Chapter 8
Killian
Something changed while I was on the supply run. She’s watching me differently — not the calculating stare I’m used to, the one where she’s trying to stay three steps ahead. This is something quieter. More certain. Like she’s already figured something out and she’s deciding when to show her hand.
She didn’t try to escape. The alarm didn’t trip, the code wasn’t entered. She stayed because she wanted to, which I already knew, but today her stillness has teeth.
She knows something.
“You’re staring.”
“You’re interesting to watch.”
“Interesting how?”
“You move like someone who expects a war at any moment. You haven’t slept since we got here. And every ninety seconds you scan the room.” She tilts her head. “You don’t even know you’re doing it.”
She’s studying me the same way I study targets. It should bother me more than it does.
“You’re doing it wrong.”
I freeze.
She’s already on her feet, crossing the room, stopping three feet away. My hand moves under the desk toward the gun out of habit, not because I think she’s a threat. She is a threat. Just not the kind a gun can fix.
“Doing what wrong?”
“The ransom. The plan. All of it.” She crosses her arms. “I told you I could double the money. I wasn’t guessing. You’re asking for fifty million from a man who spends that on art in a year.”
I stand slowly, using every inch of my height. She doesn’t step back.
“You said you could get me more. I’m listening. But first — what’s changed since yesterday? Because yesterday you were offering. Today you’re commanding.”
Her eyes shift to the voice recorder on my desk. The red light. The one that’s been blinking since four this morning.
“It was still recording when you left. I listened to it.”
My whole body goes still. Not the operational details — she already knows those.
We’re partners. She knows about Silas, the kill order on Malachi, the timeline.
That’s not what’s making my blood run cold.
It’s the other things. The parts I said at four in the morning when she was asleep, the room was empty, and the only audience was a blinking red light.
“How much did you hear?” My voice comes out low.
“All of it.” No apology. Spine straight, chin up. “I know you were ordered to kill me. Not just Malachi — me. Standard witness protocol. No loose ends.”
That. She didn’t know that before. I told her I wouldn’t hurt her. I told her we were partners. I never told her the original contract had her name on a kill order.
“And you’re still here.”
“I’m still here.” She holds my gaze. “Because you said no. You defied a direct order for personal reasons.”
My jaw locks. She’s circling closer to the thing I said quietest. The word I barely let out.
“I heard all of it.” Her voice drops. “Even the parts you said so quietly I had to replay them twice.”
The air shifts. She doesn’t say the word. She doesn’t have to — I can see in her eyes that she heard it, that she’s been sitting on it since I walked back in, turning it over and deciding what it’s worth. Deciding what to do with it.
She doesn’t do anything with it. She lets it exist between us, unnamed, and moves on.
“So. Now that we’re being honest.” She gestures at the desk. “Let me show you why your plan is wrong and mine is better.”
She sits at the desk beside me like she’s co-owner of this operation. At this point, she might be.
“Pull up an encrypted browser.”
I open a VPN-routed browser because apparently, I am taking orders from her now.
“Cayman National Bank dot com, slash offshore portal.”
I type it. Login page.
“Account number: 5583002299337.” From memory, no pause, no uncertainty. “Password: MALACHIV0N32019. He changes it every January.”
The screen loads. Eighty-seven million dollars. In one account.
“Jesus Christ.” I look at her. “How many accounts?”
“Sixteen. Twelve in the Caymans, four in Panama. Around three hundred and fifty million in total. Maybe more — the Panama accounts haven’t been touched in six months.”
I’m watching a twenty-two-year-old woman rattle off thirteen-digit account numbers and complex passwords from memory with the calm of someone reading a grocery list. Six times what I was planning to take. Enough to disappear from Silas. Enough to disappear forever.
“He made me his insurance policy at eighteen,” she says. “Memorized the numbers, the passwords, the protocols. In case anything happened to him.” A dark smile spreads on her lips. “He never imagined I’d turn.”
“Why show me now? You could’ve sat on this. Drained the accounts yourself after he’s dead. Give me only what you offered.”
“Because I can’t do it during the exchange without getting caught.
The FBI is watching. I need the transfers done before the exchange, routed through shells that don’t trace back to either of us.
And I need someone to make sure Malachi doesn’t walk away from the docks alive.
” She looks at me. “I told you I could double it. I wasn’t bluffing. Here’s the proof.”
She lays it out. Malachi transfers the fifty million ransom and Silas gets his cut — standard job, everyone satisfied. But before the exchange, she drains all sixteen offshore accounts remotely, rerouting the funds through shell companies she controls. Untraceable. Fifty-fifty split.
“Silas doesn’t know about the offshore accounts,” I say, seeing it.
“Exactly. He gets the ransom money he expects. You get a hundred and seventy-five million he doesn’t know about. And I get a hundred and seventy-five million and a dead father.” She leans back. “Win-win-win.”
I run the scenario. Check for holes. Run it again. Her plan doesn’t just improve mine — it makes mine look like a rough draft she’s handing back covered in red ink.
She’s not smart. Smart is the wrong word. She’s ruthless, and she’s been building this for years — memorizing numbers, mapping exits, waiting for the right weapon. And I walked straight into her armory.
The silence between us hums. She knows my plan, my employer, and she can guess my crimes. And she’s still sitting in my chair, at my desk, looking at me like I’m exactly where she needs me to be.
She deserves my name. The real one.
“Killian.” I extend my hand. “My name is Killian.”
Her hand takes mine — small, cold, steady. “Killian.” She tests the syllables, and something about the way they sound in her mouth makes my throat tighten. “Just Killian?”
“Craw. As in Silas Craw.” I let it land. “He’s my adoptive father. I stopped using the name when I was twenty.”
Her eyes widen slightly. “Adopted?”
“He found me when I was ten. Turned me into a weapon.” I swallow the bitterness — it’s old, it never gets easier. “I’ve been trying to escape him for twenty years. This was supposed to be my last job before I disappeared. But I didn’t know you’d be…”
I stop. Because the real end of that sentence is her — the girl from Instagram, the gray eyes I’ve been saving screenshots of for months — and that’s a confession I’m not ready to make.
“You didn’t know I’d be what, Killian?”
“Like me. Dangerously broken. Wanting revenge, not rescue.”
Her pupils dilate. “Seven years of wanting him dead. I just needed someone who wouldn’t flinch.”
Our hands are still clasped. Neither of us has let go.
“Partners,” I say. “For real this time. No more holding back.”
“I get you rich. You get me free. We both watch him bleed.” She squeezes once, then releases, and the cold of her hand stays on my skin. “Partners.”
The next hour she walks me through every account. Access codes, security protocols, two-factor workarounds. Years of preparation, meticulous and obsessive, the mirror image of how I build motorcycles. Piece by piece. No margin for error.
Her stomach growls and she pretends it didn’t.
“You need to eat.”
“Only if you tie my hands again.”
She says it and then her face catches up with her mouth — a flash of shock, gone almost instantly, but I saw it. Heat floods my chest and the smirk forms before I can stop it.
I zip-tie her wrists loosely and sit her down. Bread, cheese, fruit. My fingers brush her lips, and she leans in a fraction longer each time, the rhythm we built yesterday settling into something that feels inevitable. Her eyes stay on mine and the electricity between us tightens with every touch.
When I cut the ties after the last bite, my fingers linger on her wrists. Her pulse hammers under my thumb.
“Get some sleep.”
“Killian.” My breath hitches — I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. “Thank you for not killing me.”
Something pulls at my mouth, the scar stretching with it. “Thank you for not being a boring socialite.”
She turns toward the cot. I turn toward the monitors. Neither of us is going to sleep.
I stare at the account balances glowing on the screen.
Three hundred and fifty million dollars, sixteen accounts, every number stored in the head of a woman who was supposed to be a simple extraction target.
She sat at my desk, called my plan amateur, and rebuilt the entire operation in under ten minutes.
I came here to steal her. She stole my plan, improved it, and handed it back with a smile. I don’t know who’s running this job anymore.