“I refused. Obviously.” I took another sip, the ice-cold burn almost punitive.
He watched me, eyes narrowed but unreadable. He didn’t interrupt. Just waited.
“I promise. I refused him.” My voice was steadier, but it cost me. My stomach turned, and for a moment, I thought I might throw up.
He inclined his head. “I don’t doubt you.” There was nothing patronizing in it, but his calm amplified the doubts in my mind.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my brow. “It’s just—fuck—did I do this to myself? By being…so reckless? Did I signal?—”
“Don’t.” The word landed flat and final. He exhaled once. “You said no.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “Yes.”
“Then that is all.” He shifted back, forearms braced on his knees. “You do not owe me details while you are still bleeding from them.” His gaze hardened. “But he miscalculated. And I will handle that carefully.”
He stood in a single movement and held out his hand.
“Come.”
For a second, I just looked at it—unyielding. Certain. My pulse rattled in my throat. I slipped my fingers into his. His grip was warm. Steady.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I need to show you something.”
He led me down the hallway to the last door on the left. A matte-black keypad was set into the frame—a digital cipher lock that didn’t belong in a residential flat. He keyed in eight digits,his hand shielding the panel, and the mag-lock disengaged with a muted click.
The room beyond bore no resemblance to the rest of the apartment.
It felt like a digital cathedral concealed behind domestic walls. Recessed LED strips washed everything in a midnight blue, making my skin look bloodless. At the center stood a glass-topped desk with six monitors stacked in a double-decker arc. Green code streamed down two of them, relentless and alive. The others displayed live surveillance feeds—grainy, unblinking views of places I didn’t recognize. Corridors. Entrances. Blind corners.
I felt irrationally exposed.
Two server racks hummed in the corner, their perforated panels blinking red and amber in steady sequence. The cables feeding them were bundled and routed with obsessive precision—color-coded, zip-tied, not a single wire out of place.
The air carried a faint tang of ozone and heated plastic—electronics pushed hard, never resting.
He released my hand and gestured toward the mesh-backed chair in front of the desk.
“Sit.”
I did.
“What is all this?” I asked, unable to keep the tremor from my voice.
Luka leaned over my shoulder, his body heat seeping into me. “This,” he said, his fingers flying across the keyboard in a blur of muscle memory as he logged in, “is where I work.”
“When you’re not driving.”
“That’s not work. That’s…supplemental.”
“Income?”
He shot me a sideways look. “In a manner of speaking.” He clicked a few commands. “But that’s not why I brought you here.” More clicks. “This is.”
A collage of windows spilled open across the wall of screens: surveillance footage, social media profiles, bank statements, government filings, police reports, non-disclosure agreements. And photographs—no fewer than ten women.
My gaze darted from screen to screen, trying to assemble meaning from the barrage of data. “What am I looking at?”