I scrolled a bit more, stopping on a picture of me perched on the edge of a tableat some fancy event. The caption blurred in my vision, and the more I stared, the more I spiralled about how utterly fucked-up my life was.
I'd had a lot of time to reflect on that recently.
I was pretending I loved being the internet’s IT girl for the sake of my family.
I was lying to my sister and my friends about how I was getting better.
I wasn’t pressing charges against the man who attacked me because I didn’twant to risk losing the platform I didn’t want.
But what made my stomach turn was the fact that my dreams, my big dreams,myonlydreams, had been put on hold indefinitely. All because a man I trusted with my life thought he could touch me because he felt like it.
I turned off the screen, the sudden darkness swallowing me again as my eyessqueezed shut long enough for the memories to pass before I opened them and they drifted across the room to my easels. Blank canvases stared back at me, accusing. The paints sat untouched, the tubes all crumpled from their abandonment.
I used to lose hours there, my hands streaked with colour, the worlddisappearing as I created something just for me. But now, the very idea of picking up a brush made my stomach churn.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be her. That girl who painted her feelings, whoturned her pain into something beautiful, was slipping further and further away the more time that passed. And I wasn’t strong enough to grab her back. Not yet, anyway.
A shiver ran through me, though the room wasn’t cold. Slowly, I pressed myface into the pillow, wishing I could sink into it and disappear. I’d built a world out of filters and lies, and now it was crushing me. And yet, I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going. I had to keep her safe. My mum needed me to.
I closed my eyes, praying for that sleep I’d wanted, but all I saw was hisface. Jamie's face. The smile, the soft tone of his voice, before it twisted into something darker, something that still made my skin crawl.
I pulled the duvet tighter, my chest tightening. And then, I cried myself to sleep, wondering how many more nights of this itwould take me to figure out if this would be the thing that killed me.
chapter two
the audacity of this man makes me sad to be one
Isquinted at my laptop screen, watching the lowlifes who thought breaking into the warehouse would be a smart idea.
Amateurs.
I knew exactly who they were too. The taller one with the wrench and thebalaclava was Alex Alton. The shorter one beside him, who’d opted for a grey mask, was Andre Alton.
Twins. Crime lord family from Brooklyn. Both had been on my radar for awhile, but I hadn’t anticipated their break-in this soon. Unlucky for them, I bore no resemblance to their amateur minds. The guys I’d had stationed there for weeks, just in case this happened, would pounce on them any second now.
I lounged back in my chair, my eyes on the screen, rolling a grape between myfingers before popping it into my mouth. The skin burst sweet, crisp, and unmistakably purple. I know they’re red grapes, but they’re not. Not to me. People get stuck on labels, don’t you think? They slap one on something and expect the world to believe it without question. But labels lie.They tell you what you’re supposed to see, not what’s really there.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned doing this job, it’s that what’s really thereis the only thing worth paying attention to.
Like what was happening on my screen.
To the world, the Alton twins are the golden retrievers of charity work.Hospital wings named after them, billions raised for sick kids, every cliché PR move to make the masses fall in love with them. But right now? They’re prowling around my warehouse in Queens, hunting for tech they’ve been chasing for months. Tech that no one but me, the best in security and military intel, should even know exists.
They think they’re going to steal it and sell it to someone who’d lovenothing more than to see my company, Romano Security, burnt to a pile of ashes, before donating a speck of that blood money to whatever charity kept their halos shiny.
I knew this because, well, I'd been doing this job long enough to know that labels weren’t everything. And also because thesetwo might just be the stupidest criminals in history. Leaving a trail of digital breadcrumbs in their own systems? It was practically an engraved invitation to watch them attempt to pull this off.
On the screen, the chaos of my men and the twins' less-than-reliable backupblurred into fists flying and the occasional gunshot. But my guys were good, and trained by the best. They’d have this wrapped up in no time. I appreciated it even more knowing this technically wasn’t even their job.
Romano provided high-level security to those who needed it most. Status didn’tmatter. If you required protection, we were there. But to deliver at that level, certain tech, like the piece Dee and Dum had just tried to steal from me, was essential. Which made watching the scene unfold on the screen all the more satisfying.
I leaned back, stretched until my shoulders popped, and rubbed the back of myneck as I popped another grape in my mouth. Every muscle ached like it’d been through a meat grinder. The past few months here had been relentless, like a slow-motion train wreck I couldn’t step away from. And when you’re the one holding the whole damn operation together, there was no stepping away at all.
“No rain. No fucking rain, remember.” I muttered, staring at the ceiling.
No hardship meant no reward, I knew that. Had known that since I was little. But my God, did I wish that the satisfaction of running a corporation like this came a little easier. Stress had aged me faster than I’d like to admit, and for someone who was barely twenty-seven, that didn’t bode well.
Should I cut back on the coffee and late-night stakeouts? Probably? Or maybe Ishould just get a hobby that was anything other than making sure the world didn’t fall apart.
