Chapter 7 – Damon （February 11）
The data stream on my monitor is a waterfall of numbers and code, but my eyes keep drifting to the small window in the bottom right corner. It’s not a security feed or a bank transfer log. It’s a biometric readout from the smartwatch Demi let me sync to my system yesterday.
She’s sitting at a desk in a climate-controlled office, likely filing papers or typing up memos for that idiot Gary, yet her body is reacting like she’s in a firefight.
"She’s redlining," I murmur, tapping the screen.
Andre looks up from the kitchen island where he’s cleaning his Glock for the third time today. "Trouble?"
"Internal," I tell him, leaning back in my chair and rubbing my eyes behind my glasses. "Her stress levels have been spiking all day. Every time she has to interact with Thorne or even just be in that building, her physiology goes haywire. She’s holding it together, but the pressure is building. If she goes into the party like this, she’s going to crack. "
Marcus walks in from the balcony, tossing a stress ball in the air. "So we go get her. Distract her." He grins, that wicked, dimpled grin that usually works on everyone. "I can think of a few ways to lower her stress."
I shake my head. "No. Andre and you... your energy is high voltage. You amp her up. Right now, she needs a ground wire."
I stand up, grabbing my laptop bag and a thermal container of the soup I made for lunch earlier. "I’m going to meet her when she clocks out. Alone."
Andre frowns, his possessive streak flaring. "You sure that’s a good idea? She’s still skittish. Showing up in her area may make it worse."
"That’s exactly why I’m going," I say calmly. "She expects you to try and dominate the situation, Andre. She expects Marcus to try and seduce her out of it. She needs to know she can just... be. Without performing. Without fighting."
Andre holds my gaze for a long moment, then nods once, sharp and decisive.
I find her on a bench along the Embarcadero, huddled inside her trench coat against the biting wind coming off the bay.
The Bay Bridge lights are just starting to flicker on, cutting through the twilight gloom, but Demi isn't looking at the view. She’s staring at her hands, her knuckles white as she grips a paper coffee cup like it’s a lifeline.
She looks small. That’s the first thing that hits me. Blue is usually so large, her personality, her defiance, her sheer presence fills whatever room she’s in. But here, stripped of the Sapphire glam and the Blue armor, wearing the drab Martha costume, she looks like she’s disappearing.
I sit down next to her but don't touch her and don't say hello. I just sit, letting my presence register in her periphery. She jumps slightly, her head snapping toward me. Behind those thick, smudge-prone glasses, her fake brown eyes are wide and haunted.
"Damon," she breathes, her shoulders dropping an inch. "What are you doing here?"
"Your heart rate has been over a hundred for six hours," I say quietly, looking out at the water. "I figured you forgot to eat."
I reach into my bag and pull out the thermos and a spoon. I unscrew the lid, the steam rising in the cold air, smelling of roasted tomato and basil.
"Soup?"
She stares at the thermos like it’s an alien artifact. Then a small, watery laugh escapes her lips. "You tracked my biometrics and brought me soup? You’re like a terrifyingly competent grandmother."
"I prefer 'logistical support specialist'," I tease, handing her the spoon. "Eat. Your blood sugar is crashing."
She takes the thermos, her fingers brushing mine. Her skin is ice cold. She takes a sip, then another, and I watch as the color slowly starts to return to her cheeks. We sit in silence for a while, the sounds of the city traffic behind us and the waves lapping against the pier below.
"I saw her today," Demi says suddenly, her voice low. "Thorne. She was laughing about some settlement she had to pay out. She called the victims 'statistical anomalies.'"
I turn to look at her. The rage is there, simmering under the surface, but it’s brittle, fragile.
"She’s a monster, Blue. We know that."
"It’s not just that she’s a monster," she whispers, setting the soup down on the bench. She wraps her arms around herself. "It’s that she’s.
.. normal. She goes to lunch. She talks about her Pilates class.
She has pictures of her nieces on her desk.
She destroys lives with a signature, and then she goes home and sleeps soundly. "
She looks up at me, and the pain in her eyes feels like a physical weight in my chest.
"When my mom was sick," she continues, the words tumbling out now that the dam has broken.
"It wasn't just that Lamott jacked up the cost of her medicine or Hensley denied the insurance claim.
Thorne came after us for the medical bills we couldn't pay.
I had to take my mother home to our shitty apartment because we couldn't pay the hospital anymore.
Thorne bought that debt from the hospital and sent debt collectors after us.
They threatened us, told my mom she was guilty of fraud and that they would take us to court. "
I clench my jaw, a cold fury settling in my gut. I knew the broad strokes of the debt, the death, but the cruelty of the details... it paints a picture of a woman who doesn't just deserve to be robbed. She deserves to be dismantled.
"My mother died thinking she was a criminal," Demi says, a tear slipping out from under the ugly glasses. "She died terrified that they were going to take me to jail because she couldn't pay. That’s what Aris Thorne did. She stole my mother’s peace in her final days."
I reach out then, covering her cold hands with mine. I don't try to fix it or offer platitudes. I just try to be an anchor for her.
"Then we take her peace," I say steadily. "We don't just take her money, Demi. We take her reputation. We take her legacy. We strip her bare and leave her with nothing but the truth of what she is."
She looks at me, searching my face. "You really mean that, don't you? This isn't just a job for you anymore."
"It never has been just a job. You think Andre and Damon are the intense ones? You haven't seen me when someone hurts what’s mine."
Her breath hitches at the word mine, but she doesn't pull away.
"I built something for you," I say, shifting the mood before it gets too heavy for her to handle. I pull my laptop out of the bag and wake it up.
"For me?"
"For the heist." I turn the screen toward her. It’s a complex schematic of the Heart-Box’s digital architecture.
"I’ve been running simulations on the prototype specs you obtained.
By the way, that's pretty impressive that you managed to get them and someday you'll have to tell me how you did it.
Anyway, the internal processor has a flaw.
It creates a temporary cache file every time it runs a scan. "
Demi leans in, her Martha persona falling away as her hacker brain engages. "A cache file? Can we exploit it?"
"We can," I point to a line of code I’ve highlighted in green.
"I wrote a script. If you plug into the maintenance port, this script will flood the cache with dummy data.
It forces the system to reboot into diagnostic mode.
In diagnostic mode, the biometric requirements are suspended for thirty seconds. "
She looks at the code, her eyes darting back and forth. "Thirty seconds? That’s tight."
"It’s tight," I agree. "But it bypasses the need for Thorne’s eyeball. You just need to be plugged in."
She looks up at me, and for the first time all day, there’s a genuine smile on her face. It’s sharp, dangerous, and beautiful.
"You built me a skeleton key," she breathes. "This is a game changer."
"I built you a sword, a tool for your mission. But you’re the one who has to swing it."
She closes the laptop and hands it back to me. Then, she does something that surprises me. She leans forward and rests her forehead against my shoulder.
"Thank you, Damon," she whispers. "Not just for the code. For... listening. For the soup."
I rest my cheek against the top of her wig, wishing I could feel her real hair, but content to just hold her for a moment in the wind.
"We’re a team, Blue," I say softly. "At least we want to be. Andre can be your muscle. Marcus is the distraction. I’m the structure. And you..."
"What am I?" she asks, pulling back slightly to look at me.
"You’re the heart," I say. "You’re the reason we’re doing this. You're the reason we want to do this. Don't forget that. We can handle the logistics. We can handle the danger. You just keep that fire burning."
She nods, taking a deep, steadying breath. The frantic, redlining biometrics I saw on my screen earlier are gone, replaced by a calm, cold determination.
"I’m ready," she says. "Let’s go back to the house. I want to see the boys. And I think I’m ready for that briefing."
I smile, packing up the thermos. "Let’s go home."
As we walk back to the car, she slips her hand into mine.
It’s a small gesture, tentative, but it feels like a victory greater than any safe we could ever crack.
We’re not just planning a heist anymore.
We’re building a foundation for our future while we destroy the foundation that Aris Thorne has built her empire on.