Chapter 5
FIVE
Mateo
The apartment smelled of peppermint, graphite, and stale panic.
I stood by the door, my back against the reinforced wood, watching Rowan Quill dismantle her life. She moved with a jagged, frantic efficiency that was painful to watch. She wasn't packing; she was liquidating.
Suitcase open on the bed. Hard shell. Expensive but scuffed. It was the luggage of someone who lived in airports, not vacation resorts.
"You don't need the three-hole punch," I said. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet room.
Rowan didn't look up. She was vibrating again. Not visible tremors, but that high-frequency internal hum I could almost hear if I stood close enough. It was the sound of a nervous system redlining.
"It’s a heavy-duty Swingline, Mateo," she snapped, wrapping the cord of a scanner around her hand like a tourniquet. "Do you know how hard it is to find a punch that doesn't jam on cardstock? I’m taking it."
"We have office supplies," I told her. "Juno has a procurement budget that could buy a small island nation. We can buy you a stapler."
"I don't want a new stapler," she hissed, shoving a stack of color-coded binders next to a pair of sensible heels. "I want my stapler. I want my friction. My variables."
She grabbed a ceramic mug full of pens. She dumped them into a side pocket.
I checked my watch. We had been here eleven minutes. The window for a "quick extraction" was closing rapidly. Juno was circling the block in the armored sedan, monitoring the comms, but static targets were dead targets.
"Clothes," I instructed. "Pack clothes, Quill. Prioritize warmth and mobility." Juno had given her some clean clothes, thankfully, and we could get her more, but I was sure she'd be happier if she had her own things.
"I am prioritizing my sanity," she countered, grabbing a framed degree off the wall. She looked at it for a second, First Class Honours, Law, and then smashed the glass against the corner of the dresser to extract the paper. "Paper is warm. Paper is mobile."
She was terrified.
That was the data point flashing behind her aggression.
She was packing the office supplies because they were the only things in her life that she could control.
The world outside was hunting her, stripping her name and her face off the internet, turning her into a pariah.
But in this room, with her binders and her pens, she was still the manager.
I pushed off the doorframe. The floorboards creaked under my weight.
I walked to the window. I didn't open the blinds; I just angled one slat down with my thumb.
Islington was grey and wet. A delivery van idled three doors down. A woman pushed a stroller. A man in a utility vest was working on a junction box across the street.
My eyes narrowed.
The man in the vest wasn't working. His hands were too still. He was holding a device, angled slightly toward us. A long-range directional mic? Or a telephoto lens hidden in a tool bag?
He shifted his weight. The vest pulled tight. No utility belt. Just a shoulder holster shape printing against the cheap fabric.
Probably a freelancer hired by Vance’s security firm to sit on the address and wait for the rat to come back to the nest.
He tilted the device. I saw the glint. Lens. He was recording the window. He was recording the silhouette of Rowan moving frantically back and forth.
"We have eyes," I said quietly.
Rowan froze, a silk blouse half-folded in her hands. "What?"
"Across the street. Utility worker. He’s tagging the location."
She dropped the shirt. Her scent spiked, sharp, acrid fear cutting through the peppermint. She moved toward the window, her instinct to look, to analyze.
"Stay away from the glass," I barked.
She flinched but stopped. "Is it police?"
"Private," I said. I let the blind snap back. "He’s logging us. If he uploads a location tag to the Vance server, we’ll have a heavy extraction team here in ten minutes."
"Okay," Rowan breathed. She looked pale, her eyes darting around the room. "Okay. I have an exit strategy. We use the service corridor. I have a key to the refuse chute room, it leads to the alley behind the—"
I wasn't listening to the exit strategy. I was calculating the intercept.
If we ran out the back, he’d see the movement. He’d follow. He’d log the vehicle. The trail would be fresh, and we’d be burning fuel trying to shake a tail through London traffic.
Disruption was cleaner.
I unlocked the deadbolt on the front door.
"Mateo?" Rowan’s voice pitch shifted up. "Where are you going?"
"To blind him," I said.
"No!" She rushed forward, grabbing my arm. Her fingers dug into the leather of my jacket, surprisingly strong. "We don't engage. We need to evade. If you go out there, you escalate the threat level. You make it a scene."
"He’s already made it a scene," I said, looking down at her. She barely reached my chest. She looked small, fierce, and completely out of her depth. "He has footage of you in the window. That footage doesn't leave the street."
"We can outrun the upload!"
"I don't run," I said.
I gently, firmly removed her hand from my arm.
"Stay here. Lock the door behind me. Do not open it for anyone but me."
"Mateo, wait—"
I stepped out. I pulled the door shut. I listened for the click of the lock.
She didn't lock it. Of course she didn't. She was standing there, staring at the wood, calculating the liability.
I didn't run. Running attracted attention. I walked with purpose, heavy, rhythmic steps that let the anger build in my chest. Not hot anger, that was for amateurs. This was cold. This was fuel.
They had painted a target on her. They had sent this cheap, rental-cop thug to film her in her own home, to catalog her fear like it was inventory.
I hit the street. The air was damp, smelling of diesel and rain.
I didn't look at the van. I didn't look at the woman with the stroller. I looked straight at the man in the vest.
He saw me coming. He froze. He knew what I was. You don't get to be my size, with my scar, without signaling a specific kind of violence. An Alpha recognizes a predator.
He fumbled with the device in his hands, a DSLR camera with a heavy zoom lens. He tried to shove it into his bag. He tried to turn away, to play the innocent workman.
Too late.
I crossed the street. I didn't check for traffic. A cab honked; I ignored it.
"Hey!" the man shouted as I stepped onto the curb, trying to bluster his way through the fear. "Back off, mate. I'm working here. Official council busi—"
I didn't speak. I reached out and grabbed the front of his vest.
I slammed him into the brick wall of the townhouses. The air left his lungs in a wet whoosh. The camera dangled from his neck by its strap, banging against his chest.
"You're not council," I rumbled. My voice was low, a vibration that traveled through his sternum. "And you're not working anymore."
"Assault!" he choked out, scrabbling at my hand. "I've got rights! I'll call the—"
I grabbed the camera. I ripped it off his neck. The strap snapped.
I held it up. A fancy camera, even I could see that. Good glass. Expensive.
"Nice kit," I said.
I opened my hand and let it drop.
It hit the pavement. Crunch. The sound of precision optics shattering was satisfyingly final. I brought my heel down on the body, crushing the housing, grinding the electronics into plastic dust.
The scout stared at the wreckage, his eyes wide. "You crazy bastard. That’s property damage. That’s—"
"The card," I demanded. I held out my hand.
"It's digital! It uploads to the cloud automatically, you dinosaur! You can't just—"
I stepped in closer. I let my scent roll over him, cedar, wet asphalt, and the sharp, terrifying spike of pure dominance. I leaned down until my scar was inches from his sweating face.
"It doesn't upload automatically," I said softly. "The signal here is weak. You were waiting for a batch transfer. Where is the backup card?"
He trembled. He reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small black SD card case.
I took it. I crushed it in my fist. The plastic splintered, digging into my palm. I didn't feel it.
"Go back to Vance," I said.
I smoothed the front of his vest, a mockery of politeness.
"Tell him the asset is secure. Tell him the perimeter is closed. And tell him if he sends another scout to her family's house... I won't just break the camera."
I stared into his eyes until he looked away, baring his neck in submission.
"Go."
He ran. He didn't pick up his tools. He sprinted down the street, stumbling, looking back once before vanishing around the corner.
I looked at the smashed camera on the sidewalk. I kicked the pieces into the gutter.
I turned back to the apartment building.
Rowan was in the window. The blinds were open. She was watching me. Her face was pale, tight with fury.
I let out a breath, forcing the anger back into the cage. The violence lingered under my skin, a low hum of electricity. It felt good. It felt clean.
I walked back up the stairs.
The door was unlocked.
I pushed it open. Rowan was standing exactly where I’d left her, next to the open suitcase. She looked like a statue carved out of ice and indignation.
"You broke the camera," she said. Her voice was flat.
"I neutralized the surveillance."
I walked past her, checking the room. "Is the bag packed?"
"You assaulted a man on a public street at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday." She turned to face me. "There were witnesses, Mateo. The woman with the stroller. The cab driver."
"They didn't see anything," I said, closing the blinds again. "Just a dispute. Londoners don't get involved."
"I saw it," she snapped.
I stopped. I looked at her.
She was hugging herself, her arms wrapped tight around the silk blouse she was wearing. She wasn't scared of the scout anymore. She was scared of me. Or rather, she was scared of what I represented.
"He was recording you," I said gently. "He had your face in the lens. I couldn't let him keep it."