Sunday, 1142 PM — Aiden’s Apartment
He opens the door wearing sweats, holding half a sandwich. “Well, well,” he grins, “if it isn’t the grump king himself. Should I bow or—”
I throw the USB drive and the burner phone logs onto his table. “I need you.”
His smile evaporates. “What the hell is this?”
“Grace,” I say. “She’s working with Dreyser. She’s holding a video over me. Hack everything. Every message. Every file. And erase the footage—anywhere it exists.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Someone pissed you off real good.”
“It’s not about me.”
His brows rise. “…Ah.” He leans back. “It’s about her, isn’t it?”
I don’t answer. He doesn’t need me to. He’s already powering up his rig, screens glowing like a war room. “Let me guess,” he mutters. “Grace is slithering around again. Infecting the floor air.”
“Worse,” I say. “She’s in my building every day. Watching. Waiting. And I don’t want her looking at Evelyn.”
His fingers still on the keyboard. “The girl,” he says slowly. “The one you can’t stop looking at.”
My jaw tightens.
He exhales. “Alright.”
He cracks his knuckles. “Then we bury the bitch.”
The screens light up around him, lines of code streaming like artillery. I breathe. Because if destroying Grace is what it takes to protect Evelyn, then hell has already opened the door. And I’m walking in smiling.