Chapter 27
Talia
Genny’s apartment is a pressure cooker.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The air feels thick, dense enough to chew, buzzing with caffeine, adrenaline, and fear. The kind of fear that sits high in your throat—metallic, waiting to become something else. Panic. Rage. Resolve.
It’s been an hour since we left the Athletics building, but my pulse hasn’t slowed.
The hum of laptops blends with the smell of stale coffee and the faint tang of solder from one of Genny’s custom-built drives. Every lamp is off. The only light comes from screens—blue, white, punishing.
Nine people.
Nine hearts beating too fast.
Nine bodies stuck in the same suspended breath.
The Line, Clara called us.
I didn’t argue. It didn’t feel like a joke anymore.
Clara and Adrian are a unit on the sofa—his arm behind her, her shoulder tucked against him.
Not romantic, not even tender. Just anchored.
A formation. Zoe and Gio sit on the kitchen counter, not touching, not arguing, both unnervingly still.
Dante and Cole flank the doorway like hired muscle—silent, coiled, eyes tracking everything.
And Declan.
He sits behind me on the sectional, thigh pressed flush against mine. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. His proximity is a statement: I’m right here. No matter what hits the door.
His hand rests on my knee, heavy and warm. I look down at it. There’s a smudge of black ink on his thumb, stark against his skin, and a small, angry cut near the knuckle where the skin is broken. Dried blood mixed with a fleck of gold.
Evidence of something he broke. Evidence of the violence simmering under his skin.
His thumb traces slow, deliberate strokes back and forth on my jeans. It’s grounding and infuriating and comforting and addictive. Each pass sends a ripple through me, heat blooming in a place I shouldn’t be thinking about with all the other people in the room.
But I’m thinking about it.
About the weight of his touch.
About the way his chest rises against my back when he breathes too deep.
About how every time the room tenses, his hand tightens, claiming more space.
And the worst part?
I let him.
We’re all watching Genny.
She sits cross-legged at the dining table, half in a tangle of wires, face illuminated by the glow of three screens.
Hoodie sleeves pushed up, hair in a messy bun, glasses slipping down her nose.
She looks like a hacker in a thriller movie—if the hacker were nineteen years old and fueled entirely by spite and ramen.
She takes the USB drive—the one she smuggled out of Alistair’s office like a live grenade—and plugs it in.
The click is small.
But the silence afterward?
It’s huge.
“Okay,” Genny says quietly, fingers flying. “I’ve encrypted the connection. They’ll see the email came from Maya’s official student press account, but they won’t be able to trace the upload location to this IP address. We’re invisible.”
She slides the drive across the table toward Maya.
It skitters on the wood before stopping right in front of her.
Maya freezes mid-step. She’s been pacing for ten straight minutes—a tiger in a too-small cage, notebook open, pen tapping against her thigh. She picks up the drive slowly, like it might burn her.
She looks at Genny.
Then at Declan.
Then at me.
“You're sure?” she asks, voice low. “This is it. Once I open this, once I send the inquiry… there’s no walking it back. For any of us.”
Declan doesn’t hesitate.
Not even a blink.
“We're sure,” he says. The sound vibrates through me—low, cold, definite. Not bravado. Not fury. Just truth. His truth.
Maya nods once. Sharp. She plugs in the drive.
The room leans forward—every person, every breath, every pulse.
We watch her read. And we watch her transform. The first page makes her eyes widen. The second makes her jaw clench. The third… she goes still.
Completely. Utterly. Still.
Then she smiles.
Not a sweet smile. Not even a revenge smile.
A predator’s smile.
“Oh, he's not just a bastard,” she breathes, fingers already flying over her keyboard. “He's sloppy.”
“Most wealthy men are,” Genny mutters.
But Maya isn’t listening. She’s already working, already building. She writes like she fights—sharp, cutting, precise. She braids the Poison Pill clause into the emails, into the merger documents, into the timeline she already mapped out in her notebook.
She doesn’t write the story. She constructs it. Piece by piece. Ruthless. Elegant. Brutal.
She’s not reporting. She’s executing.
Dante speaks first, low voice cutting through the hush. “That's good, Maddox.”
Maya looks up, eyes locking with his. Dark. Lethal. “It’s the truth.”
“It’s a weapon,” Dante says. He crosses his arms, the faintest note of respect in his expression—rare, earned.
Maya’s smile widens. “All truth is.”
She turns the laptop toward us. “Read it.”
We do.
Silence deepens. Somehow, impossibly, the room gets tighter.
It's perfect. Clean. Devastating. A kill shot wrapped in journalistic integrity.
Maya looks at all of us, then back at her screen.
“Now—Phase One. We send the summary of allegations to the University President, the Board, and Alistair.” She taps a key. “I’m CC’ing his private email—the one Genny found in the hack. He’ll get the notification instantly on his phone.”
“He won’t concede,” Adrian says. Voice not loud, but sure. Heavy. “Men like that… they don’t fold. They burn everything down with them.”
“He knows that,” Declan says quietly, hand tightening on my knee. The cut on his knuckle stretches white. “Let him try.”
“I’m giving him a deadline,” Maya says, cursor hovering. “Midnight. That’s four hours to comment before we go live.”
Four hours. The ticking clock starts now.
“Send it,” I say.
Maya hits send.
The icon flashes. The file shoots into cyberspace.
The silence afterward is a living thing—heavy, expectant, crawling over my skin.
We wait.
Ten minutes crawl by. The only sound is Zoe tapping her foot like she’s trying to drill a hole through the floor. It feels like waiting for lightning after you’ve already heard the thunder.
Then—
A sharp, vibrating ring breaks the tension.
Everyone jumps.
It’s not Maya’s phone.
Not Genny’s.
Not Clara’s or Adrian’s.
Not mine.
It’s Declan’s.
The screen lights up, buzzing angrily against the cushion next to me.
Father.
Declan goes rigid. A statue of fury and restraint. His body is still, his muscles coiled tight, his attention laser-focused.
He looks at me once—quick, sharp, steady.
Then he hits Accept.
And then he hits Speaker.
The room shifts instantly.
Clara’s hand clamps down hard on Adrian’s forearm. Zoe’s foot stops tapping mid-air, her whole body freezing. Dante shifts his weight, blocking the doorway just a little more, as if he can physically fight the voice on the other end. Even Maya stops typing, fingers hovering over the keys.
We all lean in. Every nerve stands on edge.
The line connects with a sharp, digital click.
For a second, there is no sound. Just the hollow, static hiss of an open line.
And then, the sound of a breath.