I think about the way Vanguard looked at me after the fall. The rawness in his voice when he said we’d start over. The fragile, impossible thing we’re trying to build from the wreckage of everything we destroyed.
Cal’s wrong, he has to be.
But as I stand there alone in my hotel room, something cold settles in my stomach.
Something that feels a lot like doubt.
What the fuck am I going to do?
CHAPTER 38
JULIA
The data tellsa story Julia Van Veen doesn’t want to read.
She stands before the wall of screens in her private monitoring station, arms crossed, watching the scrolling teal green numbers cascade in real time. Vanguard’s heart rate, his cortisol, all neural activity patterns that paint a picture of a man coming undone.
He kept that fucking woman in his penthouse for three days, she thinks bitterly, trying to fight the waves of jealousy that batter her. She might not believe in jealousy, but the emotion sure seems to believe in her.
She pulls up the neural mapping from the past seventy-two hours, watching the patterns pulse and shift like a living thing. The attachment cluster has metastasized, spreading through his limbic system like a vine. But it’s the other readings that concern her—the aggression markers climbing steadily, the possessive pathways lighting up like Christmas lights, the darkness pushing closer to the surface with each passing hour.
The programming is fighting against his emotional responses.
And the conflict is causing glitches.
Time gaps in his location data. Moments where his vitals flatline and then spike without explanation. Neural activity patterns that don’t match any baseline she has on file.
He’s destabilizing. Faster than she anticipated.
And now she knows why.
The message from Dmitri Volkov arrived three days ago—a courtesy from an old associate in Minsk who’d seen photos of Vanguard’s new journalist companion in the tabloids. Mia Baxter, the papers called her. But Dmitri knew her by another name.
The Moth. She nearly got me in Minsk. I never forget a face, Julia. Not even under a different wig.
Her real name is still unknown, but what is known is that Mia is an SOE operative. A weapon disguised as a woman, sent to evaluate whether Julia’s creation poses a threat.
She knew it. She knew it all along, that Mia wasn’t who she said she was, that she was up to no good. And for some reason, she ignored her own instincts. Because Vanguard seemed happy for the first time ever, and she thought she was being the bigger person by letting him feel that, instead of snatching it away.
When she first heard from Dmitri, she wanted Mia killed. She had so many ways of making that happen. But then, once her emotions calmed and she was able to think clearly, she realized that hasty, reckless actions would be a wasted opportunity.
So she’s let it play out these past few days, watching, waiting, using the spy as an unwitting stress test for Vanguard’s programming. After all, what better way to test her creation’s limits than with a woman designed to destroy him? A woman who will need to die, one way or another.
Her tablet chimes. A new alert from the surveillance network.
Julia checks the notification and feels a spark of interest.
A man. British passport that hasn’t been used much. Arriving at JFK three hours ago. Currently en route to Manhattan.
She pulls up the file. Calvin Jacks. The cover identity lists him as a media consultant, but Julia knows better now. She runs his passport through the databases her Foreign Office contacts have shared—the ones connected to their quiet conversations about technology transfer and enhanced personnel programs.
It comes back as flagged.
He’s an SOE field operative. And according to the intelligence file, very close to Mia Baxter.
She checks his current location. A hotel in Midtown. And according to the tracking data, he went directly to the spy’s room upon arrival.
Julia pulls up the hallway surveillance and watches as Cal Jacks knocks on the door. Watches him disappear inside.
