Page 193 of Damsel in Disguise

There’s no trace of the cocky, infuriating man I encountered at Ariella’s apartment. Only a dangerous level of eerie calmness.

The contrast between his two personalities feels like watching someone flip a switch.

One version provokes. The other eliminates.

“Yes,” the voice modulator is working well.

Without turning around immediately, he glances down at his Rolex. “You’re unusually right on time.”

The smooth outline of the handgun tucked beneath his jacket is impossible to miss. He isn’t making any effort to conceal it from me.

I mirror his motion and glance at my own Rolex. Quite impressively, I’m not even a minute late.

Exactly forty-eight hours have passed since I placed that call from the burner phone.

“Time is a luxury neither of us can afford,” I reply.

He finally turns around, facing me. The soft moonlight glow emphasizes one side of his face, adding a depth of darkness to his silhouette.

I stay back in the shadows and go straight into business, reaching into my coat to pull out the device. “This contains everything I could extract before they realized I was there,” the iPad catches the pale dawn light as I hold it between us.

“Project Garden. The full framework. The origin documentation. Recruitment protocols. The conditioning pipeline. And the leverage structure they use to keep Synthète assets compliant,” I say before he can ask what it is.

He eyes the device without accepting it. “Shame I still don’t know who the hell you are and why you’re doing this.”

“The information is all you need to know.”

His laugh is devoid of humor. “A stranger calls me from a burner phone, drags me halfway across England, starts talking about secret organizations and projects named after flowers, and I’m supposed to trust him?”

“Trust has nothing to do with it.”

“Then explain the bike accident.”

The suppressed anger is back in him.

“The bikers who went after Ariella were never intended to survive the collision. They were to make sure that the accident looks real enough to the public—to you, the Keinstons specifically—so the attackers die but she survives anyhow because they need her alive.”

I continue. “Their financial records were wiped six hours beforehand. Families received anonymous deposits two days later. The vehicles’ telemetry was altered remotely.”

Asher’s stare sharpens. “You investigated it all?”

“I investigated everything connected to Ariella.”

“Who orchestrated it?”

“The same people who created Project Garden.”

“And what exactly is this Project Garden?”

“A recruitment pipeline for building assets.”

The faint moonlight glow catches the muscles flexing in his jaw. “Speak English.”

“They identify people with specific traits. Intelligence. Adaptability. Psychological resilience. Useful genetics. Then they manufacture circumstances around them to manipulate them.”

“Manufacture?” he scoffs.

“Trauma. Isolation. Dependency. Fear. Loyalty. Whatever produces the desired outcome,” I say, ignoring the taunt in his tone.