Chapter 11
Eleven
Grace’s fingers moved across the keyboard. Each keystroke was a small act of defiance against the crushing failure pressing down on her chest.
Except it wasn’t a failure. The drone mission had worked exactly as planned.
Which meant this suffocating pressure was guilt.
So much worse.
The command center stretched hollow without the Rebels. They’d stormed out after the alarm, after watching her “botch” the reconnaissance.
Now she sat at her console, pulling up diagnostic screens.
The data bloomed under her hands, cascading information that looked like chaos but read like sheet music.
Buried three layers deep in the mission logs sat everything she needed.
The complete response protocol from Patroclus. Every defensive mechanism laid bare.
Her masterpiece of paranoia, documented for her to exploit.
Seventeen seconds. The alarm had triggered at exactly seventeen seconds, just as she’d calculated. During that window, she’d copied their entire security infrastructure.
But no one could know. Not Rafe, not Magnus, not Lars.
So she had to sell the failure.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
Grace’s shoulders tensed before she could stop the reaction. She kept her back to him.
“Still trying to fix your mistake?” Gunnar’s voice could have frozen the room.
Grace kept typing. “Running diagnostics. Trying to determine what triggered the alarm.”
“I can tell you what triggered it.” Gunnar moved closer, close enough that she could feel him looming over her shoulder. “You did.”
Her fingers faltered on the keyboard.
She forced them steady, pulled up another screen. “The thermal signature was—”
“Save it. I’m not here for your excuses.”
Grace’s throat tightened. Good. Let him be suspicious. Let him watch her every move. Supervision meant credibility for whatever she “discovered” next.
But the way he stood over her, radiating distrust, made her skin crawl.
The door hissed open. Grace glanced over her shoulder. Magnus stepped inside and stopped, eyes on Gunnar. Grace turned back to her screen and hunched forward, trying to make herself smaller. Invisible.
“Gunnar.” Magnus’s voice carried a low and edgy note she’d never heard before. “Everyone else is getting some air. Maybe you should, too.”
“Maybe I’m exactly where I need to be.” Gunnar didn’t look away from Grace’s screens. “Someone needs to watch her.”
Her. Like she was a problem, not a person.
Grace pulled up the drone’s telemetry, letting timestamps scroll past. Anything to avoid engaging. Anything to maintain the performance.
Magnus’s footsteps crossed the room, closer now. “I’ve got it covered.”
“Do you?” Gunnar’s voice turned away from her, pitched toward his brother. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve been ‘covering it’ since Alaska, and we just lost our only shot.”
Grace’s typing stopped. She stared at the screen, trying to disappear into the data. Trying not to feel the accusation settling into her bones like cold fog.
“That’s not fair,” Magnus said quietly.
“Fair?” Gunnar’s voice went lower. Colder. “Oliver is in the hands of a psychopath. We’re stuck here with limited options and a ticking clock. And you’re defending her like she’s some kind of victim instead of the reason we’re in this mess.”
Grace turned before she could stop herself.
The brothers stood a few feet apart, Magnus with his jaw set, Gunnar’s shoulders rigid. Two men who’d had each other’s backs for years squared off across a space no wider than her workstation.
Because of her.
She forced her focus back to the screen. Watching them cost too much.
But her hands were numb against the keys.
She’d brought Lars to their door. Oliver was suffering because of the choices she’d made eight years ago. Because she’d been stupid enough to trust a monster, naive enough to think she could build weapons and somehow remain innocent.
“She didn’t—” Magnus started.
Gunnar took a step toward his brother. “You let her back in. You convinced us to trust her. And look where we are.”
Grace forced her hands back to the keyboard. Back to work. If she kept moving, kept coding, maybe she wouldn’t have to feel the truth sinking into her bones.
“We made the choice to help,” Magnus said. “All of us.”
“Because you asked us to. Because we trust you.” Gunnar moved closer to Magnus. “You’re my brother. I’d follow you into hell. But I need to know your judgment isn’t compromised.”
“My judgment is fine.”
“Is it?” The question cracked through the room. “Because I’m watching you defend a woman who’s already proven she’ll abandon you when things get hard. Who lies, manipulates, disappears. And you’re treating her like she’s trustworthy.”
Grace’s breath caught. Her hand moved instinctively to close a window on her encrypted secondary monitor. Evidence of the data she’d actually harvested during the “failed” mission. She couldn’t let them see it. Couldn’t let anyone know that every mistake had been calculated.
The guilt rose like bile. Magnus was defending her. Fighting his own family. And she was lying to him with every breath.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Magnus said.
“Then explain it to me.” Gunnar was in his brother’s space now. “Explain why you’re willing to bet Oliver’s life on her. Explain why you trust her.”
Grace’s fingers froze over the keyboard in the silence that followed.
Tell him you don’t. Tell him he’s right. Don’t sacrifice your family for someone who’s been lying from the beginning.
But the protest stayed locked in her throat.
“I can’t,” Magnus said finally. “I can’t explain it in a way that’ll make sense to you.”
Something cracked in Grace’s chest. She felt it give way.
“Then your judgment is compromised.” Gunnar’s voice held grief beneath the anger. “And that’s going to get people killed.”
The words sank into Grace like stones. She stared at her screen, seeing nothing.
Gunnar was right. Magnus risked everything on faith, and she was the one who would destroy him for it.
“Maybe,” Magnus said quietly. “But it’s my call to make.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Gunnar pressed, stepping closer. “If she takes whatever intel we get her and vanishes again? What then, Magnus?”
Magnus didn’t back down.
“You think I don’t know the risks? You think I’m not terrified she’s going to disappear the second this is over?
” His voice cracked, the raw truth bleeding through.
“I know exactly who she is, Gunnar. But she is our only way to get Oliver back. So, if I have to bet everything on her to save my son, I will make that bet every single time.”
No. Don’t do this. Don’t choose me.
But she couldn’t say it.
Didn’t want to because a disgusting, selfish part of her wanted Magnus to still care.
The silence stretched, then Gunnar exhaled, slow and defeated.
“When this goes south,” he said, voice flat, “when she proves you wrong, remember that I warned you.”
He turned and walked toward the door. Each boot strike against the floor felt like a nail being driven home.
“Gunnar—” Magnus called.
His brother didn’t stop. The door sealed behind him with a hiss.
Neither of them spoke.
Grace sat frozen, unable to process what had just happened. Magnus had just fractured his relationship with his brother. For her. Because of the lies she’d told and plans he didn’t understand.
The equations hadn’t accounted for this. She’d calculated every variable, every strategic outcome. But she’d never factored in the cost to Magnus’s relationships. The price he’d pay for defending someone who was using his trust as cover.
“Magnus—”
“Don’t.” The word came out rough, and she flinched. “Just don’t.”
He left without another word, and she went back to work because there was nothing else to do. If she kept coding, she wouldn’t have to sit with the sound of his voice defending her.
A few minutes later, footsteps came back. A mug landed beside her keyboard, filled with strong coffee loaded with sugar and creamer. The exact way she made hers when she thought nobody was watching.
Except he’d been watching.
Grace stared at the mug like it might detonate. She didn’t know what to do with kindness right now.
“You don’t have to—” she started.
“I know.”
His voice was quiet and steady, with no edge to it at all. That nearly undid her.
Grace looked up at him. The fight with Gunnar was still written across his face—exhaustion, tension, something bruised around the eyes. He’d just fractured things with his brother for her sake, and now he was standing here with a cup of coffee like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Her voice cracked. She didn’t bother trying to hide the tears.
He nodded once, then moved to the console behind her and sat down. Not going anywhere.
Grace wrapped her hands around the mug. The warmth anchored her, gave her something physical to focus on besides the guilt she couldn’t swallow past.
Tell him. Tell him the drone mission wasn’t a failure. Tell him you’ve been planning this for eight years. Tell him you’re using his trust as cover, and it’s killing you.
But she couldn’t. Not if she wanted her plan to succeed.
She took a sip of too-sweet coffee and tried not to think about how much this man had just sacrificed for a lie.
“You’re still wearing that janky watch.” Magnus pointed his chin at her watch.
“Hey.” Grace huffed. “It’s a classic.”
Magnus lifted an eyebrow, and Grace’s heart chose to skip a beat it had no right to skip. “World’s best hacker wears a watch from the nineties? Seriously, my grandma had that model.”
“Smart watches are too easy to track.” She hid her smile behind her mug and took another drink.
He didn’t say anything for a long beat. “Huh.”
A ding drew her attention to a screen on her left.
“Rafe’s patching back in,” she said, forcing steadiness into her voice as she set her mug on the workstation. “We need to finish the diagnostic.”
“Okay.”
The screen flickered. Rafe’s face appeared, his expression serious.
“Grace, Magnus. Ready to continue?”