Rhett's pov
The rooftop is cold at this hour, the kind of bone-deep chill that seeps through your coat and reminds you why most people stay inside. It always is. We've been coming up here since we were teenagers, back when the tower was half-built and this terrace was just raw concrete with no railing, an edge that felt like it could swallow you if you leaned too far. The railing exists now. The feeling hasn't entirely gone. Some nights, standing here still feels like balancing on the brink of everything.
Declan arrives in eleven minutes. He always does. Jacket zipped against the wind, whiskey already in hand from the bottle he keeps in his car for moments like this. He got the text, 'rooftop, now', and knew better than to ask questions over the phone. His face is steady, but there's a tightness around his eyes, the look of a man who's been pulled from something ordinary into whatever storm I'm brewing tonight.
I set my phone on the ledge between us. The message glows on the screen.
'You have the wrong man.'
He looks at it. I watch him closely, every micro-expression. His face does something, a flicker, barely there, a shift behind his eyes like a shadow crossing a familiar room. Then the control snaps back into place, and he's reading it like it's brand new. He meets my gaze. "Where did it come from?"
"Three servers. All clean, no trace."
"Content analysis?"
"Nothing. Four words. No context." My voice comes out flat, but inside, my chest feels tight. This message isn't just data. It's a crack in the foundation I've spent years reinforcing. And Declan, my right hand, the one person who's seen me at my lowest, might know more than he's letting on.
He picks up the phone, reads it again as if the words might rearrange themselves. He sets it down, takes a slow sip of whiskey. It isn't a surprise I saw in that fraction of a second. It was something heavier, like confirmation of a fear he'd been carrying quietly. The realization settles in my gut like lead. I don't ask about it. I'm not ready for what the answer might do to us. To the fragile trust that's kept us functioning all these years.
>>>
We talk about the investigation instead, the wind whipping around us like it wants to carry our words away. Declan asks the right questions, the way he always does, seeming collaborative while gently steering. He's brilliant at it. I've always known and chosen to value the results over the method. Tonight, though, I listen with different ears. Every suggestion lands differently, laced with the doubt I can't shake.
He suggests disinformation. "Someone who knows you're digging and wants to throw you off. Classic move, plant doubt right when things are tightening." He outlines the routing, the operational value of destabilizing at this stage. Measured, helpful, logical.
But he steers, just slightly, away from the possibility that the message might be true. That I've been chasing the wrong shadow all along. I hear it all, the subtle pivots, the careful phrasing. My throat tightens with a mix of anger and something sharper, betrayal's early sting. Declan has been with me through blood and deals and sleepless nights. If he's hiding something... the thought fractures something deep in my chest. Loyalty isn't supposed to feel this precarious.
I drink my whiskey and let the conversation flow where he wants it. For now. But I file it away with the other quiet observations I've been stacking up about him over the past year, the late calls he doesn't explain, the way his jokes have started landing a beat too perfectly. The friendship that's starting to feel like another boardroom negotiation.
>>>
Later, after he's built his case for treating the message as misdirection, we stand at the railing in silence. The city sprawls below, lights flickering like distant stars that don't give a damn about any of this. My mind drifts sideways, the way it does when exhaustion and whiskey loosen the reins. I think about Warren Adley.
Wren mentioned it casually on the ride home from that foundation dinner, her voice soft with confusion she hadn't fully named yet. 'He called at midnight. Asked if I'd been having the dreams again.'
Those dreams. She'd described them to me once in that spare, careful way she has, like she was handing over something fragile. A dark hallway stretching endlessly. Water she can never quite reach, cold and pulling. Her own voice calling a name that slips away every time. Nightmares she's carried since childhood, the kind that leave her waking up reaching for her camera like it's the only solid thing left.
Warren knew about them. Without her telling him.
The implication hits harder up here in the cold. People don't know unspoken things unless they were there when the scars formed. Unless they helped create them, my grip tightens on the railing until my knuckles ache. Wren's face flashes in my mind, unguarded behind her lens, that quiet strength mixed with vulnerability that makes me want to shield her from everything. Including her own father. The protectiveness burns in my chest, tangled with a deeper fear, what if keeping her safe means tearing her world apart? What if I'm already too late?
I haven't told her about any of this. The message, the files. The growing sense that her family's shadows reach further than she knows. Keeping her in the dark feels like love and cruelty at the same time. It weighs on me, heavy as the night air.
Declan leaves at one. I watch him go, his silhouette disappearing into the elevator, and the solitude rushes in. The rooftop feels emptier without him, but safer too. For the first time in years, I wonder if I've been leaning on the wrong person.
>>>
I'm at my desk by one-thirty. Not to work, exactly. Just to sit with the pieces. To let them turn over in my mind without forcing patterns. The city hums indifferently outside the windows.
My security system pings. Not the perimeter this time, the server.
I pull up the alert, heart kicking up a notch. A breach attempt, sophisticated enough to slip past two outer layers before my system slammed the door. This wasn't some script kiddie, professional routing, targeted.
Not the financials. Not the acquisitions or foundation records. They went straight for the Calloway family murders.
My stomach dropped, someone knows I have files on it, someone wants to know exactly how deep I've gone. A dead informant. A child witness conditioned to forget. And now this encrypted warning burning in my mind. The pieces are shifting, and the picture they form is starting to look like a nightmare I can't wake from.
I lean back, rubbing my eyes. Outside, the 1 a.m. city pulses on, cars sliding through streets, lives unfolding without pause. But inside, everything feels personal now. Wren's dreams. Warren's midnight call. Declan's flicker of recognition. The wrong man. My cousin's face doing something I chose not to confront.
The emotional undercurrent pulls at me harder than I'd like. This isn't just business anymore. It's Wren's safety, her truth, hanging in the balance. The thought of her alone in her darkroom, developing images that might reveal too much, sends a fierce protectiveness surging through me, mixed with a quiet terror that I might fail her. That my carefully controlled world is cracking open, and the things spilling out could hurt the one person who's made me feel something real in years.
I closed the breach report.
I opened a new file.
I start again from the beginning, the weight of it all pressing on my shoulders like the cold from the rooftop still clinging to my skin. Whatever comes next, I'll face it. For her. Even if it costs me the alliances I've built my life on.