Page 36 of The Warrior's Salvation

At first, I think I’ve read it wrong. But it’s there again. And again. Same terminal. Same credentials. Accessing the protected files, the restricted servers, every page that could damn this union in the hands of someone like Cormac Doyle. It's not casual browsing, either—this was a full dive. Line-item payments, routing numbers, donation accounts tied to fake charities. Everything we’ve worked to bury.

I click deeper. Her activity log lights up the screen. She pulled files from the off-books side of the ledger. Exported copies. Some went to the printer. Others were dumped to a flash drive. The audit log shows four external devices connected over the last two days. One of them stayed plugged in for nearly forty minutes.

Forty minutes is enough to gut us.

My chest goes tight, breaths short and sharp. I force myself to slow it down. This doesn’t make sense. Evie doesn’t have access to half of this. She shouldn’t even know where to find it.

Unless someone showed her.

Unless she was looking.

I shift in the chair, fingers moving faster now, flipping through system logs, surveillance notes, building check-ins. There’s footage flagged by internal security—low priority, never reviewed. I open the files. There’s no sound, but I don’t need it. The image is enough.

Evie. Out behind the warehouse. Talking to someone I don’t recognize at first. Tall, dark hair, fitted suit, face turned away from the camera. But when he steps back, adjusting his watch, his profile’s clean as a knife.

Darren Connelly.

Doyle’s fixer. His enforcer. His shadow.

He’s standing inches from her, and she isn’t pulling away.

My hands tighten on the edge of the desk until the leather creaks. The room suddenly feels colder, smaller. The weight in my gut shifts from suspicion to something heavier. Betrayal is a word too clean for what I feel creeping up my spine.

I’ve been watching her. Protecting her. Stepping into this desk job I never wanted just to keep her safe. And all the while, she’s been feeding them the bullets they’ll use to shoot us down.

I sit back slowly, let the monitor glow in my face. I replay the footage. Once. Twice. Her hands are shaking. She looks scared. Not defiant. Not smug. But scared doesn’t make her innocent. Scared means she knew what she was doing.

I drag both hands down my face and exhale through my teeth. The truth sits in my lap like a loaded weapon. And now I have to decide what the fuck to do with it.

Evie wouldn’t betray her father. She worships the ground he walks on. She defends him like it's a religion. I’ve seen the way she looks at him when he walks into a room—like nothing could touch him, like he’s invincible.

So what the fuck is this?

I stare at the screen, replaying the footage again. She’s scared. That’s what rattles me most. She’s not reckless. She’s not stupid. But she’s in deep with something, and it’s crawling under my skin because I don’t know why. I don’t know what she’s doing or who made her do it. And I should.

I should’ve seen this coming.

My chest tightens again, breath hitching without permission. For a second, it’s not Evie on the screen—it’s Maelyn. Same fear in her eyes. Same way her hands shook before she walked through that fucking door in Kandahar and never came back out. I should’ve stopped her. I should’ve been faster, louder, anything but what I was.

And now here I am again, sitting behind another desk, watching another woman I should be protecting stand one breath away from getting herself killed.

I shove back from the chair. The floor groans under my boots as I stand. My skin’s too tight, heart racing like it wants out of my chest. This isn’t a leak anymore. It’s a ticking bomb.

And Evie’s right in the blast radius.

I don’t know what she’s done. But I do know this—I can’t lose another one. Not like that. Not again.

I shoot to my feet before I even realize I’ve moved.

My legs feel numb, my chest too tight. I don’t think—I just grab my phone and bring up Jasper’s contact.

Lochlan 3:13 PM: Where’s Evie? Call me now.

The second it sends, I open a thread to Draco.

Lochlan 3:14 PM: Evie’s in danger. I’m coming to the house. Something’s very wrong.

I don’t wait for replies. I shove the phone in my pocket and get out. Down the hallway, through the stairwell, boots slamming on concrete like they’re trying to make the building feel it. I don’t bother with the lift. I need the burn in my legs to match the fire tearing through my chest.

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