Page 116 of Reaper Said Mine

“I will support your decision,” he says. “I will give you access. I will give you protection where you allow it. I will give you every ugly record I possess if it helps you find the hand behind these transactions. I will not ask you to make me look clean.”

The pressure in my chest breaks into something painfully close to relief.

“Gnash.”

“You will continue digging,” he says. “And if Dawson tries to bury what you find, we will find another path.”

“We?”

“Yes.”

“That is dangerous language.”

“So is no.”

I laugh softly, though my eyes sting. “You liked that part?”

“I liked every part after you stopped letting him own the room.”

“He can still hurt me.”

“Yes.”

“He can hurt the story.”

“Perhaps.”

“He can make me look compromised.”

Gnash’s thumb moves once against my cheek, a careful stroke that sends warmth through the entire exhausted wreck of my body. “Then we make the truth stronger than his accusation.”

I stand there in the archive cold, surrounded by suspicious transactions, hidden Combine trails, and the wreckage of my relationship with the network that made me and used me in equal measure. My career may have cracked tonight. My access may vanish. Dawson may already be drafting the first polite memo that will become a professional execution.

But the evidence is still here.

The story is still here.

And Gnash is here, not standing in front of me, not silencing me, not turning my choice into his command, but beside me.

I pull in a breath and step back from his hand, though I let my fingers brush his wrist before I return to the table. “All right. We start with Halcyon Resource Arbitration, the Atrament Star, Vara Vell’s debt transfer, and every vessel that paid through a broker with Combine-adjacent distressed asset exposure.”

His eyes gleam. “That sentence would frighten many warriors.”

“It should. Financial crime is where cowards go to stab people from climate-controlled offices.”

“I prefer knives.”

“I know. That’s why you need me.”

His smile is slow and fierce. “Yes.”

I pick up my compad, open a fresh file, and begin building the cleanest evidence chain of my life. The room remains cold. My hands still tremble a little. Dawson’s threat lingers like smoke in the back of my throat.

But the numbers are waiting.

And this time, I am not digging alone.

CHAPTER 16