The second we explained the fae magic situation to Olivia, her eyes lit up with the same dangerous spark, the one he always wore whenever someone presented him with an impossible problem. She practically threw herself into the project before he even officially invited her.
And Calix? He looked just excited to have her there. So the two of them had barricaded themselves on the fifth floor for thirty-two hours straight.
Olivia had passed out on the couch in Calix’s office for a few hours before waking up and immediately going back to work.
Both of us tried convincing her to go home, but she just laughed in our faces and waved her hand toward the couch, informing usshe’d spent most of her adult life sleeping on a rusted cot that creaked every time she breathed, so the “big boss office couch” felt luxurious by comparison.
Calix and I had stared at her in stunned silence after that. Neither of us knew what to say, so we let it go when she drank down her blood smoothie and went back to work.
After all this is done, we’re going to take her somewhere luxurious.Maybe we’d take her to Vegas and pull out all the stops. Calix would absolutely lose his mind planning it.
We’d bury her beneath expensive clothes, ridiculous meals, and the bright lights of Vegas shows. We’d even have her meet the famous people after their shows. Between the two of us, we’d drown out her past with so many good, big memories that she never had to think about that time in her life again.
She belonged with us now. She was Syndicate. That meant she would never have to scrape and survive again.
Only one thing kept stopping me from fully letting myself settle into that future—that damn work ethic they both seemed to possess.
The elevator doors slid open, and I stepped out, barely acknowledging the exhausted employees hunched over desks as I moved down the rows of cubicles. The deeper I went into FangTech, the louder the familiar arguing became.
By the time I reached the bulletproof glass doors, I already knew exactly who was involved.
Olivia stood in the middle of the lab, her hands slicing through the air while she argued, fiery eyes locked onto Calix. Her dark hair had partially escaped whatever messy knot she’d tied it intohours ago, and the rose tattoo curling against her skin stood out starkly against the flushed heat in her face.
Calix stood across from her, looking equally sleep deprived and unhinged. God help us all.
People calledmea workaholic, but at least I knew when to shut down before my body gave out. These two? They would work until their brains stopped functioning, then they’d try to keep going anyway.
I pushed the glass door open just in time to hear Olivia snap, “I helped build it, so I should get to test it first! You agreed to that last night!”
Calix recoiled like she’d accused him of murder. “I absolutely did not!” His finger stabbed toward her dramatically. “Why would I ever agree to putting you in danger?!”
Across the room, Ryan and two other engineers looked seconds away from passing out from stress.
“Uh… sir…” Ryan’s voice cracked badly enough that all three of them winced in sympathy. “Y-you did kind of say Miss Olivia would be the first one outfitted with the device…”
Calix turned slowly toward him, those usually warm pink eyes narrowed into sharp slits.
“Rack.” He pointed toward Ryan without looking away from Olivia. “Kill him.”
Ryan visibly stopped breathing.
Olivia planted both hands onto her hips immediately. “Don’t. You. Dare!” Her glare narrowed hard enough to rival his.
“You know he’s working on my formula to be able to make a body forcefield instead of a shield!” she snapped. “Are you trying to sabotage my project because you’re being dramatic?”
Yep. This was exactly what happened when two obsessive, creative people were mated to one another.
The poor engineers were still frozen in place, eyes bouncing between the two psychopaths and me like they were silently begging for rescue.
I tipped my head toward the door. “Go home.”
That was all it took. It sounded like a stampede as they bolted. Ryan nearly clipped the doorway trying to escape fast enough.
“I need field experience with the device,” Olivia continued the second the others disappeared. “I need to understand recoil timing and response delays before we investigate the hangar.”
The metal pen in Calix’s hand crumpled with a sharp crunch.
“Who,” he asked very slowly, “said you were going?”
