Chapter 15 Nyx #4
I looked at Fielding. Calm. Controlled. I let my face go blank, because blank faces made men nervous. They couldn’t tell whether you were about to cry or about to ruin them.
“Print it,” I said. “Everything attached to this code. Now.”
Fielding hesitated.
Elijah’s voice stayed polite. “Print it.”
There was no anger in it. That was the worst part. Anger would have been human. This was procedure, and procedure killed people quietly.
The printer whirred. Pages slid out warm and damning.
Kairo gathered the pages in one smooth motion, slid them into the plain folder, then photographed the screen too. Paper burned. Servers erased. Pictures traveled.
He leaned a fraction closer to the terminal, as if he was just curious, as if he wasn’t stealing evidence in the open. His shoulder briefly blocked the camera angle above the monitor, and I realized he had clocked it from the moment we walked in.
That kind of competence was its own kind of toxicity. He could act playful all day, but he was still a predator. He just wore it.
“Log out,” Elijah told Fielding.
Fielding hesitated again.
Elijah leaned in just enough for the threat to exist without being shouted. “Log out.”
Fielding did it. The window vanished. The calendar disappeared. The clinic tried to look innocent again.
Elijah’s gaze flicked to me. “You got what you needed.”
“I got the first thread,” I said. “Now we pull until the whole thing comes apart.”
Kairo’s eyes stayed on the door. “We leave clean,” he said. “No sprinting. No noise. We walk out.”
Beneath us. The words hit something in my chest, not comfort, not safety, but a bitter satisfaction. I didn’t enjoy needing them.
We did exactly what he said. We walked out of that records room. We passed the front desk with Fielding’s smile still pretending, and we left giving no one the satisfaction of watching us hurry.
Outside, the cold slapped my face and cleared my head. My heat didn’t back down. It climbed a little higher, stubborn and insistent, and I refused to let it make me smaller.
Inside the SUV, the heater clicked on low, and the sudden warmth made my skin prickle. I kept my coat on. I kept the window cracked just enough to remind my lungs there was an exit.
Kairo pulled out of the lot smooth and unhurried. His knuckles were white on the wheel, but his voice stayed light.
Elijah sat in the passenger seat and turned slightly toward me, not close enough to crowd, but enough that I knew his attention was on me even when he pretended to watch the road.
I unfolded the printed route until the lines turned into a map. A timestamp sat beside the next transfer block.
Tomorrow. Pickup window.
“This isn’t just history,” I said. “It’s scheduled again.”
Elijah’s jaw set. “Where?”
I tapped the next site listed under the same code. The letters blurred for a second, and I blinked hard, refusing to let my body cry now. Crying would make the bond swell, and I was not feeding Elijah my pain.
“Gary,” I said. “And after that, Detroit.”
Kairo’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Then we’re not done today.”
“No,” I agreed, voice steady. “We’re just late.”
Silence filled the SUV. Not the awkward kind. The kind that meant both men were already calculating what violence would be required to stop this and which rules they would break to do it.
Elijah reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a slim glasses case. He opened it with quiet precision, then slid on reading glasses that made him look even more dangerous because they made him look normal.
He took the pages from me without touching my hands. He didn’t ask. He also didn’t yank. It was a controlled taking, and the distinction made my throat tighten with a reaction I didn’t want.
“Let me,” he said, voice low.
Not a request. Not an order either.
He scanned the route, eyes moving fast behind the lenses. The glasses should have softened him. They didn’t.
“This code,” he said, tapping the paper with a clean nail. “It’s consistent across sites. That suggests central authorization, not local improvisation.”
Kairo glanced in the mirror. “Meaning somebody above Fielding.”
Elijah didn’t look up. “Meaning somebody inside Meridian.”
The words landed in my gut. I stared at the route and thought of all the ways systems hid monsters behind logos.
Outside, the clinic kept smiling and calling itself care. Inside my lap, the machine finally showed its teeth.
And I was done pretending mine didn’t exist too.
Kairo’s voice cut through the silence, smooth. “You did good in there,” he said.
My eyes narrowed. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” he asked, still light.
“Make it sound like I’m a kid who needs a sticker,” I said.
Kairo’s laugh was quiet and brief, but it had genuine warmth in it. “Nah,” he said. “I’m sayin’ you got steel. Fielding was staring at you like he expected you to fold, and you didn’t.”
Compliments from men were still controlled.
They were still a way of getting you to accept their attention.
I knew that, and my body still warmed anyway, because being called powerful hit the part of me that had spent years holding Tatum together with two steady hands and a calm face. Strong meant capable.
Strong meant I did not crack. Strong meant I could keep her safe. I did not give him the satisfaction of seeing it land, though. My expression stayed blank, my voice stayed even, and I let the warmth burn quietly where only I had to feel it.
Elijah’s gaze flicked to the mirror, then back to the paper. “Kairo,” he said, warning threaded into one syllable.
Kairo’s grin faded a fraction. “I know,” he said, quieter. “We keep her steady. My bad.”
My bad. The casualness of it made my chest ache in a way I didn’t understand. These men didn’t apologize because they felt guilty. They apologized because they wanted you to keep letting them close.
It was still dangerous. It was just packaged nicer.
My heat pulsed again, low and insistent. I clenched my thighs and forced my face to stay neutral. The last thing I needed was my body broadcasting need.
Elijah’s voice stayed calm. “Your suppressant schedule needs to be addressed today,” he said, eyes still on the pages. “Not because of the men. Because your body will sabotage you if you let it.”
“That sounds like a threat,” I said.
“It is a fact,” Elijah replied, and he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger. “Facts do not care about pride.”
I hated that it was hot. I hated that my brain caught on the finger, the glasses, the calm certainty, and tried to translate it into safety.
Kairo made a sound under his breath. “Hot nerd really is your type, huh,” he muttered.
“Elijah,” I said, warning in my voice, because I wasn’t letting Kairo make this cute.
Elijah didn’t look back. “Ignore him,” he said. “He performs. It is a defense mechanism.”
“Damn,” Kairo said, offended and amused at the same time. “You read me like a book, bro.”
“I read a paper,” Elijah replied. “People are messy.”
The line hit too close. People were messy. That was the entire problem. My sister was missing because people decided her life was paperwork.
I stared out the window at Chicago passing by in gray slices. My hands shook once. I made them still and went back to the map.
Tomorrow. Pickup window.
If the schedule held, someone was going to be moved again. Someone was going to disappear the way Tatum disappeared, swallowed by a system that pretended it was saving her.
I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart.
“I want the staff rotation list for Gary,” I said. “And I want the transport contractor names.”
Elijah nodded, already moving. “We can get it through internal access,” he said. “But it will ping the system. If someone is watching, they’ll feel it.”
Kairo’s voice went flat. The playful layer disappeared completely. “Then we don’t ping it,” he said. “We pull it another way.”
“Elaborate,” Elijah said.
Kairo glanced at me in the mirror, and the look was quick. “We take the phone,” he said.
I blinked. “Whose phone?”
Kairo shrugged. “Fielding’s,” he said. “Or whoever signed that transfer authorization. One good grab, quick and clean. We lift it, clone what we need, put it back. Nobody knows.”
My stomach twisted. Not because I was shocked. Because my mind immediately started calculating how to do it without getting caught.
That was the darkest part of all this. I was adapting too.
Elijah’s voice stayed calm, but there was steel under it. “Not without clearance from Malachi,” he said.
Kairo scoffed. “Malachi wants results.”
“Malachi wants control,” Elijah corrected. “There is a difference.”
My body reacted to Malachi’s name again, that humiliating tug in my chest. Malachi hadn’t touched me like Jabari. He hadn’t apologized like Elijah. He had just decided where I belonged in the machine.
I hated that too.
“Call him,” I said again. “And understand something,” I added, keeping my voice level. “You do not get to touch me because you’re useful. You do not get to decide closeness because you want it.”
Kairo’s eyes flicked to me in the mirror. Elijah went still.
“If you want me,” I said, “you court me. Properly. Patiently. Only as far as I allow.””
Elijah’s gaze flicked back to me, measuring. Then he nodded once.
He pulled out his phone, glasses still on, and made the call. He didn’t turn away. He didn’t shield the screen. He kept the conversation in my view.
“Nyx has a route,” he said. “Tomorrow pickup window. Gary transfer to Detroit. We need staff rotations and transport contractor names without pinging the system.”
A pause. I couldn’t hear Malachi, but I could imagine the tone. Calm. Certain. The voice that made men obey and made women want to. That was the danger of him. He didn’t have to touch you to make you move.
Elijah’s jaw tightened slightly. “Understood,” he said. “Kairo suggested a phone grab.”
Another pause. Elijah’s gaze stayed on me.
“Yes, sir,” he said again. “We will proceed within parameters.”
He ended the call and slid the phone away.
“What did he say?” I asked.
Elijah’s mouth went flat. “He said we get the information,” he replied. “He said we do it clean. He said you do not leave our sight.”
My stomach tightened. There it was again. Protection that wasn’t optional.
“Is that for me,” I asked, “or is that for his control?”
Elijah’s eyes met mine through the rearview angle, calm behind the lenses. “Both,” he said. “That is how men operate. He will keep you alive, and he will keep you owned, and he will tell himself those are the same thing.”
Kairo’s mouth curled. “He ain’t wrong,” he breathed.
The SUV rolled through the city. I stared at the papers in my lap and thought about tomorrow. I thought about Gary. I thought about Detroit.
I thought about Tatum.
And I thought about the fact that I was sitting in a car with two dangerous men, one who apologized. Both of them were trying, in their own toxic ways, to keep me functional.
I didn’t trust either of them. I also knew I needed them.
That was the truth dark romance lived in. Need that tasted like danger. Love that would come with teeth.
My heat pulsed again, and this time I didn’t fight it as hard. I just acknowledged it, the way you acknowledged weather.
“Next stop,” I said, voice steady. “Where can we get suppressant without walking into a trap?”
Elijah adjusted his glasses again. “Meridian has reserves,” he said. “But you won’t go back inside the nest.”
“No,” I said.
Kairo’s voice softened a fraction. “There’s a pharmacy across from the Gary clinic,” he said. “Independent. Owner don’t ask questions if you pay cash.”
Elijah’s gaze sharpened. “How do you know that.”
“I know the city,” he said. “And I know where folks go when they don’t want Meridian sniffin’ around their records.”
I studied him through the mirror. He caught my gaze and smiled, quick and bright, but there was something darker under it.
That was his toxicity. He wanted to be the one you leaned on. He wanted to be the one you laughed with so you’d forget the teeth.
Elijah’s toxicity was quieter. He wanted to be the one who managed you into safety, who used rules and facts to make your world smaller until you stopped noticing the cage.
Malachi’s toxicity was the unseen hand. The one that decided where you belonged.
Jabari’s toxicity was already burned into my throat. Violence with manners. Possession that hurt on purpose.
I exhaled slowly. I folded the papers and held them tight.
“Then we go,” I said.
Kairo nodded. “Bet,” he murmured, and the SUV turned, tires crunching over slush as we headed toward the next piece of the map.
Outside, Chicago kept moving. Inside, my life narrowed down to routes and timestamps and men who wanted me in their orbit.
Tomorrow was coming whether or not I was ready.
It meant following the route far enough to prove it was real, pulling on the thread until the system showed its shape.
It meant staying ahead of the people who would rather I stop asking questions.
I wasn’t here to be protected or managed.
I was here to finish what I started and bring my sister back, even if it meant using every dangerous connection I had to get there.