Chapter 24
chapter twenty four
thank god for coping mechanisms
“Careful,” I said.
“Careful is boring.” Her voice was all bubbly, that giggle she'd barely contained all night lacing her words.
“Careful is the reason you don’t end up with a face full of marble flooring.”
“You’re no fun.”
“I’m the only reason you still have all your teeth.”
This had been our back and forth since leaving the restaurant thirty minutes ago. Half of which had been spent guiding her up the stairs because the elevators were out of order and she was incredibly drunk.
Made me a little happy, though. A lot happy, actually. Seeing her so carefree.
My arms tightened around her, keeping her level and somewhat coordinated. “Okay, last step. Don’t trip. Please don’t trip.”
A messy, spluttered noise burst out of her mouth, her hand flailing at me. “Me? Trip? I am fully… in control of… my actions, mister.”
I rolled my eyes, not bothering to hide my smile. “You’ve tripped at least eight times since leaving the restaurant.”
“You’re a liar.” She jabbed a finger in my direction, wobbling like the flat floor was the most uneven cobblestone road in the world. “That doesn’t count.”
“Oh, it counts.”
She missed the top step, caught herself on the railing, and gave me a triumphant grin. Like that proved her point.
Before she could faceplant again, my brain kicked into gear, and I crouched, scooped her legs out from under her, and hauled her into my arms.
“WOAH—okay. Okay. That’s—hello. Yep, very high.” She clutched my neck like there was an eight-foot drop and an ocean below her.
“Relax, angel. I’ve got you.”
Her giggles spilt, bright and relentless, until they broke into hiccups halfway up the next flight.
By the third, her head was tucked into my arm like she’d decided I was a perfectly acceptable pillow. “I’m gonna nap right here.”
“Whatever you want.”
“Mhm.” Her voice was muffled against my shirt. “I want sleep." A pause. Then, barely louder than a whisper. “Actu-ally, I want crumpets and the stars. Then sleep."
A snort erupted through my nose. "I'll see what I can do."
Her giggled mingled with a hiccup, rather adorbaly, actually. But every light tone in her voice dissappered when she rose her head from my shoulder, hazy eyes finding me as her pink lips glided open. "Sleep with you.”
I nearly choked on a laugh, eyes catching on everything but hers as my chest rumbled. “Sure, okay. Let’s pencil that into tomorrow’s schedule. Right after I add ‘stop you from ending up in the emergency room’ to today’s.”
And then she hummed, and it was weird how it was a sound that felt nostalgic.
Weird because I’d never fucking heard it before.
But, I don’t know. It felt like comfort.
Sounded like peace. I suppose I’d been craving that just as much as she had.
And it made me feel a little better that she was finding it whilst clinging to my upper body.
I got her door open eventually, striding in and letting it softly slam behind me.
With my free hand I rounded the bed and pulled back the covers.
It was still hot in the room thanks to the weather, so I only left the thin comforter and then slowly placed Cora in the centre.
She nuzzled the pillow almost instantly, groaning with tiredness as her eyes fluttered shut.
I moved down to her feet and unbuckled her heels, placing them on the rack beside the bed, before lifting the comforter back over her body, her hands tugging it under her chin as she turned to face away.
I walked over to the window, and after admiring the city at night, I went to close the drapes.
“No,” her voice stopped me. “Leave ‘em.”
“Are you sure? It’s an east-facing window. The sun will blast you.”
She shrugged under the cover. “I like it when the sun wakes me up.”
I smiled at her as my eyes traced every corner of her face. “Okay.”
Before I could think, I bent down and pressed my lips to her temple before rising slowly. “Sweet dreams.”
And I know what this looks like. Believe me, I do.
I was supposed to keep that box, stuffed with everything I wasn't allowed to feel for her, tucked away in a locked closet.
Never to be touched again. But I dare you to try and not to mutter fuck it in your head when her lips are half an inch from yours.
I dare you to not crumble when she looks at you like your the best thing to walk the earth.
And having that look from someone who used to roll her eyes whenever she heard my name? Knowing she thought I was more than just a shadow who craved he darkness?
It meant everything.
The second her door closed, my priorities shifted. I'd try and tackle my mess of feelings later, but right now the reason why I was in London in the first place hit me square in the chest.
I made it back to my room, settled in the centre of the bed, and pulled out my laptop.
The glow from the screen ate at the darkness, flickering off the glass of untouched whisky on the table.
London buzzed beyond the window. Horns, sirens—the kind of city that never slept.
I hadn’t either. Not for three days. All because of what was happening with Romano.
Someone was inside my system. Slipping through cracks that shouldn’t exist. Watching us. Testing me. And whoever it was… they weren’t just good. They were lethal. And that's exactly what we had to become.
Lines of code blurred as I scanned the intrusion logs again, each keypress sharp and deliberate.
We’d built our network to be impenetrable.
Every firewall, every bypass, every layer had my fingerprints.
But now, it felt like I was chasing a ghost. One that was top rank.
Supreme leader. Had all the fucking medals and knew our patterns, memorised the way we ran things.
I found my way to the system where our files were double and triple protected.
It lit up half my screen, the other with the last general location of where this was happening.
The tools I had with me were useless compared to what we had back at our headquarters, but I hoped and prayed that whatever software Oscar had riddled my laptop with could get us something clearer. Something finite.
I was halfway through figuring out that whatever had been embedded in my motherboard was definitely not legally authorised, and then it happened.
A script pinged my honeypot server, just a light touch, like fingers brushing dust off an old photo.
It was impressive. If I wasn’t watching, we would have slept right through it.
It was like they were tiptoeing through a manor, and I hoped to God he didn’t know where the creaky floorboards sat.
I needed noise. Needed something other than light touches to nail them.
And then, he stepped on a board.
My heart flatlined as they clicked into a decoy folder, one I’d buried deep beneath layers of digital noise. One I hadn’t even told Oscar about. One only he and I knew the meaning of.
My breath caught.
No one knew her name. Not unless they’d known her. Unless they’d known us. Our life before Romano.
My heart thudded once, hard. I shifted closer to the screen, jaw tight.
Then I saw it.
The user-agent string was embedded in the command. A custom configuration I’d written years ago, back when I was the one training. I’d only ever installed it on two field devices. One belonged to Oscar, and the other was… Jamie.
The name felt like a fist when it hit. Depsite what was happening with Cora, Jamie had stayed clear of the company.
Just like we'd expected him to. But he never was a silent one.
Always with an opinion. Always with a statement too smart.
Too cocky. And with this, knowing that this could also be his work? I hated that it made sense.
When it erupted with the media, with Cora, with me, I’d expected anger. I’d expected threats, childish revenge. But not this. Not a surgical, slow-burn thing that smelt less like fury and more like planning.
I swallowed. My throat burning in a way that wasn’t just from the alcohol. The logs on the screen blinked at me, neat rows of time codes and IPs and packet headers. Cold, clean data. The kind that didn’t lie.
Why go to these lengths? And how was he doing it without any of us, even Oscar, catching him until now?
Jamie had always been easy to read. Bold, sloppy, the kind of man whose mistakes were loud.
This wasn’t loud.
It had corridors. It had a map. It was planned without the expectation of us ever catching on.
As soon as that thought made a home in my mind, only then did the word 'scapegoat' shine in big bright lights. It was as though Jamie’s leash had been traded for a heavier chain. Nothing but the bait. And I only knew this because if he wasn’t smart enough to think before doing what he did to Cora, he wasn’t smart enough to pull this off.
I sat back on the bed, hands burrowing into my hair, easing the tension that was building up like a dam ready to burst.
“What if—” I started, but half of me didn't recognise that I'd spoken. My jaw worked. "There's n-no wa-ay."
The stutter was soft, like a handshake from an old friend.
From the child who’d stopped talking until he was fourteen, who had learnt to hold every emotion behind an iron door.
Unlike those years of silence, now my voice only disappered when I was anxious.
When something happened that made it feel like the world was resting on my shoulders and I couldn't think, let alone breathe.
Since the breaches started, I hadn't lost it until now, and if this, whoever it really was, kept taking from us as though every door we'd locked they had the keys to, I was scared I'd wake up one day and find that fourteen year old staring right back at me.
With my head in my hands, I shook it. “I—I can’t l-let them—”
In the silence that followed the thumping of my heart, all I could hear was the ghost of my sister’s laugh, sharp and wrong, and the hollow it left when the world didn’t protect her.
When I didn't protect her. I’d poured that hollow into the company.
I’d made walls that would keep others safe.
If those walls collapsed, what had the pain been for?
I scrubbed my face with the heels of my hands, hard enough to sting, then shoved back from the screen. The lights from the city below hummed like she had. But it wasn’t enough to calm me. I needed to move. Sitting still made the panic grow teeth.
I went to the storage closet and dragged out my luggage, unfolding the compartments and rummaging until I was seated by the window, looking out at London, with three paints, one brush, and a small canvas.
For emergencies.
It was the one thing Oscar always teased me about—“Marcus, you and your emoitional support art projects.” I knew he'd said it to make me laugh, but he didn’t know.
He’d never see the way colours calmed the static in my head.
Paint was all mess and permission. It didn’t care about threat models or indemnity clauses. It accepted sloppy hands.
I opened a tube.
Cadmium red. Undeniable favourite.
I squeezed until a bead of paint swallowed the brush. The motion was mechanical at first: load, smear, press. The first stroke was ugly and fierce. The second followed, angrier, then softer, like a man arguing with himself in a foreign language.
“I—I ca-n’t l-lose it,” I told the empty room, the stutter more pronounced now. But the paint heard me. It took the cracks and filled them in. Every last one.
I didn’t think about strategy. I didn’t think about the logs. I painted a hand—broad, protective, cupped like a shield. Then another hand, smaller, reaching.
By the time the fear ebbed a fraction, the canvas was half a confession and half a map of where my head had been. My knuckles were slick with colour. My breath had slowed. The stutter loosened like a knot.
“I’ll— I’ll fi-x it,” I said, to myself, to the paint, to whatever had picked Jamie up and handed him back as a weapon.
The words felt like a promise and a threat all at once. One I went to sleep reciting.