I didn't sleep. Not that Julian Sterling offered me a bed.
Instead, his silent, armed ghosts escorted me to a room on the eastern wing of the penthouse. The heavy glass door slid shut behind me, locking with a definitive, electronic click that echoed in my chest.
It wasn't a dungeon. It was a technological cathedral.
The room was bathed in the cool, ambient glow of screens. But these weren't my patched-together, overclocked monitors from the safe house. A massive, curved OLED wall dominated the space, connected to a custom-built server rack that hummed with the quiet, terrifying power of a quantum processor. The keyboard resting on the sleek obsidian desk was a bespoke ergonomic model, keys blank, waiting for a master.
Despite the terror still gnawing at my stomach, the hacker in me couldn't suppress a dark thrill. It was the Devil's hardware, and he had just handed me the keys.
I sat in the ergonomic leather chair, my fingers hovering over the blank keys. I tried a simple ping request to an external server.
Access Denied. Local Network Only.
Of course. I was in a sandbox. A gilded, impenetrable digital cage. I couldn't reach the outside world. I could only see what Julian allowed me to see.
The sound of the glass door sliding open made me stiffen.
Julian walked in. He had discarded the suit jacket, his crisp white shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, revealing forearms corded with lean muscle. In his right hand, he held a steaming ceramic mug.
He walked around the obsidian desk and set the mug down next to my keyboard. The rich, bitter aroma of dark roast coffee filled the sterile air.
"Black. No sugar," Julian said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room. "As requested."
I stared at the mug, then up at him. "You brought me coffee yourself? Did your tactical team take a union break?"
Julian didn't smile, but a dangerous glint flickered in his dark eyes. He leaned forward, resting his hands flat on the desk, caging me in. He was so close I could see the faint pulse beating at the base of his throat, so close I could smell that intoxicating mix of cedarwood and cold ruthlessness.
"I don't delegate the management of my most valuable assets, Anya," he murmured, his gaze dropping to my lips before locking onto my eyes. "And make no mistake, that is what you are now. An asset. My eye."
I swallowed hard, refusing to lean back into the chair. I forced my hands to grab the hot mug, letting the heat ground me. "So, who am I looking at? You said a board member hired me."
Julian reached into his pocket and produced a sleek, silver thumb drive. He dropped it onto the desk. It landed with a heavy, metallic clink.
"Marcus Thorne," Julian stated, his tone turning glacial. "He's been siphoning funds from Sterling Industries' R&D division for two years. I've known about the missing money, but Thorne is cautious. He uses a labyrinth of offshore shell companies and encrypted ledgers. He thought hiring 'The Eye' to find my dirty laundry would be the perfect distraction while he executed his final transfer."
I set the coffee down and picked up the drive. It was heavy. Solid state, military-grade encryption. "And you want me to unravel his labyrinth."
"I want you to burn it to the ground," Julian corrected softly. "I want every bank account number, every hidden asset, every communication log he thought was deleted. I want the proof that will not only ruin him, but put him in a concrete box for the rest of his miserable life."
He leaned in a fraction closer, his breath brushing my temple. My skin erupted in goosebumps that had nothing to do with the room's temperature.
"You have access to my internal network. The processing power in this room can brute-force civilian encryption in minutes. Show me why I kept you alive, Anya."
He straightened up, breaking the magnetic field of proximity that was making my head spin, and walked toward the door.
"Julian," I called out before the glass could slide shut.
He paused, looking back over his shoulder.
"If Thorne was smart enough to hide from you for two years," I said, a dangerous smirk finally touching my own lips, "what makes you think I won't find things on your network you don't want me to see?"
Julian turned fully, his eyes narrowing into a look of pure, predatory challenge.
"I'm counting on it, little eye," he whispered. "Let the games begin."
The glass door slid shut, locking me in with the hum of the servers and the phantom heat of his presence. I took a sip of the bitter coffee, plugged the silver drive into the port, and let my fingers fly across the blank keys.
The voyeur was dead. The hunter was born.