Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 36353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 182(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 182(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
“I can help,” she offered.
“You’re an angel,” Molly said, her face lighting up. “Seriously.”
Before I stepped away, I leaned in and kissed Gemma’s cheek. “This’ll be good practice.”
Molly burst out laughing. “Oh, he’s definitely one of ours.”
Gemma blushed hard but didn’t have time to react further because Chase had wriggled free and took off like a rocket toward the hallway. Gemma darted after him, caught him mid-squeal, and the little punk smacked her cheeks with chubby hands and giggled hysterically.
“Up!” he shouted.
She laughed, heart-deep, as he wriggled and twisted, and I couldn’t help the grin that tugged at my mouth. For one sliver of a second, I let myself imagine her like that—with our kid. Our chaos. Our joy.
I gave her a lopsided grin that made her eyes sparkle and kissed her once more. Then I turned and headed down the hall, where reality was waiting.
Fox’s office was heavy with the kind of tension that soaked into the walls like smoke. The blinds were drawn against the afternoon glare, the only light coming from the overhead fixture above the round conference table and the glow of Deviant’s laptop screen. The low hum of conversation cut off the second I stepped inside.
Fox stood near the table with his arms crossed, leaning against the edge like he’d been born there. Maverick sat across from him, one boot resting on the opposite chair, fingers steepled under his chin as he watched Deviant work. Midnight was off to the side near a small bar sipping coffee, his scarred knuckles drumming a rhythm against the counter.
Deviant didn’t look up as I entered. He just kept typing, rapid-fire, muttering under his breath as code scrolled across his screen. I didn’t speak until I crossed the room and stood beside the table, close enough to read the files flashing past his eyes.
“I want names. Now.” My voice was low and even, but the tension in my spine didn’t ease.
Fox nodded once. “You’ll get them. Sit down.”
I didn’t. Couldn’t.
Midnight raised a brow but didn’t comment. Neither did Fox, though his eyes held a warning. They understood. Sometimes you needed to stay standing so the rage had somewhere to go.
Deviant finally stopped typing. He leaned back in his chair, stretching until his spine cracked. “Took some work, but I pulled the last-known backups off the cloud where the stolen photos were hosted. The metadata’s scrambled to hell, but I recognized a few digital fingerprints from the hacker world.”
My vision narrowed, a red haze crawling around the edges. “The ones helping him collect the photos?”
Deviant gave a slow nod. “Possibly. Or they work for the buyers. The black market collectors.”
“What’s the buyer list look like?” Maverick asked.
“Still tracing the backdoors. But the seller? That I got.”
I crossed my arms and leaned forward, voice hard. “Who?”
Deviant spun the screen around. “Name’s fake. But the IP that uploaded the files bounced through three VPNs and a Tor server before hitting a cloud storage address traced to a house outside Nashville. Belongs to a shell corporation, but guess whose name showed up on an internal transfer request last year?”
He clicked, and a face appeared.
My blood turned molten.
Darren Thomas.
Ellen’s ex.
I gripped the back of the chair so hard I heard the wood creak. My molars ground together, rage clawing up my spine. It wasn’t enough that he’d hurt Ellen—he had to drag Gemma into it. Put her in his crosshairs like she was nothing but leverage.
“When I saw him, I went back to Ellen’s phone and pulled more off her cloud backup. Stuff that hadn’t synced to her visible folders. Like texts she’d deleted.”
The words hit hard. I didn’t move. Just stared at the lines of text now filling the laptop’s display.
Deviant clicked to enlarge the file. “They’re all from her ex.”
I took a step forward. The room fell into a tense hush as the first message came into focus.
Asshole Ex
You don’t get to walk away. You think you can just erase me and start over? I was the only one who made you feel beautiful. You think someone else will lie to you like that?
Another pinged up as Deviant scrolled.
Asshole Ex
You don’t need other people telling you you’re beautiful. That’s just fishing for attention.
Then another.
Asshole Ex
You should be grateful I overlooked the things other guys would’ve walked away from. That’s how much I love you.
You need me. Other men wouldn’t have looked twice at you. I didn’t care about all that. I chose you anyway.
You owe me, Ellen. I stuck around when no one else would have. Don’t forget who made you feel wanted.
There’s a difference between love and settling. You were lucky I never made you feel the difference.
I overlooked a lot because I loved you. That kind of patience doesn’t come around twice.
You were never easy to love. I just never said it out loud.