Chapter 16
I was expecting another crisis call when Willa knocked on my office door that afternoon. Another client pulled their contract, another business relationship turned to ash, another piece of the empire I built crumbling under the weight of coordinated sabotage.
Instead, I looked up to find her standing in my doorway with an expression I had never seen before. Determined. Resolved. Almost fierce in a way that reminded me of the girl who once stood up to bullies twice her size when they picked on smaller kids in foster care.
“We need to talk,” she said, closing the door behind her.
“If this is about the other night—”
“It’s not.” She walked to my desk with purpose, her hands steady despite the gravity of whatever she was about to tell me. “It’s about Dex.”
My blood turned cold. “What about him?”
“He called me today. At the office.”
I was on my feet before she finished the sentence, my chair rolling back to hit the window behind me. “He what? How did he get this number? How did he know where—”
“Kieran.” Her voice was calm, controlled, and somehow that was more terrifying than if she were panicking. “I need you to listen to me. All of it.”
She told me everything then. The phone call, the threats, the forty-eight-hour ultimatum that had already been counting down for six hours.
But more than that, she told me about Dex’s admission—that he had been behind the systematic destruction of Cross Security, that he had found people with grudges to help him, that every crisis of the past week had been orchestrated to force exactly this moment.
“He’s been planning this for weeks,” she said, her voice steady despite the magnitude of what she was revealing.
“Maybe longer. He knew about the merger, about our clients—about everything that mattered to you. And he’s been systematically destroying it to get to me.
It almost feels like he had help . . . someone feeding him information he shouldn’t have access to. ”
I felt something cold and violent unfurl in my chest. Not just anger, but something deeper, a protective rage I had never experienced before. “Son of a bitch.”
“There’s more. He has client information. Real information. Federal judges, corporate executives, people whose lives could be destroyed if their security details end up in the wrong hands.”
“We’ll contact law enforcement. The FBI, if necessary. This is domestic terrorism.”
“And how long will that take? How many people will get hurt while we’re building a case?” She leaned forward, her hands flat on my desk. “He’s not bluffing, Kieran. He’s patient now, methodical. This isn’t the drunk, impulsive man who shot me in an alley. This is someone who’s learned to plan.”
I started pacing then, my mind racing through options and finding them all inadequate. “We’ll trace the call. Find where he’s hiding. My team can—”
“Your team has been compromised. Someone on the inside has been feeding him information for weeks.”
“I know. We found the breach days ago. It was Sarah’s login.”
Of course. This level of coordination, this intimate knowledge of our systems and clients—it could only come from someone with access. Someone I trusted.
“Who?” I asked, though part of me already suspected.
“It’s the only way—”
“It’s not the way at all. It’s surrender. It’s letting a terrorist win because he’s threatening innocent people.”
“I don’t know. But Kieran, that’s not the important part right now. The important part is that he’s offering a trade.”
“What kind of trade?”
“Me for everything else. I go back to him, and he makes all of this disappear. The merger goes through, your clients stay safe, Cross Security survives.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Those innocent people are your responsibility. Your clients trusted you to protect them, and now their lives are in danger because of me.”
“Their lives are in danger because of him. Because he’s a psychopath who can’t accept that you left.”
“But I did leave. And he’s right about one thing—people are going to get hurt because of that choice.”
I moved around my desk then, needing to be closer to her, needing to make her understand. “People get hurt when they negotiate with terrorists, too. You think he’ll just disappear after this? You think he’ll honor whatever deal you make?”
“I think he’ll get what he wants. Me. And once he has that, he won’t need to hurt anyone else.”
“Until the next time you try to leave. Until the next time he needs leverage. This doesn’t end, Willa. Men like him don’t just win once and walk away.”
She looked up at me then, and I saw something in her eyes that terrified me more than all of Dex’s threats combined. Acceptance. Resolution. The look of someone who’d already made up her mind.
“Maybe not,” she said quietly. “But at least other people won’t pay the price for my choices.”
“Your choices?” I felt my voice rising. “You didn’t choose any of this. You didn’t choose to be abused. You didn’t choose to be hunted. You didn’t choose to have your life used as a weapon against innocent people.”
“But I did choose to leave. I chose to come here, to let you save me, to put you and your business and your clients in the crosshairs of a madman.”
“And I chose to save you. I chose to bring you into my life. If anyone’s responsible for this situation, it’s me.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s exactly that.” I pulled her to her feet, my hands on her shoulders, needing her to see the truth. “I knew he was dangerous. I knew he’d try to find you. I should have prepared better and should have anticipated this. The failure is mine, not yours.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It only matters how we fix it.”
“We don’t fix it by feeding you to the monster. We fix it by fighting back.”
For the first time since she entered my office, she looked uncertain. “How?”
“We set a trap. We use the fact that he wants you to draw him out. We coordinate with law enforcement, we gather evidence, and we end this permanently.”
“And if people get hurt while we’re setting your trap?”
“Then we live with that. Because the alternative is worse.”
“How is saving innocent lives worse than—”
“Because you’re not just saving lives. You’re teaching him that violence works. That threatening people you care about is an effective way to control you. You’re guaranteeing that he’ll use the same tactics again and again until one day you’re dead and he’s moved on to terrorizing someone else.”
She was quiet for a long moment, processing what I said. When she finally spoke, her voice was small but steady.
“What if your plan doesn’t work? What if he figures out it’s a trap and people die anyway?”
“Then at least they die because we fought back instead of because we surrendered.”
“And what if I die?”
The question hit me like a punch to the solar plexus. I stared at her for a long moment, seeing not just the woman she’d become but the girl she was—brave and stubborn and willing to sacrifice herself for anyone she loved.
“Then I’ve failed at the one thing that mattered most.” I took her hands, needing her to hear the truth instead of empty promises.
“But Willa, I’ve been doing this for years.
I know how to minimize risk. The FBI will have snipers positioned, body armor on you, agents in every corner of that warehouse. ”
“That’s not a guarantee.”
“No. It’s not.” I squeezed her hands. “But the alternative is letting him control the rest of your life. And I’ve seen what that looks like—it’s a slower kind of dying.”
Her eyes searched mine. “You’re really not afraid?”
Something shifted in her expression then. The resignation faded, replaced by something that looked almost like hope.
She stepped closer then, close enough that I could smell her shampoo, could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. “Even if it means risking everything you’ve built?”
“Everything I’ve built is meaningless if I lose you in the process of protecting it.”
The confession slipped out before I could stop it, too honest and too revealing. But instead of pulling away, she reached up to cup my face, her thumb stroking across my cheek the way I did to her the night I said we were too broken to fix each other.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“So am I.”
“But you’ll help me fight?”
“I’ll help you win.”
She kissed me then, soft and desperate and full of everything we’d been too afraid to say. And this time, when the kiss started to deepen, when I pulled her closer and felt her melt against me, neither of us pulled away.
This time, it felt like a promise instead of a goodbye.
When we finally broke apart, both of us breathing hard, she rested her forehead against mine.
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“We’ll call the FBI. We set up surveillance. We coordinate with local law enforcement. And we give Dex exactly what he thinks he wants.”
“Which is?”
“You. But on our terms, in a place we control, with backup we trust.”
“And then?”
“Then we end this. Permanently.”
She nodded, that fierce determination back in her eyes. “When?”
“Tomorrow night. We’ll arrange the meeting, set the trap, and finish what he started.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
I pulled her closer, needing her to understand that this wasn’t just about tactics and strategy. This was about the future we might never get to have if we didn’t survive the next twenty-four hours.
“Then at least we’ll go down fighting,” I said. “Together.”
For the first time since she entered my office, she smiled. And despite everything—the threats, the danger, the possibility that we might not survive what was coming—I felt something I hadn’t experienced in weeks.
Hope.
Because Willa wasn’t running anymore. She was finally willing to let me fight for her, instead of sacrificing herself to save me.
And that was worth risking everything to protect.