All Chapters of OFF LIMITS: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWELVEPOV: ZaraShe’d been sitting in Ryan’s car for twenty minutes.Talking about nothing. Watching the clock. Telling herself Marcus just needed time, that Damon could handle it, that everything was going to be fine in the way she’d been telling herself things were fine all weekend and been wrong every single time.Then Ryan’s phone rang.She didn’t see the screen. He angled it away, small movement, barely anything, the kind of thing you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t already hyperaware of every tiny deviation from normal.She noticed.“Who’s that?” she asked.“Work thing.” He silenced it. Put the phone face down on his thigh.She looked at him. At his profile in the dark car. At the slight tension around his jaw that hadn’t been there an hour ago.“On a Saturday night?”“You know how it is.” Easy. Smooth. He reached over and squeezed her hand. “You should go back in. Get your medication.”“Right.” She didn’t move.His phone lit up again on his thigh. Face down. Screen blee

CHAPTER FOURTEENPOV: DamonMarcus opened the door in grey sweatpants and an old university hoodie and took one look at Damon’s face and stepped back to let him in without a word.That was Marcus.Always had been.The room was dark except for the bedside lamp. Marcus sat on the edge of the bed. Damon sat in the chair by the window. The same window that looked out over the garden where two hours ago police officers had dug a camera out of the fence.The house was quiet around them.“Talk,” Marcus said.So Damon talked.He started at nineteen. At the job that wasn’t really a job. At Gerald Osei and the transactions and the six months of deliberate ignorance followed by a year of knowing and staying anyway. He said it plainly, the way he’d said it to Zara, no performance, no mitigation, just the shape of what happened laid out flat.Marcus listened without interrupting.That was unusual enough to be significant. Marcus interrupted everything. It was his primary mode of communication. The

CHAPTER SIXTEENPOV: DamonSix years.Six years and the man still had the same voice. Low and measured and completely unhurried in the way that powerful men were unhurried because they’d never had to rush for anything in their lives. Because things came to them. Because they sent other people to do the moving and sat still at the centre of everything like a weight that bent everything toward it.Damon took the phone from Zara’s hand.Put it to his ear.“Gerald,” he said.“Damon.” Almost warm. Almost fond. “It’s been a long time.”“Not long enough.”A pause. Then something that might have been a laugh. “You’ve done well for yourself. I’ve been watching.”“I know.”“Then you know I’m not here to cause trouble.”“You’re sitting outside my best friend’s house at eight in the morning after having us surveilled for months.” He kept his voice flat. “What exactly would causing trouble look like.”“I’d like to talk. That’s all. Just a conversation.” Another pause. “Invite me in, Damon. Let’s d

CHAPTER EIGHTEENPOV: ZaraDamon moved first.She grabbed his arm before he reached the door. “Wait.”“Zara—”“We don’t just walk out there.” She kept her voice low. Steady. “We don’t know who sent that. We don’t know if someone’s waiting.”He looked at her hand on his arm. Then at her face. Something shifted, the urgency pulling back just enough for sense to get through.“She’s right,” Marcus said from the living room doorway. Phone still in hand. “Nobody goes out alone.”“I’ll look from the window first,” Camille said.She was already moving. Kitchen window. Angling herself to see the front garden without being visible from outside. The rest of them waited. The hallway holding its breath.“There’s a bag,” Camille said. “Brown. Small. Against the gate post.” She paused. “I can’t see anyone. Street looks empty.”“Looks,” Marcus said.“Yes. Looks.”Nobody moved for three seconds.Then Damon said— “I’m going out.”“Damon—”“Marcus with me. You two stay inside.” He looked at Zara directl

CHAPTER TWENTYPOV: ZaraShe didn’t tell Damon.She told herself it was because there wasn’t time. Because the car was moving and everyone was tired and the last thing this group needed was another crisis before they’d even reached London. She told herself these things very convincingly for approximately forty five minutes.Then she stopped lying to herself.She didn’t tell him because he would have stopped her.And she needed to go.Daniel’s flat in Bermondsey was on the fourth floor of a converted warehouse. Clean. Minimal. The kind of space that belonged to someone who spent very little time in it. Good locks on the door and a view of the Thames that nobody appreciated because they were all too tired and too wired to look at anything beautiful.Marcus made food because Marcus cooked when he was anxious and he was extremely anxious. Camille and Leila sat at the kitchen table going through documents again. Damon was on the phone with Daniel in the bedroom.Zara stood at the window lo