Page 96 of His Fury

She hesitated. Her hands ran over her hips, smoothing the material of her pants—a nervous habit of hers. “Um…I’m not sure, but I think…” Isla cleared her throat. “I think it’s trouble.”

I closed my eyes just for a second. Just to keep the fury at bay. Not at her.

Athim. At myself, maybe, for thinking she wouldn’t be involved with this part of my life. “And do you think he’s shown it to anyone else?”

It could be fucking anything. I had no idea what it contained, and I knew it didn’t matter, becauseshehad seen it. And it had spooked her.

Her voice was quieter now. “I don’t know. He—” She looked up at me with wide eyes. “He said I should give it to you, and you would know what to do.”

That mattered. That meant I still had a chance to control this. Maybe. I walked past her and picked up the flash drive carefully. No emotion. No urgency. Just business.

But inside? Inside, I was calculating damage. Risk. Fallout.

And watching Isla—watching how she flinched when I picked it up, how she studied my every movement like she wasn’t sure which version of me would speak next—that cut deeper than I wanted to admit.

“You’re not going to ask me why I looked at it?” she asked suddenly.

I turned to her. Met her eyes. They were wary. Guarded. But she was still here. Right here. Confronting me even though she didn’t even know she was doing it.

“Because I already know,” I said. “It’s the same reason I know why Julian gave it to you, not me. Because you were protecting someone—probably both of us. It’s what you do for loved ones.”

Her jaw tightened. “Do you know what’s on it?”

I stepped closer. Not enough to touch her but enough that she felt the shift in the air. “I don’t.” My head cocked slightly as I watched her. “But I see how you’ve reacted to it, and I’ll tell you again what I’ve told you before. Everything I’ve done, everything Ido, is to protect what’s mine, Is. And that includes you.”

She looked away. Down. At the laptop. At the flash drive that I still held. “You’re not going to ask me what’s on it?”

I shook my head once. “I don’t need to.”

She swallowed. “It’s a lot.”

I gave a quiet laugh. There was no humor in it. “I expect it is.”

Silence stretched again. She was waiting. I knew it. Waiting for me to reassure her. To tell her this wasn’t as bad as it looked.

But I didn’t lie to Isla. Not anymore.

“What you saw,” I said, “probably wasn’t even half of what it could be.”

Her gaze flicked up. Met mine. And she didn’t look away. That was the moment I knew—she wasn’t running. But staying would cost her—more than she understood.

“There are pictures of me,” she said softly. “I only saw one, but there could be more.”

And just like that, my fury erupted.

My grip tightened around the flash drive until the edges bit into my palm. I opened her laptop with slow, deliberate movements, trying to keep calm, but I jammed the flash drive into the port.

I scanned the list of spreadsheets; you didn’t need to be a genius to know what they were.Extortion.

I opened the subfolder titled Photos.I clicked.The first one was of me, and the next one was of Isla. So was the next.

Pictures.

Of her.

They hadn’t just taken her. They’d observed her. Cataloged her. Followed her as if she were prey. My jaw clenched so hard I felt the crack in my temple.

“I’ll kill them,” I said, my voice like steel dragged through gravel. “One by one. I don’t care how far it goes. I don’t care what it costs.”

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