Chapter 14 - Harper
The estate feels different like someone replaced the air with glass.
Every step threatens to crack something I can’t see. Damian and I move through the same rooms but orbit like twin stars refusing to burn in the same direction. We work, side by side, avoiding each other’s eyes.
We have become masters in pretending the heat between us isn’t smoldering under every clipped word and shallow breath. We’re rebuilding the wreckage left by the leak, picking through the ashes for anything that still holds shape.
Kiro has half the estate in controlled lockdown, a quiet storm of cables and code sprawled across the war room’s long table. Screens glow, their light painting our faces in cold geometry.
I sift through packet trails and corrupted fragments, fingers moving before I think. My exhaustion feels like an inhabitant sitting behind my ribs. It doesn’t slow me down, though, maybe because Damian is this close.
Our shoulders almost brush every time one of us shifts. He keeps his voice low when he speaks to the room, but there’s a tension beneath it.
“We’re missing the origin. The leak didn’t come from the council,” he says. His eyes flick over the screen Kiro is projecting. “Whoever planted it is inside our perimeter.”
Inside our home, he means, inside the walls that were supposed to be safe.
I search the metadata again, the strings of numbers swimming like constellations. My eyes almost slip over it, but I catch it at the last second. A ghost of movement.
“I’ve got it,” I murmur.
Damian turns. Having his full-blown attention shouldn’t affect me, but it does.
“What did you find?” he asks neutrally, soft around the edges, sharp at the core. His voice slides under my skin like a memory I’m not supposed to keep.
I zoom in on the signal clusters.
“A transmitter hidden in the estate’s private network. It’s been injecting packet fragments into our outgoing traffic for weeks. Masked as bleed-over from the security vault’s internal subchannel.”
“Internal,” Damian echoes, jaw tightening. “Meaning it had to be placed physically.”
Kiro curses under his breath.
“Sneaky as fuck. This is professional-level penetration.”
I already know what Damian is thinking. The same thought that lodges in my chest like a buried blade.
Who would dare do this here? Who was invited inside long enough to plant something like this? Who else had access apart from me and Damian?
He steps closer to examine the heat-map overlay on my screen. The faint warmth of him grazes the side of my arm, making my pulse jump.
His gaze locks on the routing line. “Where does the signal terminate?”
I swallow drily. “Moscow. Downtown business sector. Corporate tower owned by—”
I already know the name, but saying it out loud tastes like betrayal and acid.
Damian’s jaw flexes. He finishes the sentence for me.
“—Inessa’s parent company.”
The silence that follows is too heavy for the room. He stares at the map, expression unreadable. But there’s a ripple of pain, fury, disbelief—or all three, tightly compressed behind his eyes.
He whispers, “She played us.”
Us or you, Damian? That stupid fucking photograph appears behind my eyes again, and my gut boils with an ugly emotion—either satisfaction or jealousy. I’ve given up on figuring out which it is.
“We need solid proof,” Kiro adds.
“We have the transmitter,” I say. “We trace the originating packet… we know who activated it. And when.”
Kiro taps a few keys. “Routing path is clean. Looks like the signal identifies—wait—fuck.”
And, on the screen, a distinct pattern of handshake pings. There’s no mistaking it.
Damian whispers her name out loud the same time I think it.
“Inessa.”
Bingo.
Damian steps back from the screen, eyes darkened to something dangerous.
Kiro’s voice breaks the quiet. “So what now? Should we contact Mikhail about—”
“No,” Damian interrupts. “Not yet. If Anton is using her as a channel, she won’t reveal herself under pressure. She will under arrogance.”
“I’ll confront her,” I volunteer.
Damian’s head snaps toward me. The reaction is immediate, instinctual, and sharp enough to slice the air.
“No.”
His voice is low and final. I can sense the fear woven through the order. “You’re not going anywhere near her.”
I straighten, keeping my tone steady.
“She won’t suspect me. It’s cleaner if I go alone.”
“No,” he repeats. Those jade orbs flash at me, halfway between command and panic.
I’m not a soldier, nor am I his prisoner anymore. He’s losing it if he thinks I’ll listen to him.
“One woman’s challenge draws less attention than your entire security team showing up at her office.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Then what is?” The words slip out harder than I intend.
The silence that ensues is loaded. His jaw ticks once. When he finally speaks, the words feel scraped out of him.
“Control isn’t the same thing as protection, Harper.”
I step close, the static between us crackling.
“I know,” I say softly. “That’s why I’m telling you I need to do this. Not because I want to. Because we need to know what she is, and what Anton is doing through her.”
He searches my face. Something unspoken passes between us, heavy with everything we haven’t said for weeks, months—maybe from the very beginning.
He looks away first and victory settles in my gut.
“Fine. But Kiro’s team follows you.”
The café where Inessa and I decide to meet is situated high above the city, the windows stretch from floor to ceiling, reflecting the skyline in fractured shards. It was some bullshit reasoning about “clearing the air” regarding Damian.
As if I would ever fucking do that.
Every table looks staged for a magazine cover. The air smells like vanilla bean and imported citrus. Soft jazz curls through the space like smoke.
I sit near the window, the sunlight drawing long, sharp shadows across the marble floor. My heart beats too quickly and my palms are cold.
You asked for this, Harper; now there’s no going back.
Across the earpiece, Kiro murmurs, “Target incoming. Black sedan. Flanked by two.”
Of course she wouldn’t come alone.
Inessa enters the café with that same perfect posture, perfect hair, perfect indifference. Confidence coats her like lacquer. Her eyes land on me, and a smile blooms slow and warm and lethal.
“Harper,” she says, gliding toward my table. “I’m so glad you agreed to meet. I thought it was time we… cleared misunderstandings.”
The word misunderstandings tastes like poison on her tongue. I stand, because I won’t give her the satisfaction of looking down at me.
“Inessa.”
She sits without asking permission, crossing her legs with elegant precision. She looks at me like a jeweler examining a gemstone for cracks.
“Damian must be relieved you’re handling this,” she says lightly. “You always were… diligent.”
The implication threads through her tone like a hidden wire. I keep my voice level.
“I didn’t come here for small talk.”
“Of course not.” Her eyes gleam. “You never do.”
I slide a small device onto the table. It’s a routing map, marked with her signature.
Her smile widens, and she has the gall to not even plead her case. No surprise in those beady eyes of hers.
“So,” she says, folding her hands, “you found it.” She says it all calm and pleased, like this is a game she’s already won. She leans in as she adds, “Anton always said you were bright. Not bright enough, perhaps. But bright.”
She revels in the way my breath stutters, even if it’s momentary.
“Inessa,” I say carefully, “this is espionage. Treason. You understand what this means.”
“What it means,” she says with a slow, almost affectionate tone, “is that Anton keeps his promises. Power, Harper. Real power. Not whatever scraps come with being someone’s strategic wife.”
Her smile sharpens.
“You think love protects you? Love is the most efficient leash ever invented.”
My hands go cold.
She tilts her head. “He’ll break Damian. And you, if you stay in his way. But you are clever. You can still choose the winning side.”
I inhale, steady, controlled. In my ear, there’s a soft, urgent whisper from Kiro.
“Harper. Move. Now. We have incoming on all sides—Anton’s men.”
I freeze. She sits back, serene, almost radiant.
She knew. The fucking bitch, of course she knew I wouldn’t come here to talk about Damian.
The tracker in my pocket vibrates in warning pulses.
“Kiro?” I whisper.
“Two minutes. Maybe less.”
Inessa rises with ballroom grace. She brushes a fingertip across the polished table… and I see it only when she steps back:
Words etched into the wood, razor-thin but unmistakable.
Endings are for the na?ve.
My blood chills. Glass shatters somewhere in the distance, Kiro’s voice snapping like a wire tearing loose. “Go! Harper, go—now!”
Glass shatters and people drop. Tables overturn as if the floor itself tilts sideways. A bullet carves through the air above me, a clean metallic hiss that passes so close I feel it kiss the edge of my hair.
I dart away from the table, Kiro’s voice is in my ear, sharp and unfiltered.
“Left corridor—go, go, go!”
My boots skid against the marble. My pulse is a drumbeat in my ear, louder than the alarms piercing through. Smoke thickens the air as the world shrinks to a tunnel of motion and instinct.
When I look back at the table, Inessa is gone. She vanished as easily as a shadow stepping into a deeper shadow.
I shove past a falling light fixture and sprint toward the corridor. A man in Anton’s colors steps out from behind a column, raising a weapon.
My blood freezes—he’s too close, I won’t make it.
A flash of movement to my right—and a body slams into him with brutal precision.
Kiro.
He tackles the man to the floor, disarming him in a single twist of his wrist. Blood spatters across the wall like a red punctuation mark. Kiro shouts at me without looking back.
“Harper! Move!”
I don’t need to be told twice.
Another gunshot ricochets off the ceiling. A chandelier crashes like shattered ice. I slide across the floor, ducking behind an overturned marble counter. Footsteps pound behind me—heavy, coordinated, hunting.
My tracker buzzes again.
“Ten seconds to extraction,” Kiro says in my ear. “Can you make it to the side entrance?”
“I’m trying,” I rasp.
There’s no breath left in my lungs, no time to feel the shaking in my hands. No time to think about anything but Damian.
He’s coming. I know it. I feel it.
The corridor narrows. The emergency lights flicker red, casting the hallway in a pulse that mirrors my heartbeat. A shadow lunges from the left—another attacker. I throw myself sideways, feeling the swipe of his arm skim my shoulder.
A loud crack splits the air.
The man drops.
Damian.
His presence fills the hallway before I can fully see him. The outline of his shoulders, the deliberate steadiness of his stride, the way the smoke coils around him.
His eyes lock on mine.
“Harper,” he breathes, raw and visceral.
“I’m fine,” I lie, chest burning.
He doesn’t waste time correcting me. His hand finds my wrist, grasping it firmly.
“Stay behind me,” he says.
We run, the corridor shaking with gunfire behind us. Two of Kiro’s men appear at the far end, waving us forward. The glass door to the stairwell explodes inward just as we reach it. Damian yanks me behind cover, his arm braced across my back, shielding me from the shrapnel.
With my face against his shoulder, his heartbeat is a thunder I can feel under my cheek.
We break apart only when Kiro shouts, “We have to go! Now!”
Moscow’s cold air slams into me as we burst out of the café. The entire block is in chaos—sirens, smoke, pedestrians scattering like startled birds. A van screeches up beside us, back doors flinging open.
Damian all but pushes me inside. The van speeds forward before he even closes the door.
I collapse onto the seat, lungs clawing for air. Kiro checks me for injuries.
“You good?” he asks.
I nod. It’s the weakest lie I’ve told all day.
Damian sits across from me. He’s not touching, not speaking to me, but every line of his body radiates a fury that isn’t aimed at me. The van’s hum fills the silence.
Damian stares at the floor for a long moment. His hands flex once. Twice. Then he lifts his head, eyes locked on to me with a force that steals the breath I fought so hard to keep.
“You shouldn’t have gone alone,” he says quietly, fear wearing the mask of authority.
“I had to,” I say.
He shakes his head once, sharply. “She could have killed you.”
“She almost did.”
He flinches slightly.
“And if you hadn’t come when you did,” I add, voice softer, unsteady, “I wouldn’t be here.”
The van turns. Streetlights streak across Damian’s face, carving light and shadow across his expression.
Kiro updates the team, radio chatter filling the front seats, but the air between Damian and me is its own sealed chamber.
Finally, Damian exhales.
“Harper,” he murmurs. “I will always come for you.”
I feel something inside me tip, like a balance shifting under its own weight.
The van cuts through traffic, heading back toward the estate. Behind us, the city blurs. Ahead of us, uncertainty tightens like a noose. Anton is no longer a distant monster. Inessa is no longer a whisper.
The extraction team disperses when we reach the estate gates. I step out of the van, the cold air stinging my cheeks, grounding me. Damian climbs out after me. The space between us crackles like a live wire.
Avoidance has never felt so much like gravity.
He opens his mouth—maybe to scold me again, maybe to thank me, maybe to say something entirely different.
“Not tonight,” I whisper.
His breath catches as he steps close enough to send heat spiraling through me.
“Harper,” he says again, lower this time.
A plea. A warning. A confession.
I don’t answer. Something in me will break open if I do.
I walk inside and he follows.