Page 54 of Pretty Savage: Defy

“I don’t want them to see me with him either.” My voice has begun to tremble. “You may not see it the same way, Sam, but I was raised to believe some things should be private. Reserved.”

“It’s not just the sex.” Sam looks back toward the ballroom. “The sealing makes it public.”

“It makes it theirs,” I say. “I want to keep it ours. Carrson and mine.”

“It’ll still be yours.” Her eyebrows pinch together. “Of course, it will.”

“Will it? Or will it haunt us?” I search for the right words, because this is the part she doesn’t understand. “Once they’ve watched us, we can’t take it back. Later, when it’s only Carrson and me again, I’ll remember them watching. I don’t know how I’m supposed to let Carrson touch me afterward without wondering whether I’m ever really alone with him again.” I look back toward the house, the ballroom, the future that waits for me. “What if that one time ruins us forever?”

Chapter thirteen

Four Days Until Bonding

Carrson

Thomson and I wait for the New York police car with its sirens wailing to go past us. The van we’re in has fake plates, and no one’s looking for it, so we don’t break a sweat.

Cops aren’t what has us on edge tonight.

It’s the target.

“Damian Salvanti,” I read from the folder while Thomson fiddles with something in his lap. Coiled wires and tiny propellers stick out of the apparatus, and for a second it looks like the helicopter that carried us into the city an hour ago. We picked up the van a few blocks from the airport, keys under the seat where my father’s men left it.

“He’s going to be tricky,” Thomson says. “I can’t believe he breached that server. It’s one of our most locked-down systems. The tech team’s in an uproar, worried he planted a virus.”

“Did he?” I ask.

“They haven’t found anything yet.”

I look back at the photo clipped to the upper edge of Damian’s profile. Dark hair and icy blue eyes. A body built in layers, each muscle on top of the next.

I check the clock on the dashboard, just past ten p.m., which means Laurel will probably be asleep by the time I get this done and we fly back to Ashport. I grit my teeth, picturing her inside the Manor without me there to keep watch. My father is in that house, along with God knows how many other members of The Order. Sam is with her, and I trust Sam more than I used to, but it does nothing to stop the unease crawling over my skin like ants.

Just because Laurel can protect herself doesn’t mean she should have to.

The thing in Thomson’s hand whirs to life. It’s as small as a fly and can flatten to the thickness of a credit card. A scouting drone with a camera mounted to its underside.

“I wish it wasn’t so loud,” Thomson murmurs, watching it with the pride of a man admiring his own child, which makes sense since he’s the one who invented it.

I crack the window. Thomson lifts his cupped palms, releasing it. The contraption wobbles a few times, then steadies and climbs to the roof of the building, where it’ll enter an air vent that leads to Damian’s living room.

No way are we going in blind. Thomson pulls the images up on his computer. I move closer so I can see.

“He’s got signal jammers all over the building. I had to bypass them before we could get eyes inside.” He taps through a series of commands.

On the screen, the walls of a square metal duct rush past in dull gray flashes as the drone winds deeper into the building, like a worm tunneling through packed earth.

It pops out into a dim room, the curtains drawn and every light switched off. According to the building blueprints, this should be the living room, but Damian has turned it into an office.

Three identical black desks form a U shape. Each holds four large monitors set in landscape mode, with hard drives lined up beneath them. Cables run through neat black sleeves along the floor instead of tangling underfoot.

Earlier, I teased Laurel that I knew what NASA headquarters looked like. Now I think I’m seeing it in person.

Most of the screens display code, data streams, or pale windows full of text too small for me to read, but several show security feeds: the building’s front entrance, the lobby, the elevator bank, and the hallway outside the apartment.

Damian is watching every entrance. Smart. It means he sees trouble before it reaches his door.

This is not the lair of some disorganized hacker. This is a command center. Every piece of equipment is cutting-edge, arranged so Damian can reach anything he needs without taking his eyes off a screen.