Chapter 52 Parker
PARKER
Idon’t remember getting into the SUV.
One moment I’m screaming, fighting against Jace’s hold as they carry me away from Silas. The next I’m in the back seat, Jace on one side, Cal on the other, and there’s a sharp pinch in my arm.
Cal’s voice, soft and apologetic. “I’m sorry, angel. You need to calm down before you hurt yourself.”
The world goes fuzzy around the edges. Not gone, just... muted. Like someone turned down the volume on everything.
I’m not sure if I’m numb because of whatever Cal injected me with or because I just watched the man I love trade himself to save us.
Probably both.
My hands are still covered in Silas’s blood. It’s dried now, cracking across my palms, under my fingernails. I should wash it off. Should care that I’m covered in blood.
I don’t.
Jace is holding my hand. Has been since they put me in the vehicle. His thumb stroking over my knuckles in slow, steady circles. Cal has his arm around my shoulders, his other hand at the back of my neck, fingers gently massaging the tension there.
They’re trying to hold me together.
I’m not sure it’s working.
Outside the window, mountains blur past. We’re driving fast, taking curves too sharp, but I don’t care where we’re going. Don’t care about anything except the image burned into my brain.
Silas on the floor. Blood everywhere. Looking at me with those grey eyes that I’ve loved since I was old enough to understand what love was.
Telling me to go.
My phone rings. Charles answers it, puts it on speaker.
“Parker?” Sienna’s voice. “Honey, are you okay?”
I can’t look away from the window long enough to answer. Can barely process that she’s talking to me.
“The boys are fine,” Sienna continues, her voice gentle. “They’re playing with Jimmy and Lottie. They don’t know anything’s wrong. I told them you had to team up with the guys for a work thing. They bought it completely.”
That breaks through the fog slightly. My boys. Noah and Liam. They’re safe. They don’t know.
Some of the weight on my chest lifts. Not much. But enough that I can breathe slightly easier.
“Parker, sweetheart, talk to me.” That’s my mother’s voice now. “Please say something so I know you’re okay.”
I press myself harder into Jace’s side. His arm tightens around me.
“She’s here, Mom,” Charles says. “She’s just...processing.”
“Processing,” I repeat, and my voice sounds hollow even to my own ears. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Parker—” our mom starts.
“The boys are safe,” I interrupt. “That’s all that matters.”
It’s a lie. The boys being safe matters, but it’s not all that matters. Silas matters. Getting him back matters.
But I can’t say that with my mother on the phone. Can’t fall apart again when I’ve barely pulled myself back together.
“We’ll call you back,” Charles says, ending the call before Mom can respond.
Silence fills the SUV. Just the sound of tires on asphalt, the engine, breathing.
“Where are we going?” I finally ask.
“Safe house,” Charles says from the front seat. “About forty minutes outside the city. Secure location. We can regroup, figure out our next move.”
Next move. Like Silas is a chess piece that we can strategize around instead of a person. A man who just sacrificed himself.
For us.
For me.
The numbness is starting to wear off. I can feel it. The edges of panic are creeping back in, and the grief is trying to claw its way up my throat.
Cal’s hand tightens on my neck. “Breathe, angel. Just breathe.”
I breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
It doesn’t help.
The safe house is a cabin. Isolated. Surrounded by trees. The kind of place you could scream and no one would hear you.
I don’t scream.
I sit on the couch in the living room and stare at nothing while the men move around me. Setting up equipment. Making calls. Planning.
I can hear them in the dining room. Charles, Cal, Jace. Marcus and the team leads. Rodriguez. Chen. Williams. All of Silas’s people. The men who worked under him, who followed his orders, who respected him.
They’re talking strategy. Talking about what Aria did, how she did it, and what systems she compromised.
Cal’s voice is tight with frustration. “She cloned both Charles’s and my devices simultaneously. Got access to our security protocols, our encryption keys, everything. It’s sophisticated work. Military-grade technology applied to civilian systems.”
“Can you reverse it?” Charles asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I need to analyze exactly what she did, how she structured the access, and where the vulnerabilities are. But it’s going to take time.”
“We don’t have time,” Jace says. “Every minute Silas is with her is another minute she’s working on him. Breaking him down. Turning him into whatever she wants him to be.”
“He won’t break,” Marcus says firmly. “Silas Vale doesn’t break.”
“Everyone breaks eventually,” Charles says quietly. “Given enough time, enough pressure, enough leverage.”
The conversation continues, but I stop listening. Stop trying to process their words.
Because I know something they don’t.
I know exactly what Aria did. Not just conceptually. Technically.
Cal taught me systems architecture before I left. Taught me how to build security protocols, how to identify vulnerabilities, and how to think like a hacker. But that was six years ago. Technology has evolved. Changed. Become more sophisticated.
So, I continued to teach myself. Late nights in California after the boys went to bed, I’d study. Learn new programming languages. New encryption methods. New ways to protect systems and new ways to break them.
Because I knew someday I’d come back. Knew I’d need those skills to survive in this world.
I stand up. Walk toward the dining room where they’re still talking.
The moment I appear in the doorway, they all go quiet. Looking at me like I might shatter if they speak too loudly.
“Show me,” I say to Cal.
“Show you what?” he asks carefully.
“What Aria did. The systems she compromised. The access protocols. Show me.”
Cal exchanges a glance with Charles. “Parker, you should rest. We’ve got this.”
“Show me,” I repeat.
“Angel, you’ve been through a lot,” Cal says. “You need to take care of yourself. Let us handle...”
I move to where Cal’s sitting with his laptop open, ignoring his default setting he, Jace, and…Silas…call protecting me. Various screens displaying code, system logs, access records.
I sit on his lap and take over the laptop.
“Parker—” Cal starts.
I ignore him and start scrolling through the code Aria left behind. Reading the structure, the logic, the elegant brutality of what she built.
“What are you doing?” Jace asks.
I don’t answer, too focused on the screen. On the patterns emerging. The way Aria structured her access, the backdoors she created, and the kill switch protocol. It’s impressive.
Really fucking impressive.
“Parker, you need to rest,” Charles says. “We’ll come up with a plan. You don’t need to—”
Cal tries to slide the laptop away from me, and I slap his hand away without breaking my eyes away.
“Parker,” Jace says, his voice gentle. “Talk to us.”
“I’m working,” I say, my fingers already flying across the keyboard. Pulling up command lines, accessing system architecture, tracing Aria’s digital fingerprints.
“You need to—” Charles starts.
“If you’d actually done what you said you were going to do—what you’ve been bragging about for months—and actually kept us all safe and got her out of here, we wouldn’t be dealing with this,” I say, still focused on the screen.
“And maybe Silas would never have been forced into Aria’s hands in the first place.
But instead, you gave her time, access, and a reason to escalate.
Everything you did—and didn’t do—helped push her here. So stop telling me what I need to do.”
“Parker—” Charles tries again.
“Shut up,” I say. “I’m fixing this.”
My fingers move faster now. Pulling apart Aria’s code, understanding her logic, seeing where she was brilliant and where she got sloppy.
Because she did get sloppy. Just a little. I’ll let her know later.
She was so focused on getting access that she didn’t fully secure her own backdoors. Didn’t anticipate someone coming behind her with the knowledge to dismantle what she built.
Oh, how vanity and pride blind the gifted. It’s so cliche it’s almost sad, but I start building. New security protocols. New encryption layers. Closing the doors Aria opened and locking them so tight that even God himself would need a battering ram to get through.
“What are you doing?” Cal asks, leaning over my shoulder to see the screen.
“Fixing your mistake,” I say.
“Angel, that’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” I pull up another command line. “You’re supposed to be the tech genius. The one who sees everything. And you missed her completely. Missed that Dominic’s trophy wife was actually capable of sophisticated cyber warfare.”
“We all missed her,” Charles says.
“Yeah, well, congratulations. Your collective misogyny cost us Silas.” My voice cracks on his name, but I push through it. Keep typing. Keep building.
The code flows out of me. Just because I mastered in one subject doesn’t mean I have only one path in business. It’s never too late to learn new things because as you live on and the world advances, not learning new skills could get you killed.
I build walls. Digital fortresses. Encryption so complex it would take quantum computing years to crack.
And then I go deeper into Aria’s backdoors. Into her access points. And I don’t just close them, I turn them into traps.
Anyone trying to use the access Aria created will trigger alerts and will find themselves traced, tracked, and their systems compromised in return.
“Parker, what...” Cal’s voice trails off as he watches the screen. “How are you doing that?”
“I’m smarter than you thought,” I say.
“I always knew you were smart. But this is...” He leans closer. “This is genius-level work.”
“Learned from the best,” I say, my fingers not stopping. “And then when you weren’t there, I taught myself.”