“If we go down, Oscar… our clients are exposed. They’re vulnerable. They won’t be believed. They’ll be silenced, dismissed, or worse.” My chest heaved, the words falling like bullets. “Do you want them to end up like Lana?”
The name dropped like a grenade between us. And as though he could sense this was a discussion that only Oscar and I needed to hear, Nathaniel stood up. “I’m gonna give you guys some time.”
I nodded, watching him leave before my eyes drifted back down to Oscar.
His jaw clenched, his eyes on the table. “Don’t bring her into this.”
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t!”
“I have to!” I gritted out, quieter now but shaking. “Because that’s what’s at stake. You and I swore this company would protect people the system failed. If we lose that, what the hell was it for?”
Oscar stared at me. A muscle twitched in his jaw. Then he turned and grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. “I’m gonna check the servers.”
He left without another word, the door slamming shut behind him.
I stood in the silence, chest rising and falling like I’d just run a marathon. The weight of it all—Cora, Jamie, the breach, my past—crushed me like a snowplough.
I walked to the window, pressing my forehead to the cool glass, and decided I hated New York again.
My fists clenched, anger fusing at my fingertips.
This had to stop.
Whoever was behind this, whoever had the gall to turn Jamie into a weapon, to endanger everything and everyone I’ve fought to protect, wasn’t just after my reputation.
They were after my life. My blood. My future.
Who the hell was this guy?
I turned back toward the desk, sinking into the chair Oscar had been in earlier. It was still warm. My mind was running at a thousand miles per hour trying to break the code, trying to put a face to the crimes, and when I couldn’t imagine a single person from Romano doing such a thing, I slumped, my head barreling toward the desk as my fists slammed against it. Over and over again until the urge to scream ripped through my chest, and the papers I’d set out barrelled off the desk as I swiped at them.
I was heaving into air, anger rippling through every part of me, pinching my skin and searing my mind. But through the silence, I heard it—my phone, buzzing twice in my pocket and pausing reality. I leaned back in my chair and slipped the thing out of my pocket, wiping the beads of sweat from my forehead as I stared at the screen.
I didn’t expect much. Maybe a system alert. Another breach. Another fire.
But instead—
Today at 16:57pm
Cora
I have no motivation to paint right now. Permission to undelete our Big Ben picture?
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. A proper laugh that had butterflies—butterflies—roaring in my stomach. I didn’t know how all she had to do was text me, and suddenly the world felt good again.
The more I stared at her name, the more the knot in my chest loosened. Not gone, but lighter. Like someone had cracked open a window in a suffocating room.
My hand closed around the phone, and for the first time in hours, I could breathe.
Everything else was breaking apart, slipping through my grip no matter how hard I fought to hold it together. But not her. She was the one constant, the anchor in the storm, the reason I could take the chaos and not let it consume me. And with so much of my life out of my control, I wanted to cling to the one thing I could.
I wanted to hold onto the reason I could love a city I’d spent years hating, simply because she existed in it.
chapter thirty
my very own lloyd dobler
