Chapter 14
14
CHERISE
L ogan’s stare sharpens, flint and frost, more challenge than question—like he’s daring me to flinch. “Because that’s the game we’re in now, sweetheart. You came charging into our world with fire in your eyes and vengeance dripping off your tongue, and you don’t get to pretend there’s no fallout. Not with him. Not with any of us.”
I flinch—just the barest dip of my shoulders, a subtle drop of my eyes—but it’s enough. Logan sees it. Of course he does. Like a predator scenting blood, he closes in, eyes narrowing with surgical precision. Suddenly, the air between us feels razor thin. One misstep, one breath too sharp, and it’ll all come apart.
“You think I’m a distraction.”
He huffs. “Distraction? No. You’re a variable he can’t mitigate. And Nick Ryeland lives and dies by control. You upset the balance, Cherise. You make him hesitate. You make him hope.”
He takes another step, close now, voice dropping lower, dangerously calm. “And when this op inevitably goes sideways—and believe me, it will—he won’t be calculating. He’ll be reacting. And that’s how good men die.”
I cross my arms, grounding myself in the only truth that’s ever kept me standing. “You think I’m weak. That I need rescuing. That I’m the type of woman who crawls into the nearest bed for safety or leverage. You’re wrong. The fire didn’t break me. It forged me.”
Logan’s expression doesn’t shift, but something in his gaze flickers. The smallest tic. “Then prove it.”
He leans back, just enough to give me space but not enough to relieve the pressure. “Tell me this isn’t about Nick. Tell me you’re not using him to rewrite a story you couldn’t survive the first time.”
I stare him down. “Feels like maybe I’m not the only one who underestimated me.”
He scoffs, raking a hand through his hair. “Bloody hell,” he mutters, accent roughening with frustration. “You two are a bloody time bomb. Either you’ll win this war, or you’ll light the match that brings the whole damned house down.”
Then his gaze cuts toward the elevator—toward where Nick probably is. He doesn’t say the rest. He doesn’t need to.
But I do.
“I love him,” I say, quiet but clear. “And not because he saved me. Because he sees me. All of me.”
Logan doesn’t blink, but something in his jaw ticks.
“Let’s just hope that’s enough,” he mutters, turning away and picking up his mug again like nothing happened. “Because if it’s not… we’ll all be ash.”
I hear it before I see it—the soft ding.
Nick.
The elevator doors slide open with a soft chime, and Nick steps into the ops room like gravity bends around him. Everything inside me braces. My breath stalls in my chest. Logan glances over his shoulder but doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
Nick’s gaze sweeps the room in one cool, calculated pass—first Logan, then me. His eyes linger when they land on me, taking in the shirt I’m still wearing, the tension in my shoulders, the heat still clinging to the air like something happened and neither of us has said it out loud yet.
I expect fury. Reprimand. That low growl he uses when he’s two seconds from dragging me back upstairs and reminding me who’s in charge.
But instead… I get stillness.
Nick doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t accuse. He just closes the distance with that unshakeable calm that always throws me off more than his anger ever could.
When he stops in front of me, his fingers slide gently behind my neck—warm, firm, anchoring me with a single touch. It’s not punishing, not possessive, but it carries weight. Like a signal. Like a tether made of skin and trust, reminding me exactly who I belong to and who’s still in control, even without a single word.
Just there.
“Didn’t expect you up so early,” he says quietly, but there’s something behind the words—something layered and watchful. It’s not just surprise. It’s assessment. Like he’s cataloging every flicker in my posture, every edge in my voice, measuring if this is independence or rebellion. A heartbeat passes before he speaks again, but I feel the weight of his silence like a test I didn’t realize I was taking.
I lift my chin, forcing my voice to stay even despite the tight coil of tension still knotted in my spine. “I needed space to think,” I say, the words sharper than I intended, more armor than explanation. My pulse skips, waiting for the reprimand I half expect—but all I see in Nick’s eyes is that maddening, patient calm that unnerves me more than any fury ever could.
His thumb brushes just beneath my ear—slow and deliberate, the barest hint of possession in the gesture.
“I would’ve given it to you,” he says, voice pitched low, rich with that dangerous calm that always seems to settle over him when I expect the opposite. There’s no anger, no heat—just quiet understanding threaded through something heavier. Something that feels like a promise.
My throat tightens. I know he means it. Knows me well enough to realize that even silence, when it comes from him, can feel like sanctuary. But the way his eyes pin mine now? It’s not silence. It’s a vow not to pull away. A vow to see me—even when I don’t want to be seen.
His gaze flickers over my face, lingering there for a beat too long—like he’s reading the cracks I can’t quite seal shut—then drops to the subtle tremble in my hands, the one I thought I was hiding. The kind of tremble that betrays more than fear. It exposes the weight of everything I’m holding back—adrenaline, defiance, need. And he sees all of it. Not just the tremble, but the war waging just beneath my skin. His eyes darken, not with anger, but with something deeper. Something that says, I see you. I see all of you. And I’ve got you.
Then he turns, eases himself down into the chair I’d been hovering behind, and without a word—without asking—pulls me gently into his lap.
My knees hit his thighs, and I freeze for half a heartbeat. Not because I’m embarrassed. But because everything about the moment is so deliberate—so commanding in its calm, so unshakably certain. Like his quiet control has wrapped itself around me in front of God and Logan and a wall of high-tech surveillance equipment, and he’s making one thing perfectly clear without saying a word: I belong to him. Here. Now. In this war room. In this mission. In this life, he lives in the shadows. And whether or not Logan likes it, I’m not just in the room—I’m part of the equation.
His arm slides around my waist, guiding me against his chest like this is exactly where I belong. And I feel it—that quiet reinforcement. Not punishment, not humiliation. Just… clarity. I’m here. I’m still his. And he’s not letting the room, or Logan, or the mission, take that away.
Across the table, Logan watches without comment. His expression doesn’t change, but there’s a flicker in his eyes—curiosity, maybe. Or wariness.
Nick leans forward slightly and taps a few keys on the terminal. “What did I miss?”
Logan clears his throat. “We confirmed Duval had help. Someone inside Monaco PD. A leak in the surveillance chain, probably embedded months ago.”
Nick’s body tenses beneath me. “Confirmed?”
“Not by name. But we pulled intercepted comms. Whoever helped him is high enough to redirect field ops. Too precise to be a fluke.” Logan pauses, then hits a key. The main screen flickers, loading a string of raw intercepted data. “Alias used is Rouge Zero. No visual. No ID. Just encrypted bursts from a burner we haven’t traced yet.”
“Local or international?” Nick asks.
“Monaco jurisdiction,” Logan confirms, his voice clipped. “Internal Affairs has their hands tied—too many eyes, too much risk. If we go through official channels, we’ll lose the element of surprise. Which means we need to root them out ourselves—quietly—before they realize we’re hunting and cover their tracks.”
I glance between them, pulse tightening. “You think they’re still feeding Vallois?” My voice is steady, but the weight of the question lingers in the space between us, pressing into the already-fraught air. Because if Logan’s right, and there's a mole inside the Monaco police—someone actively undermining Cerberus from the inside—then it means we’re not just being hunted. We’re being watched.
“We don’t think,” Logan says. “We know.”
Nick exhales through his nose, then turns his attention to a second screen. “Pull up the comm scrub overlay.”
I follow his line of sight, only to realize he’s opening a fresh ops panel on the side of the display. “Here,” he says, and nudges the monitor toward me.
My brows lift. “Me?”
“You said you wanted in.” He nudges the keyboard toward me, the corner of his mouth lifting just slightly—not a smirk, but something more dangerous. More deliberate. "So get in. Prove you're more than a survivor. Show me you're a threat."
He gestures to the screen, fingers gliding over the interface. “This is our communications scrub filter. Set the geofence to a ten-kilometer radius around Opus Noir, timestamp it for the two hours after Fortier bailed. Then match the encrypted fingerprint patterns against what we caught last night from Rue Lafayette. If Rouge Zero was on the move, we’ll see where they bounced.”
I stare at the interface—sleek, cold, humming with a kind of intelligence that feels just beyond reach. The nested menus and streaming code blur like a language I’ve only half-learned, studied in shadows and silence, watching from the edges of Hector’s world. I absorbed more than I realized over the years. Enough to follow pieces of it. Enough to suspect. But this? This is different. This is real.
The cursor blinks like a dare. Like it knows I’ve been bluffing.
Nick’s heat is at my back, his arm anchoring me in place, strong and steady around my waist. I can feel the weight of his belief in me, and it’s terrifying.
“You’re serious?” I whisper, voice tighter than I mean it to be.
His hand traces a slow line up my side, firm and reassuring, not demanding—centering. “I wouldn’t have put you here if I wasn’t,” he says, voice quiet but absolute. No room for debate. No cracks in the foundation. He’s not just backing me—he’s betting on me.
I hesitate, fingers poised just above the keys. “I’m not trained for this. Not the way you are. Not the way Logan is.”
Nick doesn’t argue. Doesn’t soften. “No, you’re not. But you’ve been watching for years. You’ve seen how these bastards move. You know how Hector thinks. You got close without letting it break you.” His voice lowers, more intimate now. “You’ve been surviving in their world longer than any of us have. That’s what makes you dangerous.”
And just like that, something sharp and hot cuts through the fog of doubt. I’m still unsure. Still scared I’ll fail. But now there’s a thread of belief running beneath it—mine, not his.
I press the first key.
The system responds. Lines of code flicker to life, filters engage. Digital trails burst across the screen like spiderwebs spun in real time. Information flares brightly across the display, and for once, it doesn’t feel like chaos. It feels like progress.
Nick watches my hands. “That’s my girl,” he murmurs.
I swallow hard, heat blooming low in my stomach.
I don’t look at Logan, but I can feel him watching—his presence a silent pressure behind me, sharp and assessing. It scrapes along my spine like a blade still sheathed, not yet dangerous, but waiting. There’s no sound, no comment, just the weight of his gaze as I type, every keystroke echoing louder under the scrutiny. It’s not distrust exactly. It’s wariness. A waiting game. Like he’s measuring not just what I can do, but what I’m going to become.
Nick keeps his hand steady on me, his voice calm as he guides me through the next layer. “Once the scan completes, you’ll get a heatmap. From there, we can flag any locations where traffic intersected Vallois’ known drop points.”
I nod, muscles tight with focus, nerves on fire. Because for the first time since this nightmare began, I’m not just running. I’m not waiting to be rescued. And if this scan turns up even one new thread to pull—one that helps take Hector or Vallois down—then it’s worth every second of doubt I’ve carried since the moment I stepped into Nick Ryeland’s world.
He leans in slowly, the scent of him wrapping around me—leather, spice, and something darker, something that feels like home and danger all at once. His breath fans warm across my cheek as his lips graze my temple in a whisper of a kiss, not meant for show, not even for comfort. It's possession in its quietest form. A vow. A claim. And a reassurance that even here, surrounded by uncertainty and judgment, I am exactly where I’m meant to be—with him.
“You’re doing fine,” he whispers, the words brushing against my skin like silk over steel—gentle in delivery, absolute in meaning. His hand doesn’t move from my waist, a constant pressure grounding me in the moment, tethering me to the belief that I’m no longer just a survivor clawing her way through shadows. I’m a weapon. I’m not being shielded from the storm. I’m part of the damn strike team.