Page 11 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

"Agreed."

His voice drops. The screen light catches the silver in his eyes, and the absurd part is that my body urges me to step closer. Then I remember the doors downstairs, the garage, and the question he never asked. I let go of the pages.

He steps back at once, giving me the space like he has been holding it ready. "I'll send this version. Thank you, Jasmine."

There is my name again, careful in his mouth. Professional. Controlled. Too careful. By the elevator, he presses the call button while I am still a step away.

"I can get myself downstairs," I say.

"I know."

"Then why are you walking me?"

"Because the draft is finished," he says. "And I prefer complete endings."

The doors open. I step inside and turn before they close. Sebastian stays where he is, one hand in his pocket, the polished calm back in place. The elevator drops. I step into the lobby, the guard at the desk is already facing the doors with his radio in his hand. He lowers it when he sees me notice. I keep walking, but the thought follows me out: Sebastian Crowe does not guess. He arranges.

8

SEBASTIAN

The hidden room sits two levels below the lobby, it doesn't appear on the building schematic. I push it open and find the intruder already secured, wrists bound to the chair frame with a Dawnthread cord our kind cannot tear without burning.

He is younger than Gid, but older than he looks—a century, perhaps. Good suit. Shoes too luxurious for the courier he tried to pass off as. His eyes lift as I enter with confidence like he believes it's still a negotiation.

Gid stands at his shoulder. Elias works at the table, sorting a small spread of objects under a desk lamp.

"Thirty-one minutes," Gideon says. "That's how long he walked our floors before the badge flagged."

"Whose badge?"

"An old contractor that hasn't reported here in eight months." Elias slides a laminated card across the table. The photograph's been swapped; the chip underneath still carries the original clearance. "Cloned access. Clean work. He knew how to bypass a cross-check."

I set the card down. "The phone?"

"Wiped before we reached him." Elias turns the dead handset over. "He didn't trust it to memory, though. He wrote things down."

He unfolds a square of paper. I read it standing, and control becomes a choice I have to make again. The notes aren't about our servers or the upper offices. They're about Jasmine.

Arrival times. The elevator she favors. A note that she keeps a chair four meters from my office door. A mark beside the question of whether security tightens when she works late.

"He wasn't here for the company," I say.

"No." Gid's voice goes flat. "He was here for Jasmine."

I rest the paper under the lamp, because my hand would prefer to ruin it. "Show me what else."

Elias sets a final object between us—a small brass token, old, its sigil worn nearly smooth. I recognize the house before he speaks.

"Dain," Elias confirms. "This marking predates most living vampires. Cyrus gives it to people he wants useful and deniable."

"So we end it the simple way." Gid isn't looking at the intruder. He's looking at me. "She leaves Crowe Technologies. Transfer, a generous reference, or payment. She never learns why. In a month she's just a name and she's left alone."

"No."

"Sebastian."

"I said no."