8. Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
The hidden room sits two levels below the lobby, it doesn't appear on the building schematic. I push it open and find the intruder already secured, wrists bound to the chair frame with a Dawnthread cord our kind cannot tear without burning.
He is younger than Gid, but older than he looks—a century, perhaps. Good suit. Shoes too luxurious for the courier he tried to pass off as. His eyes lift as I enter with confidence like he believes it's still a negotiation.
Gid stands at his shoulder. Elias works at the table, sorting a small spread of objects under a desk lamp.
"Thirty-one minutes," Gideon says. "That's how long he walked our floors before the badge flagged."
"Whose badge?"
"An old contractor that hasn't reported here in eight months." Elias slides a laminated card across the table. The photograph's been swapped; the chip underneath still carries the original clearance. "Cloned access. Clean work. He knew how to bypass a cross-check."
I set the card down. "The phone?"
"Wiped before we reached him." Elias turns the dead handset over. "He didn't trust it to memory, though. He wrote things down."
He unfolds a square of paper. I read it standing, and control becomes a choice I have to make again. The notes aren't about our servers or the upper offices. They're about Jasmine.
Arrival times. The elevator she favors. A note that she keeps a chair four meters from my office door. A mark beside the question of whether security tightens when she works late.
"He wasn't here for the company," I say.
"No." Gid's voice goes flat. "He was here for Jasmine."
I rest the paper under the lamp, because my hand would prefer to ruin it. "Show me what else."
Elias sets a final object between us—a small brass token, old, its sigil worn nearly smooth. I recognize the house before he speaks.
"Dain," Elias confirms. "This marking predates most living vampires. Cyrus gives it to people he wants useful and deniable."
"So we end it the simple way." Gid isn't looking at the intruder. He's looking at me. "She leaves Crowe Technologies. Transfer, a generous reference, or payment. She never learns why. In a month she's just a name and she's left alone."
"No."
"Sebastian."
"I said no."
He steps closer and lowers his voice without softening it. "I've stood beside you a long time. We already know the danger. When something matters to you, you get easy to read—and right now she's the brightest thing pointing straight at you. Take her out of the equation, you take away their angle."
"You're describing abandonment with better manners.
" I keep my voice even. "Move her somewhere quiet and you don't make her safe.
You make her alone. Cyrus won't stop because her badge changes.
He'll understand the timing, send another one, and next time she won't be here with you at the door or my people.
She'll be in some polite office with no idea vampires exist, and her death imminent. I won't put her there."
Gid's mouth sets. He doesn't argue, because he can't.
"Every powerful man takes her for granted," I continue. "The last one signed her out of a career she built and called it a settlement. I won't do that to her. She stays. That way I know she's not going to be hurt."
The man in the chair shares an evil laugh—amused by our disagreement, certain he's still the cleverest thing here.
"You're debating whether to hide her," he says. "That's sweet. You're weeks late." His eyes hold mine. "She takes a different way out every night. New exit, new block, never twice the same. We logged that already. I'm not the only one with info written down. I'm just the only vampire you caught."
He keeps the smile a moment too long. I cross to him before Gid can draw the breath to stop me. My hand goes straight to his jaw, one at the back of his skull, a single decisive turn, and his neck snaps. I straighten my cuff.
"Get rid of the ash," I tell Elias. "The body, the badge, the token, the notes. Cyrus gets nothing back."
Elias is already reaching for his kit. "Understood."
"Gideon. With me."
In the corridor he falls in next to me. I don't slow. "Pull four from our own people—not the contracted floor staff, ours. The ones who've stood in worse circumstances than that one. Rotate them through as maintenance and reception. No one new ever appears at her desk."
"And access?"
"Tighten every level, for everyone. Make the whole floor harder to get on, not just her corner of it.
" It starts to assemble as I speak. "From tonight, a cloned credential trips a full-building replacement of access cards.
Loud. General. Don't blame anyone in particular.
Make it so that there was a breach in the data system instead. "
"So we make it ordinary."
"We hide it in plain sight. More faces in the lobby because the building's busier."
"Maybe we put eyes on her phone too," Gid says. "Messages, location. You'd know the second anyone reached for her."
"No." That stops me mid-tracks. "I won't take her privacy. She'd walk if she found out, I'd stepped over the line that much. The day I keep her alive by becoming the thing she could never forgive, I'll lose her."
He looks me over. "Do you hear yourself?"
"I do."
"This isn't security anymore."
I don't deny it. I give Gid three instructions: two more of ours in the building by morning, every unknown face checked twice, and any whisper near Jasmine brought to me before it becomes movement. He goes and does what he does best.
The corridor stays bright after he leaves.
Too bright for the thing I've done and too normal for what I am about to keep doing.
Upstairs, Jasmine will sit tomorrow, unaware I killed a vampire below for her safety.
She will answer emails, challenge my decisions, probably insult my systems before lunch, and I will leave her believing everything is calm because the truth would tear her world apart.
It bothers me because she deserves more than that. Her anger. Her trust. The look she would give me if she knew how many choices I have made for her life.
I convinced myself it was control, but control would have moved her away and dealt with the consequences. Instead, I'm choosing to keep Jasmine near, guarding her badly, lying to her carefully, and hoping I won't ever lose her.
I am falling in love with Jasmine Carter. And I'm powerless to stop it.