Page 75 of Knight

“No.” The word comes sharp and final. “Your apartment isn’t safe anymore. Neither is your job, your bank accounts, or anything connected to your old life.”

"What? Why?"

He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Think about it. If Victor put a warning inside this virus, then it means he’s not the one behind things, but heisinvolved. Whoever is behind it spent weeks learning everything about you. Your routines, your habits, what makes you vulnerable. You think they'd just let you walk back into your life now that you've seen behind the curtain?"

The reality of my situation hits hard. "But my things ..."

"Can be replaced." His voice softens slightly. "I know this isn't ideal. But whoever it is, they'll be watching every place connected to you. Waiting for exactly that kind of mistake."

"I can't just ... disappear. People will notice."

"They already think you're with me." He runs a hand through his hair. "The police report, remember? As far as anyone knows, you're shacked up with the dangerous hacker who supposedly kidnapped you."

"That's not—" He's right. The story we gave the detective about me choosing to be with Knight now serves as perfect cover. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh." His mouth quirks slightly. "Better they think that than know the truth. Keeps them looking for the wrong thing."

The professional mask slips for a moment as his eyes move over my clothes. "Use the bedroom. Get some sleep. We'll figure out the practical stuff once we understand what Victor's timeline is really telling me."

"You should rest too."

He exhales sharply, setting his mug down. “I need to make sure I haven’t missed anything.”

I want to argue, but I’m honestly too tired to put the effort into it. The bedroom feels like it's miles away, but it's better than this couch. Better than lying here listening to him work, and thinking about how it felt when he kissed me.

As I head toward the bedroom, I realize something that should probably terrify me more than it does—my quiet life at the library, the emptiness of my apartment, the isolation that made me such a perfect target ... none of it seems real anymore.

Reality is the man in the other room, working to decode his mentor’s warnings. The man I shouldn’t trust but somehow do. The man whose kiss still burns on my lips, even though we’re both pretending it didn’t happen.

I just hope trusting him doesn't turn out to be an even bigger mistake than the one that brought me here in the first place.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Knight

It’sthree hours until dawn, and I’mstilldigging through code. The new sequence in front of me has override protocols unlike anything I've seen before. Most viruses can be stopped remotely if you know what you're doing, but this one ...

"Motherfucker." The curse emerges through clenched teeth as understanding hits.

My fingers fly across the keyboard, expanding the sequence. The code confirms what I'm seeing—stopping this thing requires manual override frominsidetheir secure systems. The virus will deploy itself, but the only way to prevent catastrophic damage is to access Horizon Tech's core infrastructure directly. It can't be stopped remotely.

Victor's signature is all over the design. He's made sure the override can only be executed by someone who understands exactly what they're doing. Someone who can prevent their entire infrastructure from being rewritten from the inside out.

I run calculations. Horizon Tech's security is military grade. Getting past their perimeter security will be hard enough, but reaching their core systems is a whole different level of impossible. It means risking exposure.

My eyes burn from hours of staring at code, but I can't stop. Not when the sequence I'm seeing changes everything about how this virus operates.

The logs hide more information disguised as errors—access points, patrol patterns, systems controlling specific sectors of the building. Victor has made sure I have everything I need to get inside. Like he's daring me to try.

I push back from the desk, my chair hitting the wall behind me, and pace the small room, easing out kinks from being hunched over computer screens for hours. Everything I’ve discovered rolls around my head.

The timing. The way Victor has documented Horizon Tech's vulnerabilities. He’s made sure I'd have exactly what I need. But for what? To break into the company and stop the virus … or is he just showing me that I can’t stop it from happening?

Footsteps in the hallway pull my attention from the screens. Glitch appears in the doorway, sleep-rumpled but alert. Something in me softens at the sight of her, in my space, like she belongs here.

"You didn't sleep." It's not a question.

"Found something." I turn back to the screens, ignoring how her presence changes the air in the room. "The virus needs manual deactivation. Someone has to be inside Horizon Tech to do it."

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