Chapter 49 | Kincade #2
I shouldn’t have done it—opened the bond—but I did it to gauge her thoughts. She was furious. Not at me. Not at the fact Silas commandeered her estate. At the fact that she had to live like that now. Then I shut it down. Before I saw more than I should.
She looked to Silas then. “What about those fuckers who teleport? How do you stop that?”
I might’ve smiled, if I didn’t know why she asked. That’s how the Brotherhood got to her before.
Silas didn’t even flinch. “You don’t stop the jump,” he said.
“You make it expensive.” He tapped the floor plan—doors, windows, the long spine of the hallways.
“I laid a detection grid. If someone blinks inside the perimeter, we know immediately—no guessing, no lag. And I anchored the thresholds.” His gaze lifted to mine, calm as a blade.
“It won’t block an elite Watcher. But it’ll add friction.
They land off-balance. Loud. Slower.” A pause. “Ten seconds is all we need.”
More than enough. If we were ready.
He’d planned for the threat the Brotherhood refused to admit was theirs. Smart. Thorough. Exactly what we needed.
“Then this isn’t prevention,” she said. “It’s preparation.”
Silas didn’t deny it. He let the silence sit there like it belonged. Then he closed the case with a soft click—final, deliberate—like the argument had been settled long before he ever stepped into this villa.
Anna leaned forward and continued to stare at the floor plan. Her mind was working, jaw tight, then lifted her gaze. The anger was still there, but it had shifted.
“So, the security system is in place now. We can see it. But that’s not the only threat,” she said. “They still have the surveillance. The data.” She looked at me then Silas. “What if there’s another way to get rid of it?”
“What do you mean, lass?”
“Get a hacker. Someone who can drop a virus or malware or ransomware. Anything that can move through their system to destroy it all,” she said. “Burn the whole thing down digitally.”
The moment she said it, I knew. She’d been thinking about this for a while. Processing. Planning. Not reacting.
Ludwig made an interested sound. Ulrich didn’t react at all except his attention sharpened, like a knife coming out of a sheath. Ulrich saw the angle. Always did.
Silas’s mouth twitched once. Not a smile. More like confirmation. “I know someone,” he said.
My pulse kicked. “No.”
“He’s the only one who can do it,” Silas said.
“You know what he’s like,” I said. He was the last person I wanted to bring into this mess.
“I know what he can do,” Silas said. “And so do you.”
“Do you know where he is?” I asked.
“Last I heard he’s not dead,” Silas said. “Which, for him, is thriving.”
Unfortunately, accurate.
Anna snickered. “Who is this mysterious person?”
“Gremlin,” Silas said.
Ulrich sucked in a breath. Ludwig nearly choked on his coffee.
“You—have a Gremlin on speed dial?” Anna asked.
Ludwig coughed once, laughing into it. “That’s not a name. That’s a handle. The kind a guy earns after he wipes a whole server and calls it a warm-up.”
Anna blinked. “Oh, so he’s a gamer, too.”
Ulrich nodded once. “We’ve all heard of him.”
“He’s got a reputation in our circles,” Ludwig said.
“And a talent for hacking,” I added. Then, “Fine. Find him. But make sure he knows this isn’t one of his games. This is serious.”
Then Anna leveled her gaze at me. “Is there anyone you don’t know?”
I shrugged. Because I didn’t need to get into that.
Silas stood. “I’ll reach out to Gremlin. If he’s interested, he’ll surface.”
“And if he’s not?” Anna asked.
“Then we find another way.” Silas’s gaze shifted to me. “We always do.”
That was the end of it. Ludwig and Ulrich filed out first, already talking under their breath. Anna stayed a heartbeat longer, jaw tight, then exhaled. “I need air.”
And she was gone. I knew where she’d go.
Silas didn’t move.
“That favor I asked you for,” I said. “Where are we on that?”
I wanted Anna’s mother here sooner rather than later—especially after the latest information bomb.
“It’s in progress,” he said. “But it’s been on hold since you were—”
“I’m fine,” I cut in. I wasn’t. I was functional. “When?”
“When do you want me to bring her?”
“A week. No more than two. Whenever you can make it happen,” I said. “Somewhere local. Public. A park. Open sightlines. No surprises.” My mouth tightened. “They need a conversation without interference.”
Silas gave a faint nod. “I’ll set it up. And Kincade,” Silas added. “If she doesn’t like the fortress, remind her why it exists.”
It was dusk when I found her sitting alone in the courtyard, legs drawn up in the chair beneath her. String lights bathed the flagstone in a faint yellow glow, and the fountain’s underwater lamps turned the falling water into something softer.
She was clutching her elbows like she could fold herself smaller and conserve warmth. The breeze was cold. She wasn’t dressed for it—bare feet, short sleeves—like the chill didn’t get a vote. Stubborn. Even with the weather.
Her head tipped when she heard my steps, but she didn’t look up.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“Thinking,” she said.
“All day?”
“Yes.”
Alone. She’d found sanctuary away from everyone. Including me. That stung. But I understood it.
She didn’t move for a long moment. She sat perfectly still, staring past the fountain like it might have answers. I waited.
“I wanted to see what the courtyard looked like with the string lights,” she said.
There was truth in that. And something underneath it she wasn’t giving me. I felt it anyway—the hum of it under my skin. The bond picking up what she wouldn’t say.
“You’re still angry.”
“Yes,” she said, still not looking at me.
“It’s cold,” I said. “Come inside.”
She lifted her gaze to mine. The lights caught in her eyes, and I saw it all at once. Anger, despair, annoyance sharpened into something that hurt.
“Is this what my life has come to?” she asked. “Hiding behind cameras and guards and men loyal to you, pretending that’s normal?”
Then she huffed, the sound bitter. “I wonder what Uncle Edward would think of all that.”
“He’d think it was safer than what it was before,” I said.
“Would he?” Her mouth tightened. “Or would he have some other brilliant plan that none of us knew about?”
Because that was how he operated. Life as a chess match. Three moves ahead. And when he died, it took something with him she’d never get back.
She looked away again, gaze fixed on some dark point across the courtyard.
“He kept secrets from me,” she said. “To keep me safe. Like you. Even now.”
“What do you—”
“I mean the Quiet Watch,” she said. Calm voice. Controlled. “You never told me.”
“I never told anyone,” I said. For good reason. “No one knew. Not even Decker.”
I moved closer to where she sat in the chair. She didn’t move.
“It wasn’t about trust,” I said. “It was about keeping you off the board. Keeping them from realizing you were the center of it.”
“I want to go home, but—” She cut herself off. Pressed her lips together. Fighting the emotions she’d been fighting all day.
“I know you do,” I said. “It won’t feel the same when you walk through those gates. And I’m sorry for that.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“Part of it is.”
I’d made choices. They’d had consequences.
Her head snapped up, ready to argue… and then she didn’t. Because there weren’t words for it. I stepped around the chair and knelt in front of her until I was at her eye line, then took her hands in mine. They were cold—so cold it bit. How long had she been out here?
I rubbed my thumbs over her knuckles, slow and steady, like I could warm the anger out of her one breath at a time.
“It isn’t gone, you know. Just different. You’ll still be you.”
“But I’m not me anymore, either, am I?” she said, her voice tight. “I’m even hiding behind a box of hair dye.”
Oh, she was cataloguing everything then. And spiraling.
“I like the hair,” I said.
“Oh, shut up.”
But she didn’t mean it.
“Come on.” I tugged her hands, pulling her out of the chair.
She came willingly, then leaned into me like her body decided it didn’t have to hold itself together alone.
I wrapped an arm around her, the other still holding her hands between us. “You don’t have to carry all of it at once.”
She let out a breath that shook. “It feels like if I stop thinking, something else will happen.”
“It will,” I said. Honest. “That’s why we plan. That’s why Silas did what he did.”
Her forehead pressed lightly against my chest. “A fortress,” she murmured.
“A perimeter,” I corrected. “So you can sleep at night.” I tipped my head down to catch her eyes when she looked up. “You go home when you’re ready. We do it on our terms. And if you want any of it changed—guards, cameras, routines—you tell me. You tell Silas. It gets done.”
Her mouth tightened. “I hate that this is normal now.”
“I know.” My hold tightened a fraction. “But it doesn’t get to take your home from you. Or you from yourself.”
She gave a small, humorless huff. “And you like the hair?”
“I do. It makes you harder to find.”
That earned the faintest curve of her mouth—more surrender than amusement. “Funny.”
She leaned into me, forehead brushing my shirt. Her voice came out small and fierce at the same time. “I won’t feel safe as long as they’re hunting me.”
My arm tightened around her. “I know,” I said into her hair. “So we stop the hunt.”
I held her until the tension in her shoulders eased a fraction.
“Come inside,” I said. “You’re freezing.”
“In a minute,” she whispered, and held on like she was afraid the moment would break if she moved.
I stayed with her there under the string lights, arms around her, and let the night stay quiet for once.