Chapter Twenty-Two
Elise
I woke up glowing.
Not the careful, measured warmth I usually allowed myself.
This was brighter, almost ridiculous. I lay there for a long minute staring at the ceiling, remembering the way Brady had kissed me goodnight against my door, the way his hand had lingered at my waist like he was in no hurry to let the day end.
For the first time in longer than I cared to admit, I let myself imagine something normal.
Groceries. Cooking. A quiet afternoon where I didn’t have to calculate every variable.
Then I remembered him opening a door he should never have been able to open.
The glow dimmed, but it didn’t disappear. That was a problem.
If Brady had failed yesterday, I would have written him off as someone stumbling around blindly. If he had bypassed my security system with finesse, I would have reported the threat and protected my family.
I still couldn’t figure out what exactly had happened.
I got up, pulled on jeans and a simple top, and told myself I was going to the store because I wanted to cook for Brady. More time with him might expose his true intention.
It wasn’t because I needed to see him again. While I drove to the grocery store, I checked and rechecked every possible explanation for how he could have bypassed layered fail-safes without tools, training, or outside help.
None of it made sense.
But neither did how good I felt around Brady.
The bakery section smelled like fresh bread and cinnamon. I stood in front of the sourdough longer than necessary, one hand on the cart, the other hovering near a loaf while my brain split itself into two unhelpful halves.
One half wanted to buy bread, fresh vegetables, maybe something absurdly domestic like rosemary, and imagine Brady leaning against my counter while I cooked.
The other half wanted to cancel lunch, lock down every test instance I’d touched, and run a full background sweep on everyone Brady had spoken to since arriving in Basin Ridge.
I was reaching for the sourdough when a woman stepped into my peripheral vision.
She was striking in a way that didn’t try. Red hair pulled back loosely, sharp green eyes, with an effortless confidence that made the air feel thinner. Not local. Definitely not local.
My threat-assessment brain flipped on instantly. I cataloged exit routes, the weight of my phone in my pocket, the distance to the nearest security camera.
She smiled like we were old friends and held out a small black card. No name. No logo. Just a single phone number printed in crisp white.
My mouth actually dropped open.
No.
This could not be happening.
I knew that card. Every serious player in cybersecurity knew that card.
It was the stuff of dark-web legends, the one-use lifeline Dominic Corisi’s secret weapon handed out when she decided someone was worth saving.
Alethea Stone. The woman who had run international red teams, bypassed the best systems on the planet, then turned around and patched the holes she had just exploited.
She had made her fortune and her reputation doing exactly that.
The Steeles had tried to reach her more than once. She had never answered.
And now she was standing three feet away from me in the grocery store, holding out that card like it was a casual coffee invitation.
I took it without speaking. My fingers were steady. My mind was not.
Hero worship hit first. Then horror flooded in right behind it.
Suddenly what made no sense had a possible explanation. If Brady was connected to her, then every impossible thing he had done at the old house yesterday had just become something far worse than luck.
I had miscalculated.
Badly.
Alethea tilted her head, studying me the way I studied code. “You’re smarter than this, Elise.” Her voice was quiet, almost gentle, but there was steel underneath.
I slipped the card into my purse and kept my expression neutral. I wasn’t going to speak first. Not until I understood the game.
She didn’t make me wait. “Playing house with someone like Brady isn’t a flex,” she said. “It’s cruel.”
The words landed like a slap I hadn’t seen coming. I felt my shoulders tighten. How could she know? Why was she here? What did she want? “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough.” She gestured vaguely toward the bread I had been reaching for.
“You’re letting him fall for a version of you that doesn’t exist. He’s out here doing something noble, trying to fix a thirty-year mess so his brother can have the wedding he deserves, and you’re feeding him half-truths and security tests like it’s a game. ”
Guilt I had been shoving down for days rose so fast it burned. I thought of the manila envelope. The photograph. The way Brady had left everything exactly where he found it because he wasn’t there to build a case against anyone. He just wanted to understand.
“I’m not playing with him,” I said, and hated that I sounded less certain than I wanted to.
“No?” Alethea asked. “Then tell him who you are.”
My fingers tightened around the handle of the cart. “It’s complicated.”
“Most things worth doing are.”
I met her gaze. “Why are you involved?”
Alethea’s eyes softened a fraction. Not much, but enough.
“Because Brady reminds me of someone I love. My best friend, Lil. She sees the world the same way he does, full of beauty worth protecting, even when the rest of us are busy burning it down to prove a point.” She gave a small, rueful smile.
“I used to think my job was to wake people like her up. Now I understand it’s to keep the world safe enough for people like her to keep existing.
They’re the flowers. The fruit. Who wants to live in a world without beauty? ”
The words settled between us like something fragile.
I stared at her. This wasn’t the cold, calculating legend I had heard whispers about. This was something deeper. Protective. Almost maternal in a terrifying way.
I recovered, pushing back as I would with Keaton or my father. Game recognized game. “You helped him get through my security system at the abandoned house,” I said quietly.
She neither denied nor confirmed it.
I continued, “You gave him false confidence. He thinks he can walk through high-tech locks now. That kind of belief could get him killed.”
Alethea’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. Respect flickered across her face. “Fair point,” she said.
There. That was my confirmation. “So you did help him.”
“Not the way you think.”
“There are only so many ways to bypass what was on that house.”
“Spoken like someone who still believes every door is opened by code.” Her gaze sharpened. “You’re asking the wrong question.”
“I doubt that.”
“No,” she said calmly. “You’re asking how he got in. The better question is why you’re so angry that he did.”
My answer should have been immediate.
Because the system failed.
Because my design failed.
Because an unauthorized person accessed a protected location.
Because Brady Holliston was not supposed to be able to walk through one of my security systems with a song title, a macaroni joke, and a willingness to look closely at furniture.
Instead, all I could think was: because if he had failed, I would know what to do next. I don’t know what to do now and I hate it.
Alethea watched the realization land. “There it is.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” Her voice lowered. “If Brady had failed yesterday, you could put him back in a box. Sweet. Harmless. Charming. Not your problem. But he didn’t fail, and now you don’t know what category to put him in.”
I looked away first, which irritated me.
“You think because he tells the truth, he’s easy to read,” she continued.
“Isn’t he?”
“No. He’s one of the hardest kinds of people to understand.”
That pulled my gaze back to hers. “How?”
“Because you keep looking for the hidden agenda, but he doesn’t have one.”
I thought of Brady handing Roy a clean rag before Roy asked for it. Brady singing to me in front of strangers because he’d promised he would. Brady leaving my father’s papers exactly where he’d found them because he wasn’t trying to take anything.
No hidden agenda.
That didn’t make sense.
People always had an agenda.
Alethea studied my face, and I hated that she could see me more clearly than I could see myself. “You already know what to do.”
“Do I?”
“Tell him the truth.”
I almost laughed. “Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“And if that destroys whatever this is between us?”
“Then it wasn’t what you thought it was.”
My stomach tightened. “That’s easy to say when you’re not the one who has to live with the outcome.”
Her expression didn’t change. “It’s actually never easy to choose honesty. It’s just clean.”
There was nothing clean about this. My father’s past. Brady’s family. The hidden house. The notes. The way Brady looked at me like I was on his side when I was still standing halfway between him and the people I loved.
“I can’t tell him yet,” I said.
Alethea didn’t look surprised. “Why not?”
Because my father could destroy him.
Because Brady might walk away.
Because if Brady looked at me differently, I didn’t know what would be left of this version of myself I had only begun to find. It was no longer about him. It was about me.
“I can’t hurt him,” I said finally.
Alethea’s mouth curved slightly. “Do you think there’s a way you can come out of this without hurting him?”
“And I can’t let him walk away thinking he’s a master coder. If he ever does go up against my father, that could get him killed.”
She was quiet for a moment, then nodded once. “One final test.”
“Yes,” I said. “No danger. No humiliation. This is about making sure he’s more careful going forward.”
“I can design it.”
“No, I will.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll make sure it’s what you say it is.”
I didn’t ask her how she would do that. I had a feeling I couldn’t stop her anyway.
“And then?” she pushed.
I held her gaze. “Then I tell him the truth.”
“All of it.”
The correction scraped over my raw nerves. “All of it,” I agreed.
Alethea looked at my purse then back at me. Her smile was small, polite, and did not reach her eyes. “If you do the right thing, if you’re good to him, and I’ll know because I’ll be watching, you may keep the card. You might need it someday.”
She let the sentence hang. Her smile stayed exactly the same.
Chilling. A threat wrapped in velvet.
I understood why people were terrified of her.
Then her expression softened. “If it makes you feel any better, I thought your system design was highly creative. It would have stopped ninety-nine point nine percent.”
Pride washed over me, even as I admitted, “All except you.”
A genuine smile curled her lips then she turned and walked away, red hair catching the fluorescent lights like a warning flag.
I stood there holding a loaf of sourdough. My heart was hammering, the glow from this morning already feeling like something that belonged to another woman.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked it.
Brady: What time should I come over for lunch?
I stared at the message.
Yesterday the question would have made me smile.
This morning, before Alethea, it would have made me warm all over.
Now it felt like a countdown.
I looked in the direction Alethea had left then back at Brady’s text.
I could cancel.
I should cancel.
Instead, I typed: Noon.
His reply came almost instantly.
Brady: Can’t wait.
My chest tightened.
Neither could I.
That was the problem.
Underneath the panic and guilt and hero-worship-turned-horror, something was unfolding and it was too tempting to walk away from.