Celina waited until the mansion had gone quiet.
No footsteps.
No shadow passing the hallway.
Just the steady, rhythmic sound of her heart beating too loud in her ears.
She sat on the floor of the walk-in closet, tablet in her lap, flash drive in hand. Ivy's warning echoed in her mind:
"Play it when he's not around. It'll answer questions he won't."
With trembling fingers, she slid the flash drive into the port. The screen flickered—then opened to a single encrypted file labeled:
"Project Talon: Redacted."
Celina hesitated. Then clicked.
A video loaded.
At first, static. Then—grainy black-and-white footage.
A dark room. Men in tactical gear.
And standing at the center—Darius.
Younger. Blood on his hands. A body at his feet.
"Target eliminated," a voice echoed from the camera.
"Extracting asset now."
The camera panned—and Celina's breath caught.
It was her.
Sixteen years old. Curled up in the corner of the room, unconscious. Bruised. Barely breathing.
What the hell was this?
The video jumped—now showing a different room. Medical facility. Monitors beeping. The girl—her—on a hospital bed. Darius standing by the window.
A voice played from a hidden speaker:
"The girl's memory will be wiped. Trauma conditioning suggests she won't retain any of it."
Another voice replied:
"Good. She can't know what her father hid inside her."
The screen went black.
Celina's blood turned cold.
She dropped the tablet, heart racing.
Sixteen.
She couldn't remember anything from that year.
Her dad had told her she'd had a seizure. That she'd blacked out for weeks. But it was a lie. Everything had been a lie.
She wasn't just a target.
She was a test subject.
And Darius had been there all along.
The door creaked behind her.
She turned sharply.
Darius.
He stood in the doorway, watching her. His shirt damp from the rain, his jaw clenched tight.
He saw the tablet, the flash drive, the look on her face.
"You watched it," he said.
Celina stood slowly. "How long have you known me?"
"Since I was eighteen."
Her breath caught. "That's... ten years."
He nodded once.
"You've been watching me for ten years?"
"Protecting you," he corrected.
"Don't—" she stepped back. "Don't twist it."
"I didn't know who you were at first," Darius said, voice low. "You were just the girl they pulled from the facility. The 'key.' They assigned me to guard you from a distance. Wipe your trail. Cover your life in normalcy."
She shook her head, tears stinging. "So you let me believe my whole life was real. My father's death. The seizure. The job. All of it—manufactured?"
"No," he said. "Your life was real. But the danger was too."
Celina clenched her fists. "So when you married me…"
"It wasn't part of the original mission," he said. "That was me. Choosing you."
She stared at him.
"You can't choose someone you've been lying to."
Darius's face hardened. "You think I don't know that?"
She flinched.
"I've watched you live a life I couldn't touch. Every year, every near-miss. I pulled assassins off your trail. I scrubbed footage. I buried bodies." His voice cracked. "And then the bounty dropped. I knew they were going to get to you before I could stop it. So I stepped in."
Celina's voice was barely above a whisper. "And married me."
He nodded.
"It was the only way to stay close. To take you off the grid. To protect you without question."
She turned away, throat burning.
"I didn't ask for a protector."
"No," he said softly. "You asked for the truth."
She spun back to him. "Then give it to me. What am I? Why do they want me dead?"
Darius exhaled. "Because your father wasn't an accountant. He was a cryptographer for a military black-ops unit. He created something—something called The Talon Protocol. It's a neural encryption system embedded in a person's subconscious."
Celina's heart dropped. "You mean…?"
He nodded. "You're the vault. The codes are locked inside your brain. Hidden under trauma."
"And Lenora Vale wants them?"
"She wants to sell them."
Celina staggered back, as if hit.
"So I'm not just bait. I'm a weapon."
"You're not a weapon," Darius said firmly. "You're the one thing this world shouldn't be able to break. And I'll make sure it never does."
His voice cracked on that last word.
Celina stared at him, the storm inside her crashing harder than anything outside the mansion.
She should have hated him.
She should have screamed and run and never looked back.
But instead, she whispered, "Why do you care?"
Darius crossed the room, eyes dark and soft at once.
"Because somewhere between guarding you and marrying you, I forgot which one was the mission."
And before she could stop him—before she could tell herself to run—his hand came up, gently brushing her cheek.
She didn't pull away.
She didn't want to.
He leaned in.
And she let him.
Their lips met, soft and slow at first, then aching and desperate. Like everything they'd never said was now bleeding through the kiss.
But it wasn't just passion.
It was a confession.
A vow.
When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against hers.
"I don't care what they want from you," he whispered. "I'll burn the whole damn world before I let them touch you."
Celina closed her eyes.
For the first time in days, she didn't feel like prey.
She felt protected.
Wanted.
Maybe even loved.
But far across the city, in a candlelit penthouse, Lenora Vale stared at a wall of monitors. Celina's kiss played on one. Another showed a thermal map of the mansion.
She took a sip of her wine.
"Well done, Mr. Kael," she said, smiling coldly.
"Now bring her to me."