The flash drive was small enough to vanish in her palm, but it carried the weight of a loaded gun. Celeste had been carrying it for days, waiting for the right moment. Tonight, the moment had arrived — or maybe it had been stalking her all along.
Damien was out. A "meeting," he'd said, though she knew better than to believe it was anything so mundane. His absences were rare, and rarer still without one of his shadows lingering in the apartment. The silence felt unnatural, like the air before a storm.
She moved quickly but without panic, her bare feet silent on the polished floor. The laptop sat on his desk, closed but not locked away. That was Damien's arrogance — the belief that no one would dare touch what was his.
The screen lit up at her touch, demanding a password. She tried the obvious ones first — dates, names, numbers — but none worked. Then she remembered the way his fingers lingered on the velvet lining of his cufflinks case, the way he once murmured the word like it meant more than fabric.
Velour.
The files bloomed open like a wound. Her breath caught.
Names. Bank accounts. Offshore holdings. Photographs of men in suits shaking hands over tables that still bore the faint shadow of blood. And then — her. Dozens of images, some she recognized, others she didn't even know had been taken. Her walking down a street. Her asleep. Her laughing at something she couldn't remember.
But it wasn't the surveillance that made her blood run cold. It was the contracts. Her name was on one. Signed. Sealed. Sold.
She wasn't just an "asset" in Damien's ledger. She was collateral in a deal worth more than she could fathom.
Her hands trembled as she copied everything onto her own encrypted drive. The progress bar crawled forward, each second stretching into an eternity. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, loud enough to drown out the hum of the city beyond the glass.
A faint sound made her freeze — the soft mechanical sigh of the elevator starting its ascent.
She yanked the drive free, shoving it into her pocket just as the elevator chimed. The doors slid open.
Damien stepped inside, his coat damp from the rain, his hair slightly mussed. He moved with the unhurried grace of a man who owned every room he entered. But his eyes… his eyes were sharp, scanning her like a blade.
"You've been busy," he said, his voice low, almost amused.
She forced a smile. "So have you."
He closed the distance between them, the scent of rain and expensive cologne wrapping around her like a nose. "You've crossed a line, Celeste."
"Maybe," she said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding her veins. "But now I know where all of yours are."
For a moment, neither of them moved. The city hummed beyond the glass, the rain whispering against the windows.
Then Damien smiled — slow, dangerous. "Careful, Celeste. You're holding a knife in the dark. Make sure you know which way it's pointing."
She met his gaze without flinching. "Oh, I do."
And for the first time, she saw it — not just the predator in him, but the flicker of something else. Uncertainty.