. A few anomalous access records quickly surfaced from the background logs.

Then her amber pupils contracted sharply.

Running quietly in the background processes, hidden deep within layers of routine system operations, there was an unauthorized program. A piece of code that had no business being there. It was coiled like a viper in the grass, silently bypassing the firewall, slipping through security gaps that shouldn't have existed, trying to overstep its permissions and access her original entry records from eight years ago. Her arrival files. Her immigration logs. The forged documents she'd used to escape the North Barrens.

Someone was digging into her past. Someone inside the building.

Ice flooded Darcy's veins. Her fingers went still for just a fraction of a second, a pause so brief that anyone watching would have missed it. She didn't raise the alarm. She didn't slam the keyboard or call for IT. Instead, she began a quiet reverse trace, following the data link with practiced precision, her eyes scanning the code as it scrolled past. The access path had been deliberately routed through several layers of obfuscation, making it difficult to trace. But she followed the threads, peeling back each layer one by one.

The trail eventually led to the CEO's highest-level security permissions.

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.

Ten minutes ago, this man had signed an agreement not to touch her private information. He had looked her in the eye and promised boundaries.

Now his highest permissions were digging through her eight-year-old files?

He was suspicious of her?

Or had his so-called "respect for boundaries" been nothing but words from the very beginning?

Darcy yanked out her data cable, snapped her laptop shut with a sharp click, and strode toward the door without another second of hesitation.

BANG.

The sensor door slid open. Darcy didn't knock. She walked directly into Asher's private office without pausing, 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 gray sky. The air was thick with the sharp, bracing scent of cedar and snow pine. His scent, everywhere, impossible to escape. Asher leaned back in his massive leather chair, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose, the tension in his shoulders visible even in the low light. 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."

"You signed my privacy clause ten minutes ago. And now your highest permissions are pulling my old files. Is that also 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. "Does your signature only last ten minutes?"

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.

"You stormed into my office to accuse me of breaking my word?"

"If you want to dig into my past, you can ask me directly. You don't have to use these cheap tactics." Darcy leaned forward, bracing her palms on the edge of his desk, meeting those dangerous gray eyes without flinching. "I'm not one of your boardroom puppets, Mr. Kingston."

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."

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 actual retrieval request didn't come from the CEO's office at all. It had entered the conglomerate system from an external anonymous node, then deliberately used the CEO's security channel as a relay. Which was why her reverse trace had shown Asher's highest permissions. Someone had framed him. Or rather, someone had used his permissions as cover for their own intrusion.

And beneath that malicious request, another, higher-level protection protocol had already locked the path down minutes earlier. Every piece of data related to "Darcy Clark" had been forcibly transferred into a non-exportable state. Sealed. Protected. Blocked from access.

Darcy stared at the permissions signature at the bottom of the code. Clean, efficient, unmistakable. Below the lines of code, there was only one name. Asher Kingston.

The accusation that had been lodged in her throat stuck there. Refused to come out.

He hadn't been snooping through her privacy. Quite the opposite. Long before she'd even noticed the threat, this man had already used his highest permissions to lock down her data entry point.

"Over the past twelve hours, three separate high-value requests to access your old records came through the Northern anonymous black market." Asher leaned back in his deep black chair, his fingers laced loosely over the armrest. He didn't look away from her. "Every single request was traced back to the North Barrens." He lifted his gaze slowly, his eyes pinning her in place. "Someone is looking for you, Miss Clark. And they're paying top dollar. What exactly are you carrying from the North?"

North Barrens.

That name, silent for eight years, stabbed into her nerves like an ice pick, sharp and cold without warning. Darcy's heart dropped.

Before she could press down the surge of emotion, her phone buzzed violently in her pocket.

Buzz. Buzz.

The vibration cut through the dead silence of the office like a blade, loud and jarring.

Darcy pulled out her phone.

The screen lit up with a completely masked number, no caller ID, no name, just a single line of text.

[ Eight years was a long time, Darcy. ]

Darcy's fingers clamped down hard on the phone. The knuckles on her hand went white, the bones standing out sharply beneath her skin.

Asher caught the flicker of panic that crossed her face. Barely a second, but unmistakable.

He rose from his chair in one smooth motion, his tall frame blocking the gray light from the windows, casting her entirely in his shadow. But he didn't cross the boundary. He stopped two paces away, his dark eyes locked onto hers.

"Who sent that?"

Darcy forced her racing heart back under control. She met his gaze coldly. "Old trouble."

"Need me to handle it?"

"Thanks. But I can handle it myself."

The answer came too fast. Almost instinctively, a reflex honed by eight years of protecting herself. The sharp edge in her voice was unmistakable.

A flicker of gold passed through the depths of Asher's dark eyes, there and gone in an instant. But he didn't push. He didn't demand more.

He looked down at her, his gaze settling on the tight set of her shoulders, the barely concealed tension in her frame.

"Fine. But understand this. I'm not doing this for you. Within Saint Cross territory, anyone who reaches into my space, whoever they are, whatever they want, I cut the hand off."

No embellishment. No grand promises. Just a flat statement of fact, delivered with absolute certainty. And yet, the cold that had seized Darcy's chest at the sight of that message began to ease, just slightly.

She noticed the fleeting sense of security. And she hated it. Hated the way her defenses were starting to depend on someone else's presence.

"If the North is intercepting data, locking the ports is enough." Darcy pulled herself back together, her tone hardening back to its professional edge. "Mr. Kingston, that doesn't require you to stay in the office to oversee it personally."

Asher scanned her face for a moment. Then he straightened, smoothing the cuffs of his wrinkle-free suit with deliberate precision, the cold, unreadable CEO mask sliding back into place.

"By tonight, when they can't pull your records, they'll try to hit the trading platform instead." He looked down at her, his words elegant and unyielding. "I don't trust systems. I trust my own eyes. You work next door. I watch from here. This is a billion-dollar project, Miss Clark. Don't flatter yourself."

Darcy paused for a few seconds. Then a sharp, knowing smile curved across her lips.

"Of course. The Alpha Lord is always professional."

She didn't give him time to respond. She picked up her laptop from the desk and walked out without a backward glance.

Back in her independent risk control office, Darcy pulled out her chair and sat down.

The red interception warnings were still flashing on her screen. Because of the risk permissions she'd signed for this morning, the name "Darcy Clark" had been permanently locked into Kingston's highest defensive perimeter.

That was the price of today's victory.

She had shed her protective shell as a low-level employee. She had gained power. And in doing so, she had placed herself back under the noses of the hunters.

Darcy stared at the screen, her fingers typing out layer after layer of defensive code, her gaze cold and unwavering.

She didn't regret it. She would rather stand in the open with a blade in her hand than wait in the mud to be sent to her death.

Buzz.

Her phone vibrated violently again.

Darcy looked down. Still that same masked number. No text this time, just a single photograph.

She opened it. Her pupils contracted sharply.

The photo showed Kingston Headquarters. The sky was overcast, the black skyscraper standing dead center in the frame, taken from a low angle, from the shadowed street corner directly across the building.

At the bottom of the photo, a single cold line of English was attached.

[ Still hiding? ]

Her fingers went white around the phone. Ice shot up her spine and slammed into the base of her skull.

The person on the other end wasn't just tracing her online. They had already arrived in Saint Cross.