Chapter 11 Erryn
ERRYN
We arrived at the hotel later than I would have liked, and I was silently desperate to get out of my heels and rest my hip.
It had taken longer than anticipated to go through Boucher’s files and make additional requests of Artemis, and by the time we reached the accommodation Ben had arranged, even Helena had gone quiet.
Not her watchful silence. It felt…frayed in a way I couldn’t explain.
She had said very little in the car, and it was irritating me that I was spending more time pondering her mental state than on work.
The room itself was aggressively Parisian. Intimate, one could say.
It was a two-bedroom apartment with one shared bathroom, exposed beams painted cream, herringbone parquet floors, soft gold lighting, and velvet armchairs in a muted emerald.
An ornate, gilded lounge table was currently repurposed as my desk, and tall, narrow windows were dressed in heavy linen curtains that filtered the city noise to a dull hum.
Helena had muttered something about it being “charming” before disappearing into the bathroom with clipped movements and a tension I hadn’t seen in her before. The shower started almost immediately.
I ordered food the moment the door shut behind us—I had no intention of putting my shoes back on until morning. The more I looked into the reports Artemis had forwarded to me, the more I had to admit that it was less a lapse in her management and more a systems failure that had caused the breach.
The architecture Boucher had signed off on was outdated.
Layered systems that appeared impressive on paper but collapsed under sustained pressure.
Patches had been half-integrated. Alerts routed through unnecessary chains of approval, and the subsequent delays created weak points.
Artemis had flagged these weaknesses months ago, and from what I could see, she was being stonewalled at every turn.
I leaned back slightly in the plush armchair, scrolling through the timestamped requests she had submitted. Proposals for new integrations, structural tightening, and independent authorization on rapid-response protocols. All denied, deferred, and not once forwarded to the Head by Boucher.
The apartment was quiet apart from the soft hum of the heating and the distant rush of water from the bathroom. Steam curled faintly under the door. I ignored it, eyes tracking the breach reports again, and trying not to think about what was going on behind that door.
Artemis had responded quickly when the intrusion began and contained the spread within eighteen minutes. Compromised nodes were isolated and internal comms shut down before the leak could reach beyond Paris.
I exhaled slowly, tapping a key to bring up the recovery timeline.
She had already begun rebuilding the network in segments, rerouting data through temporary secure channels while waiting for formal authority to implement permanent changes, but was repeatedly blocked.
Boucher should have formalized her position years ago, and I now knew why he hadn’t.
The fucker knew who was actually running Paris, and he was clinging to the last shreds of his control.
I should have seen this coming.
The shower cut off abruptly, and I listened to the sounds of Helena moving around, the door opening a moment later.
It took every shred of my self-control to keep my expression impassive as Helena walked out wrapped in only a white towel that barely came down far enough to cover her arse.
Her long hair was loose and hanging in damp curls down her back as she padded to the room the bellhop had put her bags in, leaving wet footprints on the ground and the scent of soap in her wake.
I closed my eyes as her door snicked shut, then let out a long breath.
I had more control than this. I had to have more control than this.
I tried to concentrate on my screen, reading and taking in none of it as her door opened again and she wandered out wearing sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, her hair in a long braid that left wet patches down her back.
She still didn’t say a word as she moved around the apartment, checking windows that I had already secured and seeming to be content with the internal lock on the front door.
“Not going to request a full security overhaul on this one then?” I asked as the silence stretched on.
“It’s adequate for temporary accommodation,” she replied, plopping down on the long couch that had an exorbitant number of cushions.
“It’s also not listed as the residence of the Chair of London’s faction in leaked information.
” She threw me a sidelong glance, and I huffed softly, my gaze lingering on her as I noticed lines of exhaustion around her eyes that were not usually there.
“Are you feeling well?” I asked.
She frowned. “—yes?”
I hummed, turning back to my work. Helena settled against the arm of the couch as she scrolled on her phone, the lovely shade of her skin so striking against the emerald fabric.
It made her eyes look even more green in the brief glimpses I had of them.
She yawned unabashedly after a while, her whole body seeming to slowly relax into the chair.
“It’s only 2100hrs Rossi,” I murmured as her phone began to tilt. “Am I keeping you awake?”
She blinked rapidly, flashing me a reproachful look as she focused back on her phone, muttering something under her breath.
“I missed whatever bratty comment that was,” I said, not looking at her.
“I said”—she gave me a dark look—“not tonight, you won’t.”
I looked at her in confusion. “Are you trying to insinuate I did last night?” Images of what I had done to myself the previous night flashed through my mind, and I pushed them quickly away. I hadn’t been loud, and there was an entire floor between our rooms.
“I told you to go to your room,” I said coolly as I leveled a look at her.
“I did,” she bit back. “But as I have already pointed out, the elevator is a weak point in your security, and if I couldn’t eyeball it myself, I had to keep an eye on the damn security system.”
I blinked at her again.
“The entire night?”
“Yes,” she snapped. And I could see it now, the exhaustion weighing her down.
A soft knock on the door broke the tension, startling us both.
“Dinner,” I said, standing and waving a hand at Helena to stay seated as I went to the door and accepted the food from the concierge.
I carried everything into the little kitchen-dining room, which was more for show than function.
The table was barely large enough for two people, but it would do for the rushed meal I’d planned.
Garlic-rich steam curled from the containers as I unpacked them, then pulled out a chair, sat, and started unwrapping my own portion while scrolling through emails on my phone.
Helena joined me a moment later, gingerly opening a container and eyeing the contents.
I didn’t notice at first. I was halfway through breaking a piece of bread, dipping it absently into the sauce, when I glanced up and saw her rearranging her food. Sliding things apart with surgical precision. Scraping sauce off one piece, moving vegetables to the side.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“No.” Her head snapped up, eyes flashing and a faint flush creeping up her neck.
“It doesn’t look like no.”
“It’s fine.” She took a small bite, chewed, swallowed. Her jaw flexed with effort, then she returned to rearranging the food.
“It’s coq au vin,” I offered.
She nodded, scraping sauce off a chunk of carrot before putting it in her mouth without looking at me once.
“You don’t have to eat it,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her as I tried to figure out what the issue was.
She shook her head once. “I’m starving.”
“Then what’s the—”
“It’s touching,” she blurted. “It’s all touching. It’s wet, and the sauce is on everything. The textures are all…mixy, and I can’t see the chicken.”
“It’s…stew,” I said haltingly.
“I know that, Lox!” She glared at me, and I kept trying to read the situation.
“It’s touching?”
“Yes!” she bit back.
I thought back to her tray and the small plates she had used in the airport lounge—all separated. The meals at my home where I had watched her push food around her plate before eating…Fuck, am I really this unobservant?
“I’m not a freak,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t accuse you of being one,” I said, pulling my phone out and bringing up the app I had used to order the food. I made a few more selections, typed the requirements in the allergens box, then checked out.
“You are running on fumes. Go lie down and sleep,” I said. “Leave the food, I have replacements coming.”
It was her turn to blink at me. “What?”
“It will be an hour,” I said. “And I will be up reviewing the files until then. Go sleep, I will let you know when your food arrives.”
She didn’t move, her eyes flicking from my face to my phone and back again in confusion.
“I had a sister once,” I said quietly. I didn’t know why I was sharing this with her, but I didn’t like the defensiveness hardening her features. “She had ARFID, and I know it’s not the same, but I don’t think you are a freak. Go lie down, Helena. It’s not a request.”
A look of surprise crossed her face, but she hid it quickly, watching me for a long moment before getting up and heading to her room. I finished my dinner in silence, clearing away the containers and making myself a tea before heading back to my laptop to continue work.
Helena hadn’t closed her door. She had done exactly as I asked, lying sprawled across her bed, her face turned away from me, her long, slow breaths telling me she was already fast asleep.
I shouldn’t have wanted to touch her as badly as I did in that moment.
To see if her skin was as soft as it looked, and if her compliance extended to the bedroom as I’d imagined it might from the brief glimpses I had seen.
Such a dichotomous little heathen, and entirely too tempting.