Chapter 23
Control First
Zach pulled away the moment his breathing steadied. Not because he wanted to examine what had just happened, but because distance was the first correction.
The room smelled of sex and sweat and Emma’s softer scent beneath it. Vanilla. Wood. Her hair was a dark mess around her shoulders, her skin flushed, pulse visible at her throat.
Beautiful.
He looked away. Control first. Always. That was the deal he’d made with himself years ago.
He peeled the condom off, tying it off with quick movements. “That shouldn’t have happened. You don’t understand what you’re involved with.”
The words came out flat. Measured. Exactly as he intended.
She stilled.
Good, the tactical part of his brain said. Create distance. Reestablish control. End this before it becomes something worse.
Worse was easy to define.
Worse meant attachment.
Worse meant Marcus seeing Emma as a target.
“It meant nothing.”
The lie tasted like ash. He didn’t let himself react to that either.
He’d been aware of Emma Vann from the first morning she’d walked into their boardroom back on Mimosa Cay—unhurried, self-possessed, those brown eyes cataloguing him with a frankness that made his threat assessment instincts malfunction. She’d been a variable he couldn't classify. He still couldn't.
Which was exactly the problem.
Variables you couldn’t classify were liabilities. But Emma wasn’t a liability. She was—
Stop.
He tossed the condom in the bin and reached for his pants. Waistband. Belt. Familiar sequence. Physical routine. Something concrete.
Emma stiffened. He didn’t look at her, but he felt it—the way his words hit her. The way she didn’t buckle under it.
When she looked at him, there were no tears. No trembling lip. Just the same steady, unflinching gaze that had been unraveling him since day one.
“Good.” She straightened from the wall, voice calm. “It didn’t mean anything to me either, other than a useful stress release. Thanks for that.”
Her response cut like a blade between his ribs. Clean. Deep.
Another scar on his soul.
Whatever this was—this tightening in his chest, this immediate urge to turn around and call her a liar because he knew what passed between them—he did not understand, and that made it dangerous.
He said nothing. Didn’t turn. Didn’t answer. Just pulled his shirt over his head and fastened his belt with more force than necessary.
That was better. Anger, he understood. Pride, he understood.
“This changes nothing. You stay with me. You don’t go out alone.”
Emma’s look was scathing. “I’ll stay for my own safety, not because I trust you.” She bent and gathered her clothes from the floor with efficient, unhurried movements. No dramatics. No accusation.
He could deal with anger. With shouting. Even blame.
Quiet dignity was harder.
The bathroom door closed with a soft click.
Zach stared at it. One second. Two. Three. Then he forced himself to move. He should leave. Give her space. Put walls between this and whatever comes next.
But he couldn’t. Not with an infiltrator on the island. Not with sabotage already underway. Not with the threat to her. Her safety came first. Even now.
Especially now.
He crossed to the seating area, pulled the Gerber StrongArm from its sheath, and weighed it in his hand. Solid. Familiar. Honest.
Better.
He couldn’t look at that section of wall. He moved to the chair facing the window and pulled the whetstone from his go-bag. Set it on his thigh. Pressed the blade to the stone at thirty degrees, and drew it through the first slow stroke.
Shhhhk.
Order.
Shhhhk.
Control.
Slow. Precise. Repeatable.
Steel responded to skill. Pressure. Angle. Consistency. It didn’t complicate things or ask questions. It didn’t look at him like she had.
His jaw tightened.
He checked the edge in the moonlight. Reset the angle. Drew the blade again.
Marcus. He was the problem.
Shhhhk.
Not Emma.
Not the wall.
Not the ghost of her touch still burning across his shoulders.
Shhhhk.
The sabotage was what mattered. Someone had compromised the resort’s systems. The pattern was specific. Personal.
His mind circled back to Emma. To the argument before the wall. To the way her voice had cracked—the smallest fracture in her composure—when she asked him to stop shutting her out.
He had shut her out. He’d done it on purpose, with full awareness of the damage it would cause, and told himself it was the right call.
Shhhhk.
Marcus had already shown what he did with people around them. Kate. Lena. Peripheral targets at the time, and still he’d found ways to use them.
Emma wasn’t peripheral. He’d let her get too close. Not in one moment, but in many little ones.
Coffee left waiting for him in the morning. Her things in his bathroom. The sound of her moving through his kitchen like she belonged. The way she pushed back. The way she held eye contact. The way she learned.
She’d moved toward him. Like she didn’t know she was supposed to be afraid.
He’d noticed all of it. He should have made corrections sooner.
Shhhhk.
He flipped the blade and started on the other side.
She could shoot. She could problem-solve under pressure. Neither would matter if someone trained got to her first.
Better she hates me. Better that than dead.
He kept the blade moving.
Shhhhk.
He set the whetstone aside. The blade was sharp enough to split a hair, perfect edge gleaming. He sheathed the knife and rose, needing movement.
Maybe meditation would recalibrate him.
The Guardian discipline was muscle memory after two decades. Zach centered his weight. Feet shoulder width apart. Breathing deep.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for six.
His awareness expanded outward. The immediate space first—
The muted mechanical hum of the air conditioning.
Palm fronds scraping the window frame in the offshore wind.
The dry, papery cry of a barn owl hunting somewhere in the trees east of the cottage.
Surf breaking against the wall two hundred yards south, the rhythm irregular, which meant the tide was shifting.
The creaking stress of the cottage itself, the subtle language of a building settling at night.
And closer. Much closer.
Emma’s breathing from the bedroom.
Slow, measured. The deliberate rhythm of someone working to regulate their own nervous system. Someone who was not, in fact, asleep.
He put that silence in her.
He moved through the forms. Slow, controlled sequences designed to keep his reflexes calibrated and his mind clear. Strike. Block. Pivot. Weight shift. But his awareness kept circling back.
The bedroom door. The breathing behind it. The careful, deliberate steadiness of it.
Emma wasn’t sleeping. She was choosing not to fall apart. The same way he chose not to, with the same grim, practiced efficiency.
He’d done that to her. Handed her that wound and walked away, leaving her to manage it alone in the dark.
He returned to the window, rubbing his chest as if it might ease the ache there. Picked up the knife. Ran the familiar check—blade presentation, edge alignment, handle integrity.
The blade reflected the moonlight. Perfect edge. Perfect and ready and completely beside the point.
A faint sound drifted to him.
Barely audible. The quietest possible hitch in Emma’s breathing—caught, held, then released. Like someone pressing both hands over something to keep it contained. Like someone very good at not letting things escape.
Like someone who’d learned the hard way that showing pain just handed other people something to work with.
The realization fisted in his gut.
Zach’s hand tightened on the grip.
Fuck.
She wasn’t breaking. She was strong enough to hurt in silence, to deploy her own control as armor in the same way he did—and somehow that was worse than tears would have been.
This quiet was something else entirely. It was personal. It was specific to her, the way her steadiness was uniquely hers, and he’d put it there.
He could go to her.
Knock on the door.
Tell her the truth.
This wasn’t about her not mattering; it was the opposite. That was why he had to cut it off. She’d gotten under his guard before he’d seen the breach. Caring about her had gone from inconvenience to liability faster than he’d thought possible.
His hand tightened on the knife.
No.
If he said any of that aloud, it became real. And once it was real, Marcus could use it.
Better she think he was a bastard. Better she stay angry. Better she stay distant. Better she carry this small, specific pain and stay alive.
Even if it meant sitting here listening to the careful silence of someone who was very good at crying without making a sound.
He turned away and sat back down. Pulled out the whetstone again with the automatic reach of long habit.
Shhhhk.
The rhythm should settle him. Should push the noise back into manageable order.
Shhhhk.
It didn’t.
The tempo felt wrong tonight, a weapon slightly out of true.
Shhhhk.
Because every pass of the blade tracked against the sound of Emma’s breathing. Every breath she controlled was another reminder of the hurt he caused, calling it protection. Because none of his logic changed the fact that he wanted to go to that door.
He checked the edge again. Perfect.
Didn’t matter.
He sat back in the chair, blade in one hand, stone in the other, and stared into the dark window. Nothing would be the same now. There was no going back to who he was before Emma, and it was unlikely she’d forgive him for tonight.
He’d spent twenty years learning how to identify threats early. Contain them. Neutralize them. He’d protect her, even if she hated him.
Tonight he’d done the dumbest thing possible.
He’d pushed away the one person who’d made him want, for a second, to put the knife down.
Such a fucking idiot.