Connor's eyes widened slightly, searching my face for any sign I was simply offering comfort rather than truth. Whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him, because the tension in his shoulders eased slightly, his fingers tightening around mine.
"Your home is destroyed," he said softly, his gaze moving to the wreckage surrounding us.
"It's just a place," I replied, meaning it. "Things can be replaced." I didn't add what couldn't be—him, us, whatever was growing between us that defied the circumstances of our meeting.
Around us, technicians in headsets moved systematically through the penthouse, scanning for surveillance devices with handheld equipment.
Michael directed them with terse efficiency, his expression still murderous beneath his professional veneer. This breach had been personal for him too—a failure of the security protocols he'd designed himself.
"Sir," one of the technicians approached, holding something small between gloved fingers. "We found this in your office. Audio transmitter, high-end."
I nodded, unsurprised. "Sweep everything, including our clothes. Assume nothing is secure."
As the technician moved away, my phone buzzed in my pocket. The screen showed Jake's number, and I answered immediately, putting it on speaker so Connor could hear.
"Julian." Jake's voice was tense, lacking its usual easy confidence. "They got the backup server data. Everything on Project Phoenix."
My blood ran cold. Project Phoenix wasn't just any research initiative—it was the culmination of three years of work, millions in funding, and the closest thing to hope I'd allowed myself since the accident.
"How?" I demanded, my grip tightening on the phone. "That server was air-gapped, physically isolated from any network."
"Inside job," Jake replied grimly. "Someone with high-level access copied the data to an external drive last night. We're still trying to identify who."
My mind raced through possibilities—who had that level of clearance, who had access to the secure labs, who might be compromised. The list was short, which made the betrayal all the more personal.
"What is Project Phoenix?" Connor asked quietly once I'd ended the call, his eyes still on my face.
I hesitated, not because I didn't trust him, but because I'd kept this project compartmentalized from every aspect of my personal life. It was too important, too vulnerable to hope.
"It's a research initiative," I began, wheeling slightly away from him to gather my thoughts. "Focused on nerve regeneration and spinal cord repair. Specifically, reversing certain types of paralysis."
Understanding dawned in Connor's eyes, quickly followed by a flash of hope that was almost painful to witness. "Including yours?"
"That was the plan," I admitted, the familiar bitterness of lost possibilities coating my tongue. "We'd made significant breakthroughs, moved beyond animal trials to the first human candidates. The results were... promising."
"And now Harris has it," Connor said, the implications sinking in. "Your research. Your chance to—"
"Walk again," I finished for him, the words stark in the debris-filled room. "Yes. But more importantly, he has the names of test subjects, researchers, and whistleblowers from within his own company who provided evidence of his illegal trials. People who trusted me to protect them."
The personal loss—my own hopes for recovery—paled in comparison to the danger I'd inadvertently placed others in. People had risked everything to expose Harris's unethical practices, and I'd promised them anonymity, protection.
Now Harris had their names. Their addresses. Their vulnerabilities.
"We need to warn them," Connor said immediately, his natural empathy surfacing even amid our own crisis.
"Michael's team is already on it," I assured him, touched by his concern for strangers when his own life was in danger. "But we have another problem. Harris now knows exactly what I have on him, and exactly who can testify against him. Which means—"
"He'll come after them. And us. Again." Connor completed my thought, our minds following the same strategic path.
"Yes," I confirmed, already mentally shifting into crisis management mode—the CEO version of myself taking over from the vulnerable man who'd just admitted his most private hopes to Connor. "And he'll expect us to stay and fight, to protect the research and the witnesses."
"So what do we do?"
"We disappear," I said simply, already calculating logistics, resources, contingencies. "We go somewhere Harris would never think to look, somewhere not connected to Montgomery Industries or any of my known properties."
Connor's eyebrows rose slightly. "You have a secret hideout?"
Despite everything, I felt my lips quirk into a small smile. "I have a secluded estate that's not in my name. No digital footprint, no paper trail. Not even Michael knows about it."
