Page 9 of Make Them Pay

“Goldenbell,” she says, reading the name on the screen. “That’s Serafina’s front company.”

“You know it?”

Something flickers across her face, quick and guarded. “I know the name. Poe mentioned it a couple of times.”

I file that reaction away but don’t push. Trust is still new between us. We’re only hours into this partnership that started with her trying to sneak out.

“Knight’s alive,” I tell her. “He got away before they could catch him. He’s hiding south of Saint Pierce.”

Her whole body relaxes a little, tension draining from her shoulders. “Who else?”

“Just Knight for sure. Juno, Salem, and River are safe at the main office. The six they took are Poe, Arrow, Gage, Ozzy, Orchid, and Lark. All confirmed held somewhere, but we don’t know where yet.”

She processes it quickly, the way Poe does, but I see her fingers tighten around her cup.

“What’s the full picture with Maddox?” she asks. “Poe never told me much. He kept me completely out of the operational side.”

This is the conversation I knew was coming. Telling her how things really work means pulling back a curtain her brother tried hard to keep closed.

“Dean Maddox runs everything. He built Maddox Security as a private security outfit on the surface. They take normal jobs for regular clients. But the real work is going after people the system can’t touch. Traffickers. Financial predators. The kind of bad guys who hide behind lawyers and money. The crew finds them, gathers evidence, and either hands it over or handles it themselves.”

“Handles it,” she repeats, testing the word.

“Yes. Different situations need different solutions.”

She holds my gaze for a long moment. I let her see all of me. The guy who works quietly on computers and the guy who kicked in a warehouse door last night. She gets both or she gets nothing.

“Okay,” she says finally. “Show me how we stay hidden.”

I turn the laptop so we can both see and start explaining the basics of our setup. I keep it simple. Hidden connections online. Ways to move around without leaving tracks. She leans in closer to look at the screen. Her shoulder brushes mine, and I become very aware of how small the table is and how good she smells even after everything she’s been through.

“That part right there,” she says, pointing. “It’s smart. The way it keeps changing paths.”

I glance at her. She’s focused, eyes bright, lips slightly parted. The morning light catches the gold flecks in her green eyes, and for a second I forget what I was saying. She’s beautiful when she’s thinking hard like this. She’s a dangerous kind of beautiful.

I clear my throat. “Yeah. It changes constantly so no one can follow us.”

She asks good questions. Not just how things work, but why I set them up this way. Questions that show she’s been thinking about this stuff for a long time on her own. Her mind is sharp, and watching her pick everything up so fast does something to me I shouldn’t be feeling right now.

We sit side by side at the narrow table. There’s no way to avoid touching. Our elbows brush when we reach for the keys. Her knee presses against my thigh when she shifts. Each small contact sends a spark through me. I notice every one. So does she. I catch the tiny pauses, the way she holds her breath for half a second before continuing.

We both pretend to ignore it.

By midday she’s built something solid on her own. It is not perfect yet, but it’s good. Really good. She sits back and looks at me, surprised and a little proud.

“It works,” she says softly.

“It does. There’s a small timing glitch in the program, but you’ll see it when you check.”

She finds the issue and fixes it herself. The solution is different from what I would’ve done, and probably better.

She turns and really looks at me. “You’re actually going to teach me everything.”

“That’s what I said.”

“People say a lot of things they don’t mean. Poe promised to bring me in for years before I stopped believing him.”

“I’m not your brother.”