I didn’t sleep. Didn’t even try to.
My office smelled like fury—aged whiskey, sweat, metal. I’d been pacing for hours, wearing a groove into the obsidian floors, replaying the night on loop.
The binding. Her tears. My voice—sharp, accusing, wrecked. And her face… when I said the words.
“You’re the only one who knew about the tapes.”
She’d looked at me like I’d stabbed her. Maybe I had. But betrayal was betrayal.
It didn’t care about good intentions or soft voices or the way someone looked at you like they saw the person underneath the armor.
And still… Some part of me didn’t believe it.
Which made me hate myself even more.
The sun was rising behind the skyline—Amsterdam’s rooftops dusted in light, too soft for the way my insides felt. I sat behind my desk, pulled up the security audit logs again.
Line after line of IP timestamps and access paths. I’d gone through them twice already.
Nothing. No obvious break. No amateur fingerprint.
Just a surgical slice, clean and deliberate, into the most private part of my digital world.
Helena’s archives.
The files weren’t even linked to the core system. Only four people had access—and I’d interrogated three of them already. The fourth had her wrists tied to a leather cross twelve hours ago.
I pressed my fingers to my eyes.
No sleep. No food. No answers. Except one: Someone inside had gutted me from within.
“Sir,” a voice crackled through the intercom—Reese, head of my physical security. “We’ve traced the origin of the Jake Middleton breach.”
I straightened. “Report.”
“Not domestic. Rerouted through a Boston private firm. Subcontracted muscle, masked identifiers. Video appears authentic.”
“Condition?”
“The kid’s stabilized. The meds were never actually withdrawn.”
I exhaled through my nose—relief wrapped in razor wire.
“Send the footage to my device. Scrub the voice modulation. Cross-check with hospital staff rosters. Find me a common name or face.”
“Already running.”
I ended the call.
The Jake threat was leverage. Which meant the leak—the tapes—had never been about Floris. She wasn’t their target. I was. And someone had used her proximity to me to break the one rule I didn’t bend: control.
Not Sia. I paused. Couldn’t be.
I’d known her too long. Groomed her too precisely. She’d seen things most people wouldn’t survive. Hell, she’d done things for me.
She wasn’t capable of a move this intricate… was she? Fifteen years of loyalty. Quiet, efficient, loyal.
But also unseen. Overlooked. People like that? They learn how to make ghosts bleed.
I reached for my tablet and pulled up her access logs. Sia Sharma. Three security keys. One of the only legacy accounts that predated the Brighton firewalls.
I scrolled. Maintenance-level clearance. Private quarters. Office. Server room.
Red Room.
She’d always had access. Because I’d given it to her.
My thumb hovered over the search function. Something gnawed in my gut.
No.
Too soon. I wasn’t ready to see it. Instead, I opened the surveillance stream for Floris’s room. Empty.
No sign of her. No motion since she’d woken up and found herself wiped. But her laptop was back online.
Not the one I issued her. Her backup.
I froze.
She was hacking. And she was good. Not just “resourceful intern” good. Not “clever little rebel” good.
Professional. Sharp. Dangerous.
The code structure flickering across her screen—barely visible from the overhead angle—was custom architecture. MIT-level infrastructure. Old-school brute force overlaid with zero-day exploits and protocol cloaking.
My eyes narrowed.
She was running traceback. Against me. I’d underestimated her. Again.
But this wasn’t anger anymore. This was something else entirely. Admiration, maybe. Or something uglier.
Hope.
If she was digging, then she didn’t believe I was the enemy. Not really. She was trying to clear herself.
And if she cleared herself… Then I’d burned the one person who might’ve actually been loyal. My hand curled into a fist against the desk.
“She’s going to find it before I do,” I muttered, then after a moment tapped the comms panel. “Get me Sia.”
“She’s not on-site, sir,” came the reply. “Left twenty minutes ago. No destination logged.”
Of course she had.