Tristan
Chloe has been packed since last night, her suitcase sitting by the bedroom door ready to go. She’s heading to Jersey City for a few days to meet with the screenwriter behind Better Days Ahead, a trip that’s been on the calendar for weeks.
Before the doctor’s appointment, she was excited about it, talking about the meetings and the chance to spend a few days in New York with the energy she brings to things she actually cares about.
Now she’s standing in the entryway with the suitcase handle in her hand and her lower lip caught between her teeth, and the crease between her brows hasn’t smoothed out since she woke up.
“I can come with you.” I lean against the doorframe with my arms crossed, watching her unzip the front pocket of her bag, check something inside it, and zip it back up again. She’s done that three times in the last ten minutes. “I’ll move things around. It’s not a problem.”
She straightens up, both gratitude and a stubborn resolve in the look she gives me. “You don’t have to come with me. I’ll be fine on my own.”
I can see the anxiety in her eyes, but I also understand her need for independence. It’s a part of who she is—strong, capable, and fiercely determined. But that doesn’t make it any easier for me to let go.
I can’t help but feel a surge of protectiveness, wanting to be there for her in any way I can. “I know you’ll be fine,” I say, stepping forward. “But I want to be there for you, dimples. It’s not just about physically being there. It’s about making sure you know you’re not alone.”
A smile pulls at the corner of her lips, and for a moment, the lines of worry in her forehead disappear. “I know I’m not alone. But I can do this. I promise.”
I step closer, tugging her into my arms. She fits against me like she was fucking meant to be there, and I lean in to kiss her, threading my fingers through her hair as I tilt her face up.
Even if I can’t come with her and be by her side every step of the way, I want to be as close as I can, for as long as I can.
“I’ll miss you,” I murmur.
She pulls back enough to look at me, and both dimples appear at once. I’ve never been this far gone for anyone in my life, and it still catches me off guard sometimes, the way she can do that to me with just a smile.
“Good.” She bites her lower lip in a way that makes my cock twitch. “I look forward to being welcomed back properly when I get home.”
I walk her backward until her shoulders hit the wall and then kiss her, making sure it’s one that will leave an impression for a good long while since she’s about to get on a plane and be gone for three days.
Her arms wrap around me, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt, and when I finally step back, we’re both breathing harder than we were.
She picks up her suitcase, straightens her jacket, and smooths her hair, giving me a look that is extremely self-satisfied.
“Text me when you land,” I tell her.
“Yes, Dad.”
“Chloe.”
She’s already smiling as she turns away. The front door closes behind her with a soft click, and I move to the window and watch the car pull out of the driveway, watch it reach the end of the road and disappear around the curve, then stand there a beat longer than I need to.
The house feels different without her in it.
Same rooms, same furniture, same view of the ocean through the windows, the same morning light cutting across the kitchen tiles, but the most important thing is missing.
I make coffee and drink it at the kitchen counter looking out at the water in the distance, the waves breaking against the sand. Then I grab my jacket and go.
I decide to drive myself today, taking the coast road with the windows down.
Things at work have been going well. The last several months I’ve felt myself fully settle into this role, and with my brothers functioning as an actual unit rather than five people operating in parallel, the results have started to show up in the numbers and in the room when we’re all together.
The expansion strategy is solid, the new markets we’ve been quietly moving into are responding, and there’s a momentum to it now that I can actually feel when I walk through these offices in the morning.
I have real confidence in what we’ve built and where we’re taking it, which is not something I could have said a few months ago.
I spend the morning in back-to-back meetings, and by the time I surface, it’s past one in the afternoon.
There’s a cold coffee sitting on my desk that my assistant left an hour ago, and I drink it standing at the window looking out at the city below while I check my phone.
Chloe texted when she landed, a photograph of the Manhattan skyline from her hotel window across the river, along with a message about the screenwriter that runs long and enthusiastic in a way that makes me grin.
I read it twice before I put the phone down.
The next two days drag on. The house feels like a shell without her in it. Every corner, every room seems emptier, and the silence is stifling. I find myself constantly checking my phone, hungry for texts or calls from her.
I’m restless, my mind circling back to thoughts of Chloe. The bed feels too large without her beside me, and I find myself reaching out in the dark, as if I could pull her closer even when she’s not there.
Meals feel less satisfying without her to share them with. The quiet of the house during dinner is a stark contrast to the animated conversations we usually have. I find myself absentmindedly setting a place for her, only to realize moments later that she isn’t here.
I text her often, sending her little updates about my day, random thoughts that pop into my head, or just checking in to see how she’s doing. Her responses always bring a smile to my face, no matter where I am. More than a few times, Beckett and Reid catch my expressions and tease me about it.
That’s fine. They can tease all they like. They don’t know how this feels. Not yet. And if they ever get the chance, they won’t care while Chloe and I tease them in return.
At work, the hours feel longer. My mind keeps drifting back to her.
I catch myself staring at the photos of us on my desk, remembering her laughter, the way she moves through a room.
It’s like her absence has turned up the volume on everything else, every sound and sensation sharper than it should be.
The day before Chloe is set to return drags. I’m in my office, my thoughts on the moment when I’ll see her walk through the door again. I’m just about to pick up my phone to text her when it rings.
Expecting it to be Chloe, I pick up with a smile, already in a better mood at the thought of hearing her voice. “Hey, you.”
“Mr. Thorne.”
The voice on the other end isn’t my wife’s. It’s a curt, professional tone—John Davidson, the head of IT. My smile slips into a frown. His name on my screen at four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon is not a good sign.
“I’m sorry to call like this.” His voice has a careful, clipped quality as he informs me, “We’ve had a security breach.”
Fuck.
I set my pen down on the contract. The tip leaves a small ink blot where it lands. “Talk to me.”
“Someone accessed proprietary files and downloaded them. It looks like it happened several days ago. We caught it late, and I apologize for that, but we’ve closed the access point that was used. Whoever it was shouldn’t be able to pull anything further.”
“Which files?”
“We’re still compiling the full list. I’ll have it to you within the hour.”
“Who accessed them? How did they get in?”
“Still working on both. The logs are giving us information but not the complete picture yet. I’ll call you back the moment I have more.”
We hang up, and I push the contracts aside and turn my chair toward the window. The city is going about its afternoon fourteen floors below, and I watch it all sightlessly as I wait with my hands tightly clenched on the desk.
My inbox chimes twenty minutes later. Subject line: List of Accessed Files.
I open the attachment and go through it slowly, line by line. By the time I reach the bottom, I’m sitting very still with my jaw tight.
It’s everything. The full expansion strategy for the coming year, every market we’ve been quietly positioning ourselves in, the specific clients we’ve been courting and the terms we’d been discussing with them, the market research reports we paid significant money to commission, the financial projections, the complete operational blueprint for how we intended to execute on every major initiative my brothers and I have spent the better part of a year building.
All of it, downloaded, sitting on someone else’s hard drive right now.
I lean back in my chair and press a fist to my mouth, looking at the ceiling.
This isn’t a minor breach. This is someone handing our entire strategic position to whoever they’re working for, and whoever that is now has a detailed map of where we’re going and exactly how we plan to get there. It’s going to cost us. The only question is how much.
I’m still going through the list, making notes on what we can move on quickly and what’s already too exposed, when Davidson calls back. I pick up on the first ring, and I can tell from his silence before he speaks that whatever news he’s about to give me is worse than what he’s already delivered.
“We traced it,” he says. “We know which machine the files were downloaded to.”
“And?”
“It was a desktop computer in the MediaSphere offices.” He lets a beat pass before he finishes. “It’s registered to… to Chloe Thorne.”
The air goes out of the room. What the fuck?
I straighten, my grip on the phone tightening. “Say that again.”
“The downloads were traced directly to her workstation, Mr. Thorne. We’ve checked the logs twice. That’s where it leads.”
“Keep digging,” I tell him, working hard to keep my voice level as the words scrape past my throat. “Timestamps, access method, every log you have. All of it.”
“Understood. I’ll send everything over.”
I hang up without saying anything else, my chest going tight. I put the phone down on the desk, staring at the screen as I wait for his report to come through, a cold numbness spreading through me.