Page 44 of Make Them Pay

“The delivery system is ready,” she says. “Evidence package is set. The moment you enter the stairwell, I trigger the drop. Federal agencies, the regulatory people, and the journalist all get the complete Goldenbell financial map at the same time. By the time Serafina’s lawyers can react, the information will already be in the hands of people who can act on it.”

“Timing?”

“Synced with the breach. Zero delay. The digital side and the physical side start at the same second.”

She turns from the laptop and looks at me. Her expression is clear and steady. Not embarrassed. Not regretful. Not trying to fill the silence with reassurance. She’s looking at me the way she has since the night she sat on the concrete floor and laid out her conditions: directly, without apology.

“We should talk about it,” she says.

“Now?”

“When else? In five hours you’re going underground and I’m going to be on the other end of a radio trying to sound professional while the man I just had sex with is clearing corridors in a building full of people who want to kill him.”

The bluntness is so completely her that something warm moves through my chest.

“What do you need me to say?” I ask.

“I don’t need you to say anything. I need to know that when you walk into that building tonight, you’re not carrying guilt about this on top of everything else. I need to know that what we just did isn’t sitting in your chest like a weight that makes you slower or less focused or more reckless because you’re trying to make up for a decision you think you shouldn’t have made.”

She sees me. The precision of it is almost unsettling, like she’s running a diagnostic on me that I don’t fully control.

“I’m not carrying guilt,” I say. I check the statement against what’s actually true and find it accurate. “I’m carrying awareness. The awareness that I’ve just made the situation more complicated in every direction. Poe. The crew. The mission. What comes after. All of it is more complicated now because of what we did.”

“More complicated isn’t the same as wrong.”

“No. It’s not.”

“So you don’t regret it.”

I look at her. The woman who taught herself to code in an empty apartment. Who found the weak spots in systems that should have been locked down. Who mapped an entire criminal empire while I was unconscious with a fever. Who walked twenty miles through wet forest without complaining. Who sat on a cold floor and told me she wasn’t going to fall apart and then spent eight days proving it.

“I’ve regretted a lot of things in my life,” I say. “Most of them were things I didn’t do. This isn’t one of them.”

Something in her expression shifts. Not a smile. Something deeper. The look of a person who heard what she needed to hear and is taking it in completely.

“Okay,” she says. “Then here’s how this works. You go into the building. I run the digital side. We bring the crew home. And when it’s over, when Poe is out and the crew is safe and Serafina is dealt with, we have the conversation. The real one. The one where you tell me everything and I tell you everything and we figure out what this is in a room that doesn’t have a countdown clock on the wall.”

“That’s the plan.”

“That’s the plan. But Render.” She pauses and holds my gaze. “Come back. From the building. From the stairwell. From whatever happens underground. Come back. Because the conversation can’t happen if you don’t.”

“I’ll come back,” I say.

“Promise.”

“Promise.”

The word sits between us for the third time in eight days. The first time was in the cabin when she made me promise to answer her questions. The second was after the Margaux decision. This third one is different. This one isn’t about information or honesty. This one is about a body returning to a room where another body is waiting.

It’s the simplest promise I’ve ever made and the hardest one to guarantee.

I look at her standing there in my hoodie, hair still messy from my hands, eyes steady on mine. Five hours left. The clock is still ticking. But right now the only thing I can think about is how she felt against that wall and how much I already want her again.

“Come here,” I say.

She doesn’t ask why. She just walks over. I sit on the edge of the cot and pull her between my knees. My hands slide under the hoodie and find the warm skin of her waist. She shivers at the contact.

“I need you again,” I tell her, voice raspy. “Before we go back to the work. Before the clock takes over. I need to feel you.”