“Please.” I hand her the drive, the weight of responsibility lifting slightly as it passes from my possession. “The more copies that exist, the less power Steffan has.”
We spend the next two hours going through the drive’s contents, Mitzy occasionally mutters technical jargon I don’t understand as she creates encrypted backups and routes them to secure servers.
“This is…” she pauses, staring at the screen. “This is explosive stuff. Your husband wasn’t just corrupt—he was running a full-scale operation.”
“Former husband,” I correct automatically. “And yes, I know. That’s why I spent three years gathering evidence. I needed to make sure when I finally escaped, he couldn’t just make it all disappear.”
Mitzy looks at me with new respect. “Smart. Dangerous, but smart.”
Mitzy’s eyes narrow as she scrolls, her fingers tapping a steady rhythm against the keys. “The files on this USB are a chaos of data—no unifying titles, no structured folders, just fragments of financial statements, security protocols, court transcripts, energy contracts. Like a hoarder’s hard drive.”
“I took what I could when I could. That’s no surprise, but is it enough? Enough to take him down?”
“Definitely. The problem is this is messy,” Mitzy mutters.
“That’s what I said.”
“But not messy enough.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“These files shouldn’t connect.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, watching her brow furrow deeper.
“They do,” she says slowly. “Barely. But, then they don’t. It’slike a shadow running through the metadata. Version histories, revision comments, internal notes.”
I havenoidea what she’s talking about.
Mitzy leans in, typing faster. “Most of these files were scrubbed or anonymized—some of them encrypted in layers. But not perfectly. There’s a tag that keeps showing up, buried in old edits and hidden fields.”
“A tag?” I shake my head. “Sorry, but you’ve lost me.”
“Obsidian.”
“What’s Obsidian?”
“No idea,” Mitzy replies. “But it’s an odd reference, occurring across many of these files—legal, military-adjacent, even biotech. Some are scanned memos, while others resemble early-stage research proposals or covert budget approvals. All of it smells black-ops adjacent. It’s as if someone was quietly pulling strings behind federal walls. It’s just weird. You may have snagged a thread tied to an unsanctioned ghost project.”
“I’m not surprised. Steffan and integrity are like oil and water.”
Mitzy turns back to the screen. “I’m still digging, but this could be more than we realize. It could explain why Steffan wasn’t willing to let you go.”
“It was worth the risk.” I think of the bruises, the humiliation, the years of careful planning while enduring systematic abuse. “It has to be.”
A soft knock interrupts us. Bear’s head lifts, but he doesn’t seem alarmed, which I take as a good sign.
“Come in,” I call.
The door opens to reveal a man who can only be described as a giant carved from mountain stone. He has the kind of height that makes doorframes nervous—to my best guess just shy of seven feet—and a body built like a battering ram. Tree-trunk legs, shoulders broad enough to block sunlight, and hands the size of dinner plates.
His hair is a shock of white blond, thick and unruly, falling over ice-blue eyes that crinkle with warmth when they land on Bear. A small scar slices through his left brow, barely noticeable, but enough to hint at stories not easily told.
“There’s my favorite fur missile.” His voice rolls through the room like distant thunder, like boulders crashing against each other in some forgotten canyon. Low. Deep. Resonant. A sound you feel in your chest more than your ears.
Bear launches off the bed, barreling into the newcomer with such enthusiasm that a lesser man would have been knocked flat. The giant merely laughs, absorbing the impact and rubbing Bear’s ears.
“Willow, meet Forest Summers,” Mitzy says, her tone suggesting this introduction is significant. “Creator and head of Guardian HRS.”
