EIGHT
Ash dropped into his seat at the war room table, the chair scraping against the floor with a sound that seemed too loud in the tense silence. His body still hummed with residual energy from last night—the kind that came from finally giving in to something he’d been fighting from the start.
He rolled his shoulders, but it didn’t shake off the distraction.Focus.
If something big wasn’t coming, Con wouldn’t have called them all here. They had intelligence to crack and a mission to plan.
Con stood at the head of the table, arms crossed as he studied the main screen where lines of encrypted code scrolled past in endless streams. Sophie sat to his right, fingers poised over her keyboard while Dante leaned back in his chair, watching the code get interpreted.
“How are you doing that so fast?” Ash broke the silence.
Con gave him a chin lift to acknowledge he heard the question, but he didn’t respond until Sinner, Mason and Steele joined the group, taking their usual positions around the table.
Then Ellory walked in.
Ash’s entire being took notice of her body in dark pants and a fitted blouse, her hair pulled back in a way that should have looked professional but only made him remember the feel of it wrapped around his fist.
She carried her tablet and a coffee mug to a seat between Elin and Dante, but she didn’t look at Ash.
Not even a sideways glance.
His jaw tightened.
Con cleared his throat, drawing everyone to attention. “Let’s get started. Sophie, Dante—you had a breakthrough on the encryption?”
Sophie straightened, her screen mirroring onto the main display. “We did. Dante and I have been working on this for the past forty-eight hours. With Elin’s help, we finally created a program to help crack the codes faster.”
“How?” Steele asked.
Sophie swung her gaze to him. “Without going into full geek mode, I can tell you that thanks to the latest intel, I isolated three main patterns within Cipher’s code. We created some keys, and Dante coded a program to run all ciphers through those keys. If they don’t fit, they’re stored in a separate file that I’ve been working on manually. But…” She waved at the screen, drawing everyone’s focus back to the words popping up there faster than they could read them.
“What was taking Sophie days is now taking hours.” Dante grinned. “We fed it every single piece of intel we have on Cipher and let it run.”
Ash leaned forward, elbows planted on the table, forcing his attention to the screen and away from the woman who was currently nibbling on the stem of her glasses as she listened.
That habit of hers was going to kill him.
Sophie’s words drew his attention to her instead. “We’re close to finding Cipher. Very close.”
“How close?” Steele’s back was rigid as if he was ready to spring up and scramble.
“I’d say within days. Maybe a week.” Con’s statement hit the group like a blast.
Ash watched the data scroll across the screen, his mind already working through tactics. If they found the money and cutthe funding, it wouldn’t take long to dismantle Cipher’s network. Cut off the head and burn the rest to ash.
But his focus kept slipping back to the woman shifting in her seat the way she’d squirmed on his cock.
Ellory leaned forward to add something to the quiet discussion between Elin and Dante. Her voice was steady—not at all the rasp he’d heard when he’d made her come.
And she still hadn’t looked at him once. What the hell was that about?
When they parted ways in the darkest hours of night, they both knew what they’d shared was a physical release. But he’d still expected some acknowledgment today—a glance. A nod.
Hell, a flicker of an eyelid.
Instead, she was acting like he didn’t exist.
Like he hadn’t been buried nine inches deep inside her while she shook apart for him.
