Chapter 13 Kimberly
KIMBERLY
The safehouse kitchen always smells faintly like instant coffee that’s been reheated too many times.
It’s late. Not midnight-late, but that heavy, off-kilter hour when your body thinks it should be sleeping and your brain is still wired on cortisol and unfinished business.
The overhead light hums with a thin, electrical whine that makes my temples ache if I pay too much attention to it, and the air feels stale, recycled through too many filters that were never meant to handle adrenaline and fear and two people who are lying to each other by omission.
Tur is standing at the counter with his back to me, disassembling and reassembling a compact pulse pistol with mechanical, unnecessary precision.
Click.
Slide.
Tap.
Lock.
Over and over.
He hasn’t looked at me since he came back from the warehouse.
I don’t raise my voice when I speak.
That’s how he knows it’s bad.
“You’re hiding something from me.”
The words land softly.
They hit anyway.
His hands pause for half a second over the weapon.
Then they keep moving.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
It’s not a good lie.
It’s not even a competent one.
I step closer.
Not into his space.
Just close enough that I can feel the faint heat coming off his body, the way the air around him always feels a degree warmer than the rest of the room, like he’s running on a different thermostat than the rest of humanity.
“You went silent after you went back to my restaurant,” I say. “Like actually silent. Not your normal broody, morally tortured Batman routine. You came back with your jaw locked and your eyes weird and you spent six hours reinforcing perimeter sensors that were already reinforced.”
Click.
Slide.
Tap.
Lock.
“Alliance pings spiked that same night,” I continue. “Not just general background noise. Actual deep-layer triangulation attempts. Ishaan confirmed it. Twice.”
His shoulders tense.
I take another step.
Still not touching him.
“You’ve been sleeping in two-hour shifts since then,” I say quietly. “You rerouted three data feeds through dead relays that don’t even exist on modern maps. And you’ve started running kill-corridor drills like you’re bracing for a siege.”
Click.
Slide.
Tap.
“You found something under my family’s foundation,” I finish.
This time, his hands stop.
The pulse pistol lies in pieces on the counter.
The room feels smaller all of a sudden.
He exhales slowly through his nose.
“I told you there was something valuable there,” he says carefully.
I feel heat bloom behind my eyes.
“That’s not an answer,” I say. “That’s a politician’s dodge wrapped in tactical jargon.”
He finally turns to face me.
His expression is tight and controlled and just barely holding together with discipline and duct tape.
“I’m not lying to you,” he says.
“You are absolutely lying to me,” I reply. “You’re just doing it by starving me of specifics instead of saying something factually untrue.”
Silence stretches between us.
The light hums.
The fridge in the corner clicks on with a low mechanical groan and then off again.
“You don’t get to decide what I can handle,” I say, my voice still quiet, still level. “That stopped being your call the moment the Nine firebombed my restaurant and the Alliance started sniffing around my life like I’m a goddamn biohazard.”
His jaw tightens.
“I’m deciding what keeps you alive.”
“That is not the same thing,” I snap.
The pulse pistol pieces rattle softly as he grips the edge of the counter.
“There is buried infrastructure under your restaurant,” he says finally. “Old. Reaper-era. Transit architecture.”
My stomach drops.
Not in a surprised way.
In a horrible, confirming way.
“I know,” I say.
His eyes flicker.
“You know.”
“I broke into municipal archives with Ishaan,” I say. “We found zoning shields, permanent tax exemptions, redevelopment vetoes written under pre-Alliance law. Someone has been protecting that address for decades.”
He stares at me.
“You did crimes without telling me,” he says flatly.
“I left you a note.”
“You left me a post-it that said ‘Doing crimes. Back soon.’”
“Again,” I say, “clear communication.”
Something sharp and humorless flashes across his face.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I absolutely should have done that,” I counter. “Because now I know my family didn’t just get unlucky. We were sitting on top of something powerful people don’t want civilians touching.”
He looks away.
Just a fraction of a second too late.
“And you found something else,” I say.
His silence is answer enough.
The heat behind my eyes turns into something molten and dangerous.
“You went down there alone,” I say. “Didn’t you.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
“You felt Alliance tracking light up and you still didn’t tell me.”
“Yes.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
“What,” I ask quietly, “did you find.”
His throat works.
“There’s a node,” he says. “A buried transit convergence hub. Not just pipes and cables. A logistical artery from a pre-Alliance network that predates modern jurisdictional maps.”
The words feel unreal.
Too big.
Too old.
Too far outside the scope of my former life, which revolved around spice orders and broken fryers and whether Mara remembered to rotate the lemons.
“Is that why the Nine are pushing so hard,” I ask. “Because they want what’s under my floor.”
“Yes.”
“And is that why the Alliance suddenly decided you were a containment breach again.”
“Yes.”
I laugh.
It comes out thin and sharp and not even remotely amused.
“So,” I say. “Let me get this straight. My grandparents accidentally built a restaurant on top of a ghost artery from a secret military transit network, the mob wants to evict me so they can dig it up, and the Alliance parked you in my city like a watchdog and never bothered to mention that part to you.”
His eyes close.
Just for a second.
“Yes.”
I take another step toward him.
Now we’re standing too close.
The air between us feels thick and electric and tight enough to snap.
“And you decided,” I say softly, “that all of this was something you could just… manage on your own.”
His eyes open again.
“I decided that telling you everything I found would make you more of a target than you already are.”
“You don’t get to make that call,” I say.
“I do when the consequence is your death.”
My laugh breaks.
“That is the same controlling bullshit in a different uniform, Tur.”
His eyes harden.
“This is not about control. This is about threat mitigation.”
“This is about you not trusting me with the truth because you’re terrified I’ll make a choice you don’t like.”
His mouth tightens.
“You are injured, hunted, and emotionally compromised.”
“Wow,” I say flatly. “You’ve really been workshopping that one, huh.”
He flinches.
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“And I am trying not to lose my entire goddamn life to men who think secrecy and violence are personality traits.”
Silence detonates between us.
We’re standing so close now I can see the faint pulse jumping in his neck.
He smells like ozone and gun oil and the industrial soap he uses because he doesn’t trust anything scented.
“Why didn’t you tell me,” I demand.
“Because you don’t know how dangerous that node is,” he snaps.
“Then explain it to me.”
“No.”
My chest tightens.
“No,” I repeat.
“Not yet.”
“Tur.”
“I don’t know yet who else is listening,” he says, his voice dropping. “I don’t know which data channels are compromised. I don’t know if the Nine already suspect what’s under there or if they’re still probing blind.”
“So you decided to make that decision alone,” I say. “Again.”
“Yes.”
“You are not the only one whose life this is going to destroy.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it.”
The argument turns sharp and intimate and too close for comfort.
“You don’t trust me,” I say.
“I trust you with your own life,” he snaps. “I don’t trust you with mine.”
I blink.
“What.”
He drags a hand down his face.
“I don’t trust myself not to become something I hate if I start making decisions with you instead of for you.”
There it is.
The real thing.
“You’re afraid of wanting something too much,” I say quietly.
“Yes.”
“You’re afraid that if you let yourself need me, you’ll turn into the monster the Alliance promised you you’d be.”
His jaw locks.
“They weren’t wrong about what I am capable of.”
“They were wrong about what that means,” I shoot back.
He steps closer without realizing it.
I don’t step back.
The air between us goes tight and loud and strange, a pressure I feel in my teeth and behind my eyes.
His hands curl into fists at his sides.
“Do not do that,” he growls.
“Do not what.”
“Do not look at me like that.”
“Like what.”
“Like you’re not afraid of me anymore.”
The words hit my chest like a hammer.
“I am afraid of you,” I say. “I’m just more afraid of what happens if you keep cutting me out of decisions that affect my life.”
Silence.
Thick.
Fragile.
He exhales shakily.
“I don’t know how to share this,” he admits. “Everything they taught me says information is leverage and leverage is survival.”
“And everything they taught you was built by people who thought cruelty was a feature, not a bug.”
His eyes flicker.
“That word,” he mutters. “You keep using it.”
“Because that’s what it was.”
We stand there, breathing hard, the distance between us like a held breath that might shatter glass.
“You don’t get to carry this alone,” I say quietly. “Not the node. Not the Nine. Not the Alliance. Not whatever nightmare scenario you’re spinning out about in your head at three in the morning.”
He swallows.
“And you don’t get to make this worse by acting like I’m a child you need to trick into safety.”
He nods once.
Sharp.
Reluctant.
“I will tell you what I found,” he says. “When I am sure it won’t get you killed faster.”
“That is not an answer I like,” I reply.
“I know.”
We don’t touch.
Neither of us backs down.
The space between us hums and crackles…with more than just our argument.