Page 108 of Over the Edge

His arm tightened around me. “Tomorrow we go to work, pretend we’re professional adults who don’t make out in supply closets, and try not to give Ethan an aneurysm.”

“And after that?”

“After that...” His fingers trailed lazily up my spine. “We come home.”

Home.

With Flynn.

A man who loved me for me.

It was mind-boggling.

For so long, I’d believed that love was a liability—that caring too much made you vulnerable, made you weak. I’d watched my mother wither after Elodie disappeared, had seen operatives compromise missions for loved ones, had witnessed how attachment could be leveraged as a weapon.

But lying here in Flynn’s arms, I understood something I’d missed before: love wasn’t the liability. Fear was. Fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of the very connection that made life worth living.

“Flynn,” I whispered against his neck.

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

He didn’t ask what for. He just pressed a kiss to my forehead and held me tighter, as if he understood everything I wasn’t saying. And maybe he did. Maybe that was part of what made us work—this ability to read between each other’s lines, to understand the silence as clearly as the words.

Outside, rain began to patter against the windows, a gentle percussion that only enhanced the cocoon of warmth we’d created. In Flynn’s arms, with his heartbeat steady beneath my ear, I felt something I hadn’t experienced since Elodie’s death: peace.

I was home.

CHAPTER33

TRENT

I’ve seena lot of fucked-up tech in my years with Edge Ops, but nothing made my skin crawl quite like the tech Moreau had for sale on that goddamn island.

Sentinel was the headliner, sure, but the catalog of horrors went deeper than autonomous killer drones. Stealth suits that scrambled thermal and facial recognition. Biometric spoofs that let you walk through any secure door like you owned the place. Neural compliance implants disguised as wearable health tech. And worst of all—disposable soldiers. Gene-hacked embryos preloaded with combat aggression, grown in underground labs and programmed to die young.

Weaponized child soldiers.

Jesus fucking Christ.

My gut twisted as I leaned against the back wall of our war room, arms crossed, watching Kate and Ozzy dissect the digital remains of Moreau’s auction like forensic surgeons. The room glowed with blue light from five massive monitors—each displaying another horrific piece of intel: weapons, buyers, transaction logs, surveillance footage.

“Tracking a transaction to Saudi Arabia,” Kate said, her fingers flying over her keyboard.

“Saw that, too.” Ozzy glanced over, face bathed in scrolling code. “Looks like our Saudi prince wasn’t just in it for the scenery.”

“Emilio Benítez was there, too,” I said, nodding to El General’s profile on screen.

“Yeah, that man’s a piece of work,” Decker said, lounging back in his chair and flipping a knife from blade to hilt to blade again. “Sick fuck wanted the embryos. Kept bragging about it all night.”

Ethan stepped closer. “Did he get them?”

Kate shook her head. “They hadn’t gone up for bidding yet. If he got them, he stole them in the chaos.”

“Alright. Cross-reference his name with the transaction logs. I want to know what he did walk out with.”

Ozzy pulled it up. “Nanovirus with geographic targeting.”

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