What does it say about me that I responded so intensely to both of them? To males who represent everything I’m fighting against?
Percy’s approach at least comes with genuine concern for the environment, a willingness to compromise. Hamilton’s is pure conquest—in business… in everything.
And yet I can’t deny that both encounters have left their mark on me in different ways. With Percy, I glimpsed the possibilityof understanding between our worlds. With Hamilton, I experienced the raw power of our opposition.
Both thrilling.
Both dangerous.
Friday’s meeting looms ahead, and now I’ll have to face not just one, but two Porkwell’s knowing exactly what I look like when I come. Knowing the sounds I make, the way I feel from the inside.
I need to get my shit together.
I need a shower, a clear head, and a strategy that doesn’t involve sleeping with the entire Porkwell family.
But first, I need air. Lots and lots of air.
8
Prescott
I’m watching her panic through five different camera angles when she bursts onto the terrace.
Ruby Wolfhart—all five-foot-seven of wild red hair and fury—gasping for air twenty stories above Shiftown like she’s just outrun a predator.
Which, technically, she has.
My brother, to be specific.
Hamilton has that effect on females, though usually they’re running toward him, not away.
But Ruby’s different.
She’s always been different
She’s bolting for the terrace like the building’s on fire, which it isn’t—I’d know, since I designed every security system in thisplace. Including the one that’s currently tracking her every move with annoying precision.
Hamilton’s orders; my execution.
Zooming in on her disheveled clothes and the unmistakable scent-markers my system picks up. Those are new—my latest algorithm can detect pheromone signatures through visual cues alone.
My system confirms what I already know: She’s been thoroughly… Hamiltonized.
I sigh, adjusting my glasses.
“For fuck’s sake, Hamilton,” I mutter into my empty office, which looks more like a server room.
I’ve spent most of my life in rooms just like this one—climate-controlled, humming with technology, comfortably devoid of social complexities. But the digital feeds streaming across my monitors bring all those complexities right to me, whether I want them or not.
The Pred Tracker 9000, as I secretly call it (we officially named it “Urban Wildlife Movement Analysis System” for the permits), was Hamilton’s pet project. “Build me something that can track throughout all of Shiftown,” he’d demanded.
The first version was simple enough—facial recognition and gait analysis. But Hamilton kept wanting more. More precision. More detail. More… everything. I added thermal imaging, scent detection, behavioral algorithms.
But Ruby?
Ruby gets special treatment.
A dedicated algorithm all her own.
