“David, I can?—”
“Lena.” His voice was soft, but unyielding. “Let me.”
And somehow, those two words—let me—undid her more than anything else today. She nodded mutely and sank onto the couch, tugging the throw blanket over her lap.
From the kitchen, she heard the clink of a can opener, Minx’s escalating meows, and David’s muttering, “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. You’re very important. We’ll never delay your dinner again.”
Lena pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
A moment later, he returned—sans diva—and settled beside her. Not too close, but close enough that his presence filled the space like warmth from a fireplace.
“She’s fed. You’re home. Leg’s elevated.” He glanced at her, something playful flickering in his dark eyes. “Anything else on the crisis list?”
Lena shook her head, throat tight again, but this time for a different reason. “No. I think… I think I’m okay. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Good, because I’m not going anywhere.” David’s hand found hers again, fingers lacing through hers with the ease of inevitability.
Minx chose that exact moment to leap onto the back of the couch, perch behind Lena’s head like a tiny sentry, and begin grooming herself loudly.
Lena looked up at the kitten, then at David, and despite everything—the fear and the chaos and the unknown waiting outside her door—the faintest flickers of safety warmed her chest.
And maybe a little bit of hope.
Chapter 35
Electrical Storm
David stoodin the server room, sweat slicking the back of his neck despite the cold, humming air. The usual rhythm of blinking LEDs offered no comfort—each flicker an accusation, each whir of the cooling fan whispering,you’re losing control.
He watched the display in soundless fury as lines of code jittered and spat red error flags faster than he could blink them away. The entire network was bleeding—guest data, keycard access, the power grid—it was all falling apart, piece by piece, like someone peeled the skin away from the network to slice at its nerves.
He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. “This shouldn’t be happening,” he said aloud, voice hoarse against the sterile silence of the room. “No one breached the firewall. No one got in.”
But something had. Some malicious code was dancing through his system like it knew it better than he did—bouncing through secure nodes, rewriting logs, erasing trails, waving a taunting middle finger as it left. It was fast, unpredictable—pure chaos disguised as logic. And it wasn’t messing with sensors anymore. Another warning flashed as the HVAC power routingfor all of Zone C went offline. Guests were in those bungalows. Families.
David’s stomach flipped. His fingers tightened on the tablet’s smooth edge until his knuckles burned. This—this was personal. Someone was trying to gaslight the entire infrastructure, to make it look like incompetence… or worse.
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them and spoke again to the empty room, “You want to play? Fine.”
He crouched on the floor, knees spread for balance. A sharp tremble moved through his hands as he adjusted the tablet against his palm, connecting with its internal network through bare skin. The usual static buzz that greeted him when he slipped into the machine scraped like a scream tonight—too loud, too violent, hurling fragmented data like debris in a storm.
This was going to hurt.
Weight was already building behind his eyes, drumming at his temples like a warning bell. If he stayed too long, fully immersed, he’d wipe himself out. Coma-level burnout. And there’d be no one to pull him back.
But he couldn’t stop. Not with multiple systems failing across the resort. He had to protect his brothers. Lena.
Taking a sharp breath, he let the physical world go. The electric hum flattened into a tone only he heard, and the room blurred. Code wrapped around him like a second skin—cold and alive, angry with purpose.
He plunged in, deeper than he’d gone in months. Probably years.
The network no longer resembled a street map—it was a war zone.
Lightning arcs of encrypted script tangled above him, snapping like thunderclouds. He moved through crawling data tunnels, shielding his psyche from malicious input clusters thatclawed at his presence, tried to rewrite his consciousness as if he were a random line of corruptible code.
But he was David-fucking-Jones, and this washissystem.
His pulse thudded in his ears. Muscles trembled in his legs. Some distant part of his mind registered a nosebleed dripping onto the tile, but he banished the concern, tunneled toward the source. He had to get there before the virus mutated again. Before the saboteur turned the whole damn island dark.
