Chapter 9 - Damian #2
“Then we’ll find it.”
We.
She says it without hesitation, without calculation, without the self-protection I’ve come to expect from everyone around me. The word feels somewhat like a balm against frayed edges. A completely foreign feeling, if I say so.
Right when the clock is about to strike four in the morning, Kiro’s message comes through. Harper and I both straighten as the alert pings across the shared network.
Kiro’s voice crackles through the encrypted line before I even accept the call fully.
“We’ve confirmed infiltration. Anton’s men are inside the Moscow data hub.”
A cold weight drops into my gut. The small line has finally been crossed. Now everything after this moment will tilt differently, permanently.
Harper stiffens beside me, her fingers curling around the edge of her chair.
“How many?” I ask.
“At least six verified, possibly more. They’re splitting into compartments, masking their digital footprints. Whoever’s directing them is disciplined.”
Anton. It can be no one but that shithead. This bloodless violence is his exact brand.
I exhale through my nose, slow and controlled. Harper watches me with a look that is half anticipation, half warning. She already knows I’m making a decision.
I turn to her fully. “We don’t have the luxury of staying quiet.”
Her brows pull in. “What are you thinking?”
Iosif enters the room, his entrance noticed by Harper a second too late. That’s just how sharply this man moves. He looks at me, then at Harper, then at the glowing screens. I can see the pattern forming in his mind, the pieces aligning into something dangerous.
I stand, the motion abrupt enough to send a ripple of tension through the space. The room feels too small for the thought forming in my mind.
“We force them into the open,” I say.
Iosif’s head tilts, interest flickering like the brief flare of a match.
“How?”
“A public initiative,” I answer. “One the entire organization will see. One the Moscow cell will see. One Anton’s people won’t be able to ignore.” I let the words sharpen as they leave my mouth. “A unified digital defense expansion. Led by us.”
Harper rises slowly from her seat, eyes narrowing as she catches up.
“Damian—”
“Not us,” I correct softly. “Mr. and Mrs. Ignatov.”
The room freezes. Even the server fans seem to pause.
Iosif’s expression does not shift, but a subtle tension knots the air around him. The strategist in him understands the brilliance. The cousin in him understands the danger.
Harper looks at me as if the ground beneath her has changed texture entirely.
“You want to use our marriage.”
“I want to weaponize what Anton thinks is a weakness.” My voice is low, threaded with something darker than resolve. “He believes you’re a liability. An outsider. But if we present ourselves as unified in public, he’ll be forced to pull his spies out of the shadows to test the threat.”
“And while he’s busy reacting,” Harper murmurs, the wheels turning behind her eyes, “we tighten the perimeter.”
“Exactly.”
Iosif nods once.
“It will work. But it binds you both. Permanently.”
He doesn’t mean romantically, of course. As if. He means politically, symbolically. If we take this step, there is no reversing it without fracturing the entire syndicate.
As if I don’t know this? I want to scoff drily, but I keep that in.
Harper looks away for a second, toward the screens, as if searching for a foothold in the storm. The blue glow haloing her face carves her features into sharp, nearly vulnerable lines.
When she looks back at me, I see defiance and acceptance burning the same behind her eyes.
“If we do this,” she says quietly, “there’s no halfway.”
“I’m not offering halfway,” I reply.
A pregnant pause suffuses the air.
Then she nods once, the smallest motion. An unspoken energy vibrates in the air between us, getting more intense as our gazes refuse to leave the other’s.
Iosif steps back, giving us space he pretends we don’t need. He’s always been perceptive that way, patient where I’m ruthless, calculating where I’m instinctive. A mirrored opposite, cold where I am sharp.
“I’ll initiate the European lockdown,” he says. “Kiro will assist. But Damian—” His gaze flicks between us. “If you do this, the organization will see you differently. Together.”
“That’s the point,” I say.
His point isn’t lost on me. He nods and leaves the room without another word.
Harper exhales slowly, the sound shaky around the edges. She pushes her hair back from her face, fingers trembling just enough that I notice. We’re exhausted, but that’s not what’s making the air between us crackle.
“It feels like we’re stepping into something we can’t step out of,” she says.
“We are.”
She swallows.
“And you’re not hesitating.”
“Oh, I am,” I murmur. “Just not for the reasons you think.”
Her eyes sparkle with heat, morphing into exhaustion. “Then why?”
I take a step closer, just enough for the hum of the machines to recede, for the room to narrow into something intimate, dangerous.
“Because once we do this,” I say quietly, “you won’t just be part of the plan. You’ll be the center of it. The face of it. Anton won’t see you as a threat, he’ll see you as the threat.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” I ask, softer, darker. “Do you understand what he does to people who stand in his way?”
She lifts her chin, refusing to be intimidated, refusing to retreat.
“I’m already in his way.”
God help me. That strikes something inside my chest with a force I don’t expect.
She steps closer too, as if pulled forward by something magnetic and inevitable.
“Damian,” she whispers, “you don’t have to protect me from this.”
“Yes,” I say, “I do.”
Her breath catches, tension sinking under the skin, slow and startling in its intensity. The space between us stretches thin as wire, humming with dark, unspoken electricity.
Her gaze drops briefly to my mouth, then back to my eyes so quickly I almost think I imagined it.
She inhales shakily.
“Then tell me what happens next.”
“We go public,” I say, voice low. “We announce the initiative at dawn. You and I together. Unified.”
“And Anton’s men?”
“We’ll be ready for them.”
She nods slowly, her eyes fixed on mine like she’s searching for the parts of me I don’t show anyone else.
“We can do this,” she murmurs. “Together.”
We.
Again.
The word coils inside me, warm and unwelcome and necessary.
Harper watches me, her expression unreadable, but her pulse visible at the base of her throat, fluttering like a trapped spark.
I clear my throat, steadying myself. “Get some water,” I say. “You haven’t moved in hours.”
“You haven’t either,” she counters.
There’s a faint, almost-smile full of exhaustion at the corner of her mouth. It twists something inside me I don’t have a name for. The mouth on this woman.
“We’ll rest when Anton is in the ground,” I mutter.
“So will I,” she whispers.