“Yep,” she says and grins to herself as her arms close around me.
She is grounding me.
Because she saw.
And gave me the courtesy to leave the reasons to me while taking away my fear.
I don’t know how I ended up here, but now I have a possessive girlfriend who is beautifully intelligent with a big sprinkle of madness. One who gives me severed hands as gifts, kills those who threaten me, and dictates my actions. Me. Lilian Anne Knightley. Control freak, who never wanted to date, ever.
“What happened to the hate me and condemn me version of you?” I ask.
“Oh, I do hate you,” she says. “But I gave up fighting what I feel. And let’s not forget it was you who knelt down to make me stay and called me Mistress.”
Doug looks as if he would rather be anywhere else, and I have never felt more relatable.
“Can’t recall that particular part,” I say in a hiss.
She hums in knowing arrogance.
The elevator descends, and the moment we arrive, I get out of it.
What opens before me is a different world.
Softly buzzing servers line both sides of the underground hall, revealing the view into a data center.
I walk through it, and while I am generally not easy to impress, this here does. I can’t help but wonder how she managed to do all that. Physical space aside, a full copy of a system she had no knowledge of prior to, let alone authorizations…unless?—
“Doug!” I shout as I turn and stare at him, just in time to see Kat hand him a hundred bucks.
He fights a laugh when he sees my face.
“You helped her,” I say, underlying anger boiling.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, and I know he’s teasing me.
“I am going to murder you both,” I threaten them, but Kat distracts me with her hand on my back, steering me towards a door in the back.
Why the hell can’t I focus the very moment she touches me?
“So, everything works as you know it to, only it is now separated from official government access,” she says casually, as if none of it is a big deal. “They believe Zeus is gone, while it’s right here?—“
She opens a room that resembles a NASA command center, with displays on the walls and a huge round table at its center.
After taking in the magnitude of what I see, I spot a box with my office stuff. She even thought of that.
“Official government access?” I ask.
“Uh-hm,” she says.
“What did you do?”
“Well, I built a backdoor access through the working connection before I cut it,” she says. “So, Zeus can still access it, just hidden. Tweaked the RAT you developed a bit for that.”
I can’t believe any of it. This has to be a dream.
“You did not,” I say.
“Oh, I did,” she says, grinning proudly.
