Chapter 16
I Don’t Need You
Mira
The system didn’t like being pushed this far.
I felt it the second I stepped past the access layer I’d been sitting on for days, the structure tightened in ways that weren’t obvious unless you knew how to read it.
Ironhand wasn’t built sloppily. It looked chaotic on the surface, loud, violent, unpredictable, but underneath it ran on precision, on controlled channels that fed into something bigger than what anyone saw on the floor.
I’d been working the edges of it, mapping where money moved, where it paused, where it disappeared long enough to come back clean on the other side. Now I stopped skimming and went straight through it.
The terminal hummed low under my hands as I bypassed the last set of soft restrictions, sliding into a layer that wasn’t meant for anyone without direct clearance.
The files didn’t label themselves cleanly, not with anything that screamed “illegal” or directly tied to what Ironhand actually did.
Everything was coded, buried under legitimate fronts, supply chains, and private accounts that appeared to belong to businesses unrelated to what was happening here.
But the numbers didn’t lie. They never did.
I started cross-referencing the routes with the physical movement I’d been tracking on the floor, matching timestamps to shipments, shipments to payouts, payouts to accounts that shouldn’t have existed in the same loop.
At first glance, it looked like standard laundering, money cycling through layers to come out clean on the other side.
Then the timing hit.
There were gaps. Not random delays, not system lag, but deliberate pauses where the money stopped moving before it continued on a different path.
Those pauses lined up too cleanly with transport windows I hadn’t been able to map fully yet, routes that didn’t show up in the standard logs, movements that didn’t match the fighters or the equipment listed on paper.
My jaw tightened as I pulled another dataset, dug deeper, and forced the system to give me more than it wanted to.
This wasn’t just about money. It was about movement — live movement — the kind that didn’t leave a clean paper trail because it wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place.
People.
The realization settled in heavily — not shocking, not surprising — just confirming what I’d already suspected the deeper I got into this place.
Ironhand wasn’t the center of it. It was a node, a distribution point that fed into something larger, something structured enough that it didn’t need to hide in the open.
It hid in the system.
And whatever it was connected to? It went far beyond this building. Which meant I wasn’t just sitting inside a fight ring anymore. I was sitting inside something a hell of a lot bigger than I’d planned for.
But I didn’t get long to sit with that thought.
Like everything else in Ironhand, it changed silently, methodically, just enough volume to notice if one paid attention.
I felt it before I looked up, the small ripple in the air that told me I wasn’t alone at my terminal anymore, that someone had invaded my space without so much as announcing themselves.
I didn’t look up immediately.
My hands continued their work on the terminal, completing the function I had been working on and signing out of the lower level gracefully, leaving no glaring breadcrumb behind.
I didn’t shift in my seat, tense up, or check the space around me like I usually did when I finished with a dive. I kept my occupation generic, worked like a part of the machine instead of someone who had just hacked the hell out of wherever they weren’t supposed to be poking around.
Steps stopped just behind me … Near — too near to be a coincidence.
“You working hard or something?”
His voice was low, didn’t quite carry, and smoothed out in a way that was incongruous with everything else about Ironhand. Gentle. Methodical. Quiet enough that he didn’t need to shout to gain attention.
I recognized that voice.
Silas.
Of course, Silas was there.
I shifted back far enough to look over my shoulder, casually. Not surprised, not protective, just acknowledging his presence like he showing up unannounced wasn’t some violation.
“Depends on what I consider work,” I answered smoothly. My voice hovered on indifferent, teetering into nonchalance as though Silas hadn’t just witnessed me tunnel my way through layers he probably shouldn’t even know existed.
He didn’t break eye contact with me.
His stare wasn’t predatory like so many of the others stuck here would have given — trying to look me up and down, trying to sleuth out something about me they didn’t understand. He was cooler, quieter, and more efficient, as though taking everything in without trying to accuse outright.
“You’ve been spending some time down there,” he observed, shifting closer to my seat but not invading my space overtly, staying close enough, though, that I could feel the air thin around us. “Traffic’s cleaner. Bottlenecks are starting to get… dealt with.”
Silence.
Pressure.
Not an accusation.
A question.
I shrugged noncommittally and turned back to my terminal, summoning a mock surface-level screen on my display that somewhat matched what I should have been working on.
“That’s what you do.” I countered mildly, tossing just a hint of annoyance into my voice, as if it was beneath me to be questioned on my actual work. “You want flow to be good, you eliminate whatever is causing a snag.”
The pause behind me was deliberate … deliberately quiet.
“You know,” he started suddenly, voice dropping an octave, chilling but quieter than it had been before, lazy like he wasn’t even trying to conceal the warning that threaded through it. “Sometimes when something’s that bogged up, it means someone’s been messing with it.”
My fingers didn’t pause, but my mind froze on that statement.
Here.
Maybe Silas had caught wind of the breach. Maybe he was here for me.
“What do you think?” I asked quietly, already turning back towards my seat, angle adjusted so I could watch him too, while I decided if I needed to start covering my tracks. “You haven’t seen anything you shouldn’t have?”
Silence.
Pressure.
He knew. So did I.
Knowing Silas as I did, though, I should have expected him to brush off the comment and move on, letting me know he was there without putting me on alert. Hell, I should have known better than to think he hadn’t suspected long before I noticed the subtle change in atmosphere myself.
Instead, he smirked.
“Smart mouth.” He drawled low, gaze sweeping down over my entire frame while I held his gaze like I hadn’t just potentially given myself away. “Don’t ever mistake that for courage.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, but I didn’t look away. I stayed still.
Silence hung between us for long moments, and I half expected Silas to push, to prod at me further, make me give more away just because he could.
He didn’t.
“You have fun.” That was all he said, matter-of-factly. But there was an undercurrent thrumming just below his words that didn’t sound like advice.
His footsteps faded.
But I didn’t relax my posture. Didn’t let my guard down. Instead, I stayed frozen for a long moment longer, my blank gaze fixed on my empty screen and knowing exactly what had changed when we were alone in that room.
Someone was watching.
Silas wasn’t hovering around Ironhand like he usually did, clicking his tongue about security and trying to rally the weakest of the place to do better.
He was watching me … as in specifically targeting my movements, tracing my steps, taking an active interest in where I went and what I did. And if Silas was paying that kind of attention to me? It wasn’t because he liked what he saw. It was because he knew there was more.
Avoiding Aiden became impossible the second Silas started watching me.
The system tightened, routes overlapped more than they should have, and suddenly every task I touched seemed to intersect with his.
It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t bad timing.
It was the reality of both of us operating in the same space while the walls started closing in, forcing proximity whether we wanted it or not.
I spotted him before he acknowledged me, standing at the far end of a supply lane I’d just been redirected into, his presence as controlled and deliberate as ever. He didn’t move out of the way. Didn’t shift like someone trying to avoid a collision.
He waited. Of course he did.
I kept walking.
If he thought I was going to step around him, give him space, make this easier, he was out of his fucking mind. The distance between us closed fast, tension building with every step until there wasn’t room left for anything except the reality of him standing right in front of me.
We didn’t speak.
The air between us felt heavier than it should have, loaded with everything we hadn’t said, everything we refused to resolve.
My shoulder brushed his as I passed, not accidental, not gentle either, just enough contact to acknowledge exactly what this was without turning it into something anyone else could question.
His hand moved as if to stop me. He didn’t.
I didn’t look back. Didn’t slow down. But I felt him.
Felt the way his attention tracked me, the way his presence lingered even after I put distance between us.
Anger still burned under my skin from the last time we’d been alone, from everything he said, everything he didn’t say, everything he thought he still had the right to control.
And underneath that? Something worse.
Because no matter how much I wanted to stay pissed, wanted to hold onto that anger and let it anchor me, my body hadn’t forgotten him. It reacted whether I wanted it to or not, every forced interaction tightening that line between us instead of easing it.
Neither of us apologized. Neither of us backed down.
We just kept moving through the same space … like we weren’t one bad moment away from losing control again.
I kept moving, kept my pace steady as I cleared the corridor and slipped back into the noise of Ironhand like nothing had just happened.
It should’ve been easy to reset. That was the point of control, of discipline, of keeping everything compartmentalized so nothing bled where it wasn’t supposed to. The mission sat exactly where it needed to.
The intel I’d pulled still burned sharp in the back of my mind, numbers lined up in ways that confirmed this was bigger than a fight ring, bigger than anything I’d originally signed up for. That should’ve been enough to keep me locked in, focused, untouchable. It wasn’t.
Because no matter how cleanly I shifted my attention back to work, no matter how hard I forced myself to stay inside Lena Gray and everything that identity required, there was still a part of me that hadn’t disengaged from him.
It lingered in the edges, in the way my body stayed just a little too aware of his presence even when he wasn’t in front of me, in the way every forced interaction seemed to echo longer than it should have.
I didn’t need him.
That truth sat solid, unshakable, built from two years of learning exactly how to function without him, how to survive without depending on someone who could disappear without warning, leaving me to deal with the fallout alone.
I’d built something for myself inside that absence. Strength, control, independence that didn’t rely on anyone else making the right call for me. I wasn’t giving that up.
Not for him. Not for what we used to be.
But knowing that didn’t stop the reaction.
Didn’t stop the way my pulse shifted every time he stepped too close, or the way my focus fractured for half a second when his voice cut through the noise, or the way my body betrayed me in those moments where proximity turned into something heavier than it had any right to be.
I hated that part.
Hated that after everything, after the anger and the betrayal and the fact that he’d made a choice that rewrote everything between us, there was still something there that responded without permission.
It wasn’t weakness. It wasn’t dependence. But it wasn’t nothing either. And that was the problem.
Because I could tell myself all day that I didn’t need Aiden, that I didn’t want him, that I wasn’t going to let him back into anything that mattered, but the truth sat under all of that, quieter, harder to ignore the longer I stayed in the same space as him.
I didn’t need him.
I couldn’t stop reacting to him.
And in a place like this, where every reaction could get you noticed, could get you killed, that wasn’t just inconvenient.
It was dangerous.