15. Jasmine
JASMINE
Sebastian presses his palm to a blank panel in the elevator that I had no clue was there, and instead of rising upward, we sink.
"Two levels down," he says. "Under the garage."
I watch the floor count run backward and say nothing. Four days ago I stopped answering his calls. This morning I sent one text — Show me more — and here I am, descending in a skyscraper I never knew had a bottom.
The doors unlatch, revealing a long corridor that is dark and gloomy. No glass walls. No breakroom noise. No office vibe. Just concrete and steel, doors set flush into walls with seams so tight the hinges are invisible.
"All this time," I say. "Under my feet."
"Yes."
"While I was upstairs cleaning up your travel itineraries."
"Yes."
I hate that he doesn't apologize for it. I hate more that I'd trust him less if he did. A door swings to my left. Gideon, head of security waits, and nods at me. The other, I've only passed: lean, dark-haired, eyes the color of weak tea.
"Jasmine Carter," Sebastian says. "Gideon Ward. Elias Knox."
I don't offer my hand. Neither do they. I hug myself to feel warm, while none of them seem to feel it.
"So," I say. "You're all —"
"Yes," Gideon says.
"You could let me finish the sentence."
"You'd take longer."
Elias speaks before I decide whether I like either of them. "We have a problem in Denver." He says it to Sebastian, not to me. "A donor coded out at a private clinic. The attending wrote anemia, then revised it twice. There's a photo on a nurse's phone we haven't reached."
"Buried?" Sebastian asks.
"In the process. There are more threads than there used to be. We have to be sure."
I'm following half of it, while my stomach turns. "Buried?" I repeat. "You mean someone died."
"Vampire fed without care," Elias says. "It's rarer than it was. Still, not rare enough."
A new voice cuts in from the doorway. "And it gets harder to cut when your name is attached, Sebastian."
The woman who says it is dressed like she bills by the minute — dark, precise, wearing a watch worth my whole year's salary. She sets a sealed legal packet near the table edge without opening it and her attention toward me is frank, uninterested.
"Amelia," Sebastian says. "My —"
"Millie. We're family, distantly, which for our kind means I'm the one who keeps him out of court." Her head tips. "You're the human."
"I'm the executive assistant," I say. "The human part is recent."
Almost a smile. "Good. You'll need that."
She pulls out a chair but doesn't sit. "Here's what he keeps under wraps. Under the old law, a human who knows what you know has no standing. You're not a person in that system. You're an exposure. Some clans will argue you should be — killed."
"Killed, why" I say.
"Don't make me explain it."
"I think you should."
Gideon and Elias trade a glance. Sebastian doesn't.
"Some will want you gone," Millie goes on. "Others'll want you kept. A known human mate is proof he can be reached. Leverage that walks on two legs and answers to a name." She finally turns to him. "You can't stop them from finding out she knows, Bash. That door's open, and it doesn't close."
The room keeps talking around me — she, the mate, the situation — like I'm a line item. Sebastian must have told them all about this bond thingymajig.
"I am here, ya know," I say. They stop. "I can hear all of you. I'm not a breach, or a scandal, or a clause in some damn old law. Discussing me in the third person isn't polite, and I don't appreciate it."
Sebastian moves into the space where their attention was. "She's right. Anyone who calls Jasmine a problem to be solved can do it elsewhere."
Gideon studies me with something that isn't warmth but might be the start of respect.
"For what it's worth," Gideon says, "I argued against you ever meeting him."
"I can tell."
"It's nothing personal."
"Of course it is. I'm THE person."
He almost laughs. Almost.
Elias' phone wakes. "The nurse in Denver just posted. I need to go."
"Go," Sebastian says. Amelia collects her unopened folder, and Gideon's already at the door.
"Carter," Gideon says without turning. "Whatever you decide — decide it with your eyes open."
Then they're gone, and it's only us, and the cold. Sebastian lets the room keep its own quiet. That is the habit I've stopped expecting from him.
"You're afraid," he says finally. "I can feel it. The bond carries that much." He lifts a hand before I get a word out. "I'm telling you so you know I'm not pretending I can't. Not so you'll think I'm reading you. I won't use it. If I ever do, leave."
"You felt me deciding to come down here?"
"I felt you stop hating the idea." He says it like a fact he isn't proud of.
I let the fact find its place. The room hums faintly — not the awful office drone, something deeper, machines keeping a hidden world quiet.
"Does it make me a fool?" I ask, "to stay anywhere near this?"
"I won't answer that for you."
"You could lie. Tell me escape is best."
"Doing so would be a decision I made about your life. I'm trying not to do that."
And that thing I've been refusing since the night the truth came down. Not the vampires. Not the law that calls me a liability. This: that I feel something for him, that didn't burn off when the floor dropped out of my world. Fear didn't kill it. Fear made it louder.
"I don't have any trust in you," I say. "Actually, I don't. Not every ugly piece. Maybe not most of it."
"I know."
"But the feelings are real. They were real before I knew what lives under that suit of yours.
They're not going anywhere, which is inconvenient for both of us.
" My voice holds. "If I leave now, I'm not choosing safety.
I'm choosing not to know. And I've spent my whole life being the woman who investigates everything, just like my Dad. "
"Then find out," he says. No pull behind it. No fate. Just my own two feet.
I battle with my mind back and forth, until I make the decision.
"I'm staying," I say. "For the truth. Not because anything tells me to. If you ever confuse those two things, we're finished."
"Understood."
It doesn't feel settled. It feels like standing on a ledge and calling it a resolution. But two floors under the city I thought I knew, that's the bravest thing I have.