The door shut.
The silence Vidar left behind was dense and dangerous, charged with everything that could nolonger be unsaid.
Alaric didn’t turn back to Sera immediately. He stood where he was, one hand braced on the edge of his desk, pulse hammering in a way he refused to acknowledge. His mind was already moving, stripping away false narratives, discarding conclusions he’d almost accepted, reconstructing the world around that single, undeniablefact.
The Brand.
Lightning-bolt. Dante.
If she carried it, he struggled to find her guilty of theft. She was bound to him in a way that predated intention or choice. And if that was true, then someone had known exactly what they were doing when they set this theft in motion.
Chapter 5
THE DANTE BRANDdidn’t appear for convenience. It didn’t appear by accident. And it didn’t appear for thieves.
If Sera Carrington was Branded, then the logs weren’t evidence of theft.They were evidence of framing.Cold realization settled in his chest like ice poured into steel. He just needed proof.
Someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to place her credentials on that access path. To tie her physically to the moment. To ensure that when the breach was discovered, the conclusion would be inevitable.
And it had worked.He had believed it.That truth burned far worse than anger.Alaric turned slowly.Sera stood exactly where he’d left her, her arm still half-raised, fingers curled protectively inward as though she could hide the Brand by will alone. Her face was pale now, fear no longer contained behindprofessionalism. She looked like someone standing at the edge of a collapse, forcing herself not tofall.
“You saw my mark,” she said quietly.
He nodded once.
“That’s not possible,” she whispered. “I’m not— I don’t—” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know what it means.”
Neither did he. Not fully.But he knew enough.”You probably didn’t take the file,” Alaric said. The rest he’d explain later.
Her breath hitched. Relief flashed, bright and brief, before terror rushed in behind it.”Then why am I still here?” she asked.
“Because whoever did this wanted me to think you were expendable,” he replied. “And they wanted Vidar to agree.”
Understanding flickered across her face. “They wanted you to erase me.”
“Yes.”
Her knees weakened. She caught herself on the edge of the desk, fingers digging into the glass. “You almost did.”
The accusation landed without heat.It didn’t needany.
The truth of it settled into Alaric, heavy and unforgiving. He hadn’tordered it. But he had considered it. He had let the possibility exist long enough for it to matter.
“I don’t act on assumptions,” hesaid.
“You acted on the logs,” she replied.
He didn’t contradict her.
Silence stretched, thick and brittle. Not the absence of sound, but the kind that pressed inward, demanding acknowledgment. He could still experience the echo of that night in his body, not as desire but as exposure. The moment he had allowed her to see him without armor. The way she had spoken to him without fear. The way he had answered without forethought.The vulnerability. The closeness. The precise instant he’d broken one of his own rules and let her past the walls he never lowered.
He’d reinterpreted that night—her presence in his home, the trust he’d extended, the way the line between professional and personal had blurred—as strategy, because the alternative was unacceptable. Because if admitting it hadn’t been intention meant admitting it had been instinct.
And if she hadn’t manipulated him, hadn’t used intimacy or access to compromise his judgment, then the only remaining conclusion was far worse. It meant the situation had been constructed around them, notby someone who understood Dante branding or anticipated its appearance, but by someone who understood people. Someone who knew how evidence would read. Someone who knew how easily trust could be recast as weakness, and how quickly suspicion could be made to look like logic.
And that someone wanted Sera takenout.
Alaric straightened, the last of his internal recalibration snapping into place.
