She stopped.
“Too much?” Celeste finished softly.
Daphne didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Her twin already knew. All their lives, they were both considered “too much” in their own ways. Celeste had always been “too loud,” “too wild,” “too reckless”—the girl who dyed her hair neon colors and built experimental tech prototypes in the garage and once hacked into the school PA system to play the entireHamiltonsoundtrack during finals week. And Daphne had been “too quiet,” “too intense,” “too cerebral.” The girl who preferred server rooms to slumber parties, who spoke in code before she spoke in complete sentences, who could dismantle a firewall but couldn’t make small talk at a family dinner without wanting to crawl out of her own skin.
Too much. Never the right kind of enough.
Celeste was quiet for a beat. Then she exhaled through her nose and picked her coffee back up.
“Okay. So either this is incredibly romantic or incredibly dangerous. Possibly both.”
“It’s neither. It’s just?—”
“A connection with a stranger whose identity you can’t verify, who somehow found the most paranoid cybersecurity analyst in the private sector and got past her defenses.” Celeste raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t set off any alarms for you?”
It did. Of course it did. Daphne wasn’t naive. She knew the risks, had cataloged them exhaustively in the analytical part of her brain that ran constant threat assessments. But the thing about Titan was that he’d never pushed. Never asked for personal details. Never tried to extract information about her work or her family.
“Just be careful,” Celeste said. She leaned down and pressed her forehead against Daphne’s—their gesture, the one that had existed since before they had words for things. “I can’t lose you, too. Not right now.”
Daphne closed her eyes and breathed. “I’m always careful.”
“Liar.” Celeste pulled back and smiled, though it was fragile at the edges. “Find Dom. And tell mystery man I want a full background check before any in-person meetings.”
Then she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her, and Daphne was alone again with six monitors full of nothing.
She gave herself thirty seconds to feel whatever she needed to feel, and then got back to work.
four
The guards cutDom’s zip ties, then shoved him through the door hard enough that he stumbled. He caught himself on the arm of a leather couch and spun around just as the door slammed shut behind them. Three locks engaged in rapid succession, each one a heavy metallic thud that traveled through the walls.
Fuckers.
He flexed his hands. His fingers had gone past numb, and he winced as blood rushed back with a tingling, angry burn. The skin over both wrists was raw and welted, and would bruise spectacularly within a few hours. He clenched and unclenched his fists, forcing circulation.
He wanted to put one of those guys through a wall.
Not even the one who’d shoved him. All of them. He wanted to work through every last man who’d laid hands on Vivi, wanted to do it slowly and with great personal satisfaction. He cataloged what he’d seen so far: the guard at the door with the bad knee, the way the second one always hung back a half-step. Hesitant. Green. The big guy who’d cut his ties was the real threat, but he’d eventually show his weakness, too. They always did.
Patience, he told himself.You’ll get your shot.
But, as Davey liked to remind him constantly, he wasn’t a patient man.
He pulled in a breath through his nose and turned to take in the room.
It was admittedly an improvement from the basement.
An apartment, all clean lines and warm lighting, and furniture that looked like it had been selected by someone with taste and a budget that didn’t have a ceiling. Hardwood floors, honey-toned and polished. A low-slung sectional sofa in charcoal gray took up the living room, flanked by end tables with lamps. An open kitchen lay beyond, with marble countertops and copper fixtures.
But a gilded cage was still a cage.
And he hated being caged.
Dom noticed the cameras immediately. Four in the living room alone. They weren’t hidden. Weren’t even trying to be.
The message was clear:We see everything. We want you to know we see everything.
Vivi stood just inside the door, arms wrapped around herself, scanning the room. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. She was running the same assessment he was, studying the room like the thief she used to be.