Page 71 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

Ivy stops typing. Her cursor blinks rapidly against the black terminal screen. She picks up her coffee mug, but she doesn’t drink. She reads the headline.

The lines of her face tighten. A ghost runs its fingers across her spine.

I don’t ask her what she thinks. I sit perfectly still and wait. I’ll wait as long as she needs.

“Her name was Marta.” Ivy doesn’t look away from the screen. “She was twenty-three.”

I set my mug down. The ceramic clinks heavily against the wood. I don’t interrupt.

“She came from Kyiv with a medical visa.” Ivy grips her mug with both hands, staring through the news feed. “She had a reference letter from the Gemini Foundation. They facilitated her passage to the United States. I processed the reference letter. I told her the paperwork cleared.”

She turns her head and looks at the Atlantic Ocean. The blue water stretches out forever.

“I didn’t read the architecture carefully enough. I didn’t see the shell structures.” Ivy’s voice fractures. “They consumed her. The infrastructure swallowed her whole.”

Standing, I cross the space between us.

“I burned their money for three years because I couldn’t find her.” Ivy looks down at her hands. “When we ran the routing tables in D.C., I searched her name.”

I stop beside her chair.

“They logged her as liquidated.” The devastating finality of the word echoes in the quiet apartment.

I don’t offer platitudes. I don’t tell her it wasn’t her fault. She is an architect of systems. She knows exactly how the machine works.

Kneeling beside her chair, I cover both of her hands with mine.

She lets out a ragged breath and leans into me. The rigid line of her spine collapses. She rests her head against my shoulder. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her completely flush against my chest, anchoring her to the ground.

I hold her until the sun clears the horizon, washing the apartment in gold.

“Come here.” I stand and lift her out of the chair.

She wraps her legs around my waist, burying her face in the curve of my neck. I carry her out of the living space and into the bedroom.

I lay her down on the mattress. The sheets tangled from the night before, white linen bathed in the morning light. I brace my hands on either side of her shoulders, letting my weight settle over her.

The collision is entirely different from the island house deck. No adrenaline driving us. No threat of an incoming airstrike. We’re completely alone, and we’re completely safe.

I strip the shirt off her shoulders. She arches into my touch, her hands sliding up my chest to grip the back of my neck. I kiss her, slow and deep, taking my time. There is no urgency. I have the rest of my life to memorize the taste of her.

“Julian.”

I bare her skin to the light. I touch her everywhere, my hands mapping the delicate, lethal lines of her body. She shivers, her breath catching as I trace the curve of her hip, sliding my hand down the length of her thigh. She opens for me, completely undefended.

I sink into her.

The sensation is overwhelming. The heat and the friction strip the air from my lungs. She wraps her arms around my shoulders, holding onto me with a fierce, quiet desperation. We move together in a slow, deep rhythm that burns away the shadows of the Consortium, leaving nothing behind but the physical reality of each other.

She undoes me. She takes the violence, the structure, the unyielding rigidity of my life, and she turns it into something devastatingly beautiful.

When she shatters, her back arching off the mattress, she calls my name, the sound burying itself deep in my chest. I follow her over the edge a second later, the release blinding and complete.

I collapse against her, wrapping her tightly in my arms, listening to the heavy, synchronized beat of our hearts slowing down in the quiet room.

An hour later, the apartment smells like fresh espresso.

Ivy sits back at the dining table. She opens a new terminal window. I set a fresh mug next to her keyboard.