Page 34 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

"What's the plan?" she asks. "Not the strategy. For me. Where I go, what I do, who decides."

"I decide. Until this ends."

She nods like she expected nothing else, and that's worse than if she'd thrown the glass. "Okay."

"Jazz—"

"I'm tired. Goodnight, Sebastian."

She climbs the stairs without hurry. Deflation present in her body. She doesn't glance like she usually would.

The display hums behind me—every thread, every proof of how cleanly I've been outplayed. I can see the conspiracy, but what I can't see is how I manage to love and protect her.

Elias is still below. I open comms to speak.

"One more directive. Effective now. Every threat assessment touching Jasmine routes to both of us. No delay. No filtering."

"Understood."

On the wall, the network folds itself once more, clean and total, every line bending toward a single point of control. It looks like protection. It will hold every danger at the door.

21

JASMINE

The tile is cold under my bare feet when Mom's name appears on screen, and I answer before I've decided which version of myself she gets tonight.

"Hi, baby," she says. "You eating? You don't sound like you're eating."

"I'm eating." I lean against the sink. "I'm fine, Mom."

"You go quiet on me for days and call it fine. Where even are you?"

"Out of the city for a few days. A work thing. Somewhere quiet." All true, kind of.

"Quiet," she repeats, suspicious. "With that man?"

"It's—complicated."

"It's always complicated with the handsome ones." She laughs, then gentles. "I worry, Jazz. You've had a hard year. Don't run yourself into the ground."

"I know." I close my eyes. "How are you? The new meds, the?—"

"That's why I called, actually." Her voice does something I haven't heard from her in years. It lifts. "I meant to tell you sooner, but I didn't understand it at first. The hospital sent aletter weeks ago, then called Tuesday to confirm it. The balance is gone. Paid in full."

"What?" My eyes widen.

"Forty-one thousand dollars. There's a program—the Anson Patient Relief Fund. I cried right there on the phone, I'm not ashamed of it."

The name feels familiar. Anson. I've seen it. Routed paperwork in Sebastian's outer office, a sub-fund under one of the Crowe charitable arms, account strings I scrolled past because it wasn't mine to deal with.

"Mom." My mouth has gone dry. "Did you apply? Fill anything out?"

"No, that's the miracle. They reached out to me. Said I was pre-qualified."

My legs go weak, and I place myself on the bath. I never gave Sebastian anything about it. Not to anyone. That means he went looking.

"Jazz? You there? Aren't you happy?"