“Not tonight,” I whisper.
His breath catches as he steps close enough to send heat spiraling through me.
“Harper,” he says again, lower this time.
A plea. A warning. A confession.
I don’t answer. Something in me will break open if I do.
I walk inside and he follows.
Chapter 15 - Damian
The council chamber feels smaller than it ever has. Mikhail is pacing like a caged wolf, boots thudding against the marble floor, while Iosif sits with his fingers steepled beneath his chin, calculating.
I stand at the head of the long table, the wood scarred by decades of arguments that never mattered as much as this one. My family watches me as though waiting for a verdict.
Mikhail slams his palm down.
“We strike back now. No hesitation. No half-measures. Anton isn’t hiding—he’s advancing.”
“We don’t have full intel,” Iosif counters, voice smooth enough to hide the tremor beneath. “Acting blindly is exactly what he wants. We need to know how deep the infiltration goes.”
I listen, but their words scrape uselessly across my nerves. My mind is already ahead of them, tracing the shape of the next attack. Every instinct, honed by years of reading people who lie for a living, whispers the same thing:Anton doesn’t waste time. His next move will be personal.
And personal means Harper.
I don’t let my expression shift, even when the thought sharpens behind my ribs. I only feel the tremor of restraint in my hands.
“Mikhail. Iosif.” My voice cuts clean through their argument. “Time is not a luxury we have. He’s already inside our systems. He’s already watching us. We’re reacting to a game that’s been running for months.”
They fall silent. I already know how the rest of this day unfolds, and I hate every version of it.
By late afternoon, the dusk over my head feels like a warning. I stay in motion, installing security protocols myself because I no longer trust anyone else to touch the network. Not after the fucking transmitter we found buried like a parasite in my own walls.
Harper shadows me despite her protests, her steps soft but certain. She hates the idea of being moved into the secured command center, but I refuse to entertain her resistance.
“This is excessive,” she complains as I enter the last access code.
“It’s necessary.”
“You mean it makes you feel in control.”
I look at her. Her tired yet determined eyes reflect the dim glow of the monitors. I know she’s right; control is a fantasy, but I cling to it anyway.
“Control doesn’t matter,” I say. “Keeping you alive does.”
Her expression changes, but she doesn’t argue again. She just steps into the room as the reinforced door seals behind us with a hydraulic hiss.
Not even five minutes after we’re back in the command center, a live feed flickers to life. The tech executives mutter frustratedly under their breaths, but it all goes over my head until—
Inessa’s face appears with the kind of glossy composure she wears like a second skin. Her makeup is immaculate, her smile soft and venom-laced. She doesn’t speak at first, letting the silence draw tight as wire. Everyone freezes where they are for a moment, taking her in.
“How the fuck is she—” Mikhail begins to shout, only to be intercepted by file after file blooming onto the screen; confidential documents stamped with Ignatov seals withHarper’s signature looping at the bottom like an executioner’s flourish.
My blood goes cold.
The documents look real and convincing enough to damn her without trial. Inessa narrates them like a bedtime story.
