Three Justice
THREE
Justice
Fury lances down my spine as I watch the car vanish down the gravel drive, taillights bouncing like they’re mocking me. How the hell did I let her get away again?
Ella Rendale is too damn clever, too fast, and too fucking cute for her own good.
She thinks I want her dead. I should. Except I don’t. I want to trap her at my house in the woods and have her sing. Talk. Joke. Hum. Any sound out of her magical mouth.
I’m not good. But I’m not evil either. I don’t like the idea of killing a sprite. Not even a volatile one with champagne on her lips and code in her blood. However, I’ll do my job and lock her down to protect my brother.
Right now, I want her under me. For an entire night. One good night to fuck her out of my system is all I need. And I’ll get it.
I turn and head back through the trail. Brambles slice at my pants and dirt sticks to my boots. My mood doesn’t improve. Then I see something in the mud.
Sparkles against the sludge.
I take three more steps and find her heel—citrine-stoned with the spiked heel half hanging off as if it snapped when she was running.
I pick it up and laugh under my breath. Of course it’s hers.
No one else would weaponize jewelry and sabotage in the same night.
I keep moving, brush the worst of the forest off my clothes, push open the door, and step back inside.
That’s when he hits me.
Not physically. Vocally.
One of the IT techs, some kid in a suit too expensive for his social skills, steps directly into my path. “Mr. Beathach,” he says, too loud, too sharp, too wrong.
His voice scrapes through my nerves and explodes in my elbow like a sucker punch of cold pressure.
I bite back a grimace, rolling the joint once like I’m adjusting a cufflink instead of trying to force sensation back into the limb.
Every word this guy says feels like sandpaper grinding bone, and unfortunately, affects me physically.
“We had a woman come into the tent. She typed something into the system, and the guys think it was just a change to the music. I’m not sure. ”
I nod. “Do a deeper dive and then send me the logs.” His instincts are good, but I doubt he’ll uncover what Ella did. She’s too good. I’ll check it out later. It’s not like I haven’t hacked into Aquarius Social before.
He hesitates, clearly wanting to keep talking. I narrow my eyes. He gets the message and clears out.
Inside, the ballroom looks unchanged. Champagne pours. Music flows. I spot Thorn near the cake table, surrounded by men in suits who pretend not to carry knives. He turns the second I approach. “What was that?”
I lift a shoulder and keep my voice low so his bride doesn’t hear. “Best guess? Ella hacked into the servers.”
His gaze sharpens, and the air tightens. “Should we shut it all down?”
“Not yet,” I say. “I’ll dig later to see what I can find. She’d never hurt Alana, so I’m not horribly worried.” Curious, though.
Alana appears beside him, fingertips brushing his arm, and effectively halts our conversation. She leans in and whispers something. He bends his head to listen.
I watch. The moment is private, and I shouldn’t care, but I do. There’s something in that kind of closeness that makes the rest of the room feel fake.
Alana looks at me, soft and confident, like she sees more than she should. “That was a lovely speech, Justice. I have to tell you, I’ve missed my brother so since his untimely death. It’s nice to have a brother again.”
I exhale. Some of the fire in my chest cools. That’s Alana’s gift. Her voice lands like a feather. No bruising. No sparks. It doesn’t hurt to listen to her. “I’m proud to be your brother.” It’s true. I’d easily die for her … and now kill for her, if necessary.
Ella, though?
Her voice ensnares and caresses, and I’d love to have her mouth around me. Can already see it in my mind. I feel the broken heel in my hand. The citrines on the shoe hum in my pocket, and I don’t have a connection to citrines. But she does, and I sense it.
Alana moves to speak to other friends, and bodyguards shift positions subtly in every corner of the room.
Thorn looks around, back to business. “Should I be concerned about Beaumont’s servers?”
“No.” I follow his gaze, scanning the ballroom. The security’s solid, the perimeter holds, but I can still feel the static under my skin. Ella’s out there. Loose. Brilliant. Unstable.
“I love Alana,” Thorn says, and his voice drops just slightly when he adds, “She’s mine. And her father does own this company.”
“I’ll look into it,” I say. “You’ve earned this six-week honeymoon. You need to take it.”
His brow creases deeper. The scar down the side of his face tightens when he frowns like that. It runs from temple to jaw, a permanent reminder of our difficult childhood. It makes him look just as deadly as I know him to be. “I don’t know,” he says. “If something’s going on …”
“No,” I cut in. “I’ve got it. I can charge our servers, run Malice Media, and handle our people. Seriously. Go.”
He watches me. I feel him weighing it, the responsibility, the risk. Then he says, “I know you’re capable. But if we’re facing another attack …”
I shake my head. “Why? Ella doesn’t want you dead. Not any longer.”
Thorn snorts. “Maybe not me, but she looked ready to spit fire when you made her dance earlier. She might want you drowning in your own blood right now.”
That makes me laugh. “Yeah. She might.”
“I don’t want to harm Alana’s best friend,” he says, softer now. His gaze drifts to where she ran. “But if Ella keeps pushing, someone’s going to get hurt.”
“I’ll handle it,” I say. “She won’t get near to hacking our servers.”
Not again. Somehow she snuck code into the garnets and infected our entire platform with a computer virus.
When Thorn laid his hands on the crystal to charge the system, he caught the virus and started to freeze from the inside.
The thing morphed from energy to rewriting him.
She didn’t create it, but she managed to get it uploaded. The code almost killed him.
She didn’t mean to nearly murder him. At least, that’s what she said. She also assisted in bringing him back from the edge and helped us find a way to undo the damage.
That doesn’t make her safe. She could still cause damage if she chooses.
Thorn’s attention shifts to Alexei Solokov, who is dancing with Rosalie Mooncrest, Alana’s other best friend. The Russian moves like a panther on a leash, his gaze always somewhere else, like the music is just an excuse to stay within striking distance.
Thorn doesn’t say it, but I can feel the thought between us.
Alana’s best friends are ticking clocks. Brilliant. Dangerous. If either Ella or Rosalie gets hurt, we’re the ones who will bleed.
I know something else, too. Ella is a threat. A beautiful, burning threat with code in her blood and secrets in her eyes. But God help me, after her voice rippled beneath my skin, I don’t want her erased.
I want her under control.
If I have to lock her down myself, I will.
I don’t want to go to war with Alexei. Which might happen if I take Ella away from here. Or … maybe not. Maybe he’ll be grateful that I took care of the threat and he can still appear innocent to his woman. Well, as innocent as he can seem. Hard to tell with him.
Those three women—Ella, Alana, Rosalie—they’re tight. They’re twisted into each other’s lives like rope. If I hurt Ella, even by accident, it won’t just be Alexei who wants my head.
Alana will come for me.
Rosalie, too.
Which means my brother’s life gets caught in the fallout.
“Leave Ella to me,” I say, and I mean it.
Thorn knows me better than anyone else walking this planet. He looks at me like he’s reading more than I want him to. “Are you interested in her?”
“God. No.” The denial comes out too fast. Too sharp. I clear my throat. “Yes, she’s beautiful and brilliant. But so is the black widow spider.”
He doesn’t say a word. Just raises one brow.
So I shut up.
He really does need a vacation, and I need him gone so I can figure out what the hell is going on with my health and the fucking garnet that seems just fine running our servers now.
No longer diseased, which confuses me since I’m definitely having issues.
With him out of the way, I have options.
I can take Ella out of play. Quietly. I’ll handle it myself.
I won’t risk someone else screwing it up.
I don’t want the blowback to touch Thorn. I can live with Alana hating me. I can live with Rosalie’s fury. I can even live with Alexei sending his entire organization after me.
But I can’t live with letting anything harm my brother.
I can have Ella dropped on an island in the middle of nowhere with no signal, no server, no keyboard, no power grid. Just sun, water, and books. She’ll have to take up reading. Gardening. Maybe swimming.
The image of her on a beach clicks through my brain. Her bare feet in the sand. Her skin golden under the sun. Naked. Wild hair down her back. No phones. No firewalls. Just Ella skinny-dipping at night.
My whole body tightens instantly.
I shift my stance and clench my jaw.
This is a problem.
A real one.