DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.
For a second, it was just text.
Then my stomach dropped. The name sharpened on the screen, everything else smearing into a peripheral blur. Thomas McKinnon. My dad.
Why the fuck was my dad’s name on these files?
The room seemed to tilt, like the headboard had slipped a few inches back. I blinked, read the line again, slower this time, making myself pick through each word. Then I scrolled down into the metadata.
Dates. Classification tags. Internal routing codes I didn’t recognize. I traced phone numbers back to satellites and followed chains of command that didn’t belong to any sheriff or county patrol. This wasn’t just high-level. This was untouchable, vault-level, oath-sealed, dangerous, CIA-real shit.
And I had fucking found it.
That was the part that scared me the most—how straightforwardit had been. No encrypted drive, no air-gapped server, no impossible backdoor. Just… there. Too easy.
The ease of it felt wrong, like a door left wide open in a bad neighborhood. Either someone wanted this to be found, or they were confident no one like me would ever come looking.
Why the fuck was my dad involved in this? I’d grown up thinking he ran a car dealership. Boring invoices, late nights at the office, a normal life. I had never—not once—considered CIA.
But as I stared at his name, old scenes started slotting into place in my brain. The whispered arguments in the kitchen I’d written off as work stress. The “old friends” who showed up late and never gave their last names. My dad’s half-smiles and deflections whenever I asked what he actually did.
It added up now, and it made me feel stupid for not seeing it.
What really fucking pissed me off, though, was that he wasn’t just in some random document. He was threaded directly through Mackenzie’s case file.
He had known who she was all along.
Her file flagged her under something called the Legacy Program.
What the fuck did that even mean?
If he’d known who she was all along, then what did that make us? Had our meeting been an accident, or something scheduled years before I’d ever walked into Camp Blackshear? Had we both been dropped onto the board, nudged along by invisible hands?
For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe none of this had started with me at all.
Jackson kept referencing a game in his texts to Mackenzie, and now Mackenzie was questioning me about a game. We’re we in a game now? Did she know?
Anger flared inside me. I felt the root of betrayal settle. The man who taught me right from wrong, who kissed my foreheadwhen I was sick, was part of something monstrous. Something that was terrorizing the woman I was deeply in love with.
I closed the laptop, hands trembling. Someone would notice eventually. That I had hacked in. I didn’t do a great job of covering my tracks on this one. But for now, I had a plan. I needed to protect her from Jackson, from her father’s world, from everything that was hunting her.
Including the CIA and the FBI. I didn’t trust those fuckers.
I had no idea what the fuck I was up against, but I loved her enough that I would enter the game with her. I was quickly realizing that everyone here at Blackshear was a predator.
Even in her sleep, Jackson was there. Inside her brain, haunting her. He’d already shown me he didn’t play by any rules. Every ping, every shadow, every move was unhinged. He was a predator who wouldn’t stop until he’d taken everything. I needed to figure out a way to ensure she was completely safe from him.
I had watched her as she slept. The rise and fall of her chest, the soft curve of her lips, the fragile way she clutched my hand. Obsession clicked into place. Possession. Protection. Love. Something primal that didn’t care about right or wrong.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her, memorizing her. The twitch of her lip when she lied, the twist of her bracelet when she was anxious, the way her pupils dilated when I whispered things that made her body react without her knowing.
I’d follow her into hell. I’d walk through fire, bleed, burn forher.
Her cries, her nightmares, her secrets, even the darkness she carried—all of it belonged to me now. I would guard her, whatever it took.
Because I loved her. Completely. The closer I got to her, the more it burned. If this obsession were to destroy me, I’d wear it like a crown. She was mine, in ways she didn’t even know, and I’d be her king if she let me.
I closed my eyes and shoved my hands into my pockets. I letthe dark settle around me, thinking about everything I had discovered. The stars now reflected off the water, bright and sharp, reminding me of our tattoos, of the light she brought into my life. She was the only light that made this chaos bearable.
