Enzo slammedme up against the corridor wall, one forearm across my chest and the other hand locked around my throat.
“What the fuck did you do to Robbie?”
His voice was low, guttural, but his eyes—those were dead. Flat. Cold. The kind of look that said if I gave him the wrong answer, he’d finish what he’d started.
I didn’t fight it. Didn’t even try. I hung there, arms slack at my sides, blinking through the shock. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why,” he spat, his face inches from mine, breath hot with fury, “did he say he was doing stuff for you and, then, start crying so hard he couldn’t breathe? Why did he lock himself in the filing room? He hasn’t needed to do that in forever.” His voice cracked on the last word.
That hurt more than the hand at my throat.
Because I knew what that room meant to Robbie and what it meant that he’d chosen to crawl back into it.
Enzo’s grip trembled enough to tell me this wasn’t rage for the sake of rage—this was panic. This was fear dressed up in fury because Robbie was hurting again, and Enzo didn’t know why.
And I was the closest target because Robbie hadmentioned my name. I raised my hands. Not to defend myself, but to show I wasn’t going to run.
“He asked to help with the research I was doing,” I said. “I gave him the safe files. Not the encrypted crap. Just boring data. Lassiter stuff. Nothing that should’ve?—”
Enzo’s jaw clenched.
“—nothing that should’ve triggered him,” I finished, quieter.
The silence that followed was heavier than the grip on my neck.
“Let him go, Enzo,” Robbie said next to us, voice calm but firm.
Enzo tightened his grip; the muscles in his arm locked like steel. I pinched at his wrist, not fighting—just reminding him I needed air. Maybe reminding him that he wasn’t that guy.
“I found some old files,” Robbie continued. “Ledgers. Numbers that are linked to people. It just… shocked me, that’s all. I handled it and took my ten minutes. I’m okay.” He reached out, fingers brushing Enzo’s bicep. “Listen to me, my love; let him go, babe. It’s okay.”
That single word—babe—cut through the fury. Enzo’s entire frame jerked as if he’d come out of adaze. His eyes widened for a breath, then narrowed in pain. And at last, his grip loosened.
I slid down the wall as though my legs had stopped remembering how to hold me up, hitting the ground hard and clutching my neck with both hands.
Enzo stood there, breathing ragged, guilt bleeding through every line of his body. But he didn’t look at me.
He looked at Robbie, as if he’d almost lost something he couldn’t name. And then, they were moving toward each other, pulled by gravity or desperation—I couldn’t tell which. Enzo crushed him into his chest, arms wrapped tight as if he was anchoring them both.
Robbie clung back just as fiercely, legs wrapping around Enzo’s waist as he jumped into the embrace. “It’s okay,” he kept repeating, breath hitching between words. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
Enzo buried his face in Robbie’s shoulder, still shaking, and I could tell—this wasn’t only relief. This was the kind of fear that lingered, that gnawed at you long after the danger was gone. And Robbie… he was holding them both together. So fucking strong. I scrambled to stand, then made it back and away from the two men who needed their privacy. I hunted down Robbie’s laptop and found the lists he’d discovered. They didn’t mean much to me, but somehow Robbie had connected numbers to names and saved them in a separate file. I saved everything, but uploading it from here wasn’t working, so I saved the files in a secure place, left a note on the laptop screen to indicate where I’d gone, and left work an hour early. I needed to see the team in the Cave and check on progress.
See Killian.
I arrived at the elevator door a little after five, as people were leaving their offices and swirling around me. I stared up at the spot where I knew the tiny camera was located and waited. The doors opened, and I stepped inside before they could shut on me and fell straight into Killian, who was leaning in the far corner. The doors closed, and it was just the two of us left, and he wasn’t pressing his hand to the pad for us to go to the office. Instead, he stumbled into my space and, for the second time today, I was pinned to the wall, only this time it wasn’t with a hand around my neck.
Although I wouldn’t have said no.
Killian kissed me as if he couldn’t get the taste of me fast enough. He kissed like a man possessed. Frantic, all teeth and breath and crushed lips, his hands gripping at my waist, my neck, my face.
“I missed you,” his words spilled out between kisses. “I hated you not being with me. Hated the silence. The space. It makes me fucking wild.”
He kissed me again, urgent and messy, hands pushing up under my shirt, sliding over my skin as if he was trying to memorize me all over again. “You get in my blood,” he breathed. “Fire and passion and lust and obsession, Jamie—I can’t think when you’re not around.”
I was so hard it hurt, every nerve alight with need. He pressed against me, our hips grinding, my head thunking back to the wall. I barely managed a gasp when he dropped to his knees in one smooth motion, yanking my jeans down with a desperation that made my knees buckle.
“Fuck,” he whispered, voice reverent and raw.
