I pull back. Look at his face. The boyish features that made me dismiss him on sight, that I now know belong to the most capable, perceptive, stubborn man I've ever met.
"I'm falling in love with you too," I say. Because he said it first, two mornings ago, bare and honest, and I've been carrying my answer ever since, waiting for the moment I trusted myself enough to say it. "And that terrifies me more than Victor Kane."
His smile starts slow. Spreads to those dimples. Reaches his eyes until they're lit from the inside, warm and golden and completely, devastatingly certain.
"Good," he says. "Terrified means it matters."
He carries me to bed. Not because I can't walk. Because he wants to.
I let him. Because I want to let him.
The light in his cabin stays dark tonight. He doesn't need it.
He's here.
7
HAYES
The trap works faster than anyone predicted.
Day eleven, oh-nine-hundred. Sully's false data package hit Whitfield's monitored channel eighteen hours ago. Within six hours, the fabricated research files moved through two shell companies and landed on a server registered to Meridian Capital Partners. Within twelve, the FBI's cyber crimes unit had a federal judge sign off on warrants. By dawn, Thomas Whitfield was in handcuffs in his Palo Alto home, and FBI agents were walking into Meridian Capital's New York offices with enough paper to wallpaper the building.
Victor Kane's lawyers mobilized within the hour. Kane himself hasn't been arrested, because men with twelve billion dollars don't get arrested on the first pass. They get investigated, deposed, and slowly cornered. But the SEC filing Warren submitted this morning puts his acquisition play on ice. The stock bleeding stops. The narrative shifts.
Lex should be celebrating.
She's packing.
I stand in the doorway of her cabin watching her fold a suit into her Louis Vuitton suitcase with the mechanical precision of someone who's done this a thousand times. Her phone is wedged between her ear and her shoulder, and she's talking to someone on her board in a voice that's pure steel.
"The emergency board meeting is tomorrow at nine. I need to be there in person, Janet. A video call from a mountain cabin doesn't project stability. It projects exactly the weakness Kane's been cultivating." A pause. "I'm aware of the risk. Book me on the seven AM out of Reno."
She ends the call and reaches for the next suit.
"No," I say.
She doesn't look up. "Hayes."
"The FBI arrested Whitfield six hours ago. Kane's operation is compromised but Kane himself is still in play. His security apparatus is still active. The people who broke into your penthouse and sent a surveillance team to this compound are still employed by a billionaire who just watched his acquisition strategy collapse. That makes you more of a target right now, not less."
"I understand the risk assessment."
"Then you understand why you're not flying to San Francisco tomorrow."
She stops folding. Straightens. Turns to face me. The woman looking at me is not the woman who said she was falling in love with me last night on the kitchen counter. This is the CEO. Ice blue eyes, set jaw, shoulders squared inside a cashmere sweater that costs more than my truck.
"My company just survived a hostile takeover attempt," she says. "My board is shaken. My investors are panicking. My stock price needs to see my face in that boardroom tomorrow, or the damage Kane started will finish itself without him."
"Warren can represent you. Your legal team can handle the board."
"Warren is not the CEO. I am."
"And you're also a target of an active threat from a man with unlimited resources and a grudge."
"The FBI is handling Kane."
"The FBI is handling the financial crimes. They're not sitting outside your penthouse at three in the morning. They're not running counter-surveillance on Kane's security team. They don't have the tactical capability to protect you in an urban environment where Kane's people already proved they have access."
