Page 121 of Controlled Burn
She clicked save.
Because prey runs.
But predators?
They set traps.
And Talia Cross was just getting started.
Behind her, in the dark of her apartment, a faint red light blinked once. Steady. Watching.
Chapter 44
Ember Logic
He had always been invisible.
Not in the pitiful, wallflower sense the crew joked about. No—Brooks wasn’t unnoticed.
He was ignored. Dismissed. Misunderstood.
And that made him dangerous in a way they hadn’t yet learned to fear.
But they would.
It was always the same kind of woman. The bold ones. The loud ones. The ones who demanded to be seen, touched, and obeyed.
Women who thought rules didn’t apply because they could weaponize softness. Because they could turn heads and twist authority with a smirk or the arch of a thigh.
He knew them. He’d been raised by one.
His mother wore perfume that stained every room—a red-lipped ghost who vanished for days at a time. She’d sit at thekitchen table, drunk off someone else’s liquor, laughing too loud at the television while his father sulked in the next room—broken, silent, wrecked.
He was twelve the night she came home with another man’s cologne on her skin. She kissed him goodnight and whispered,Don’t tell your father.
He did.Sheleft anyway. She never came back.
After that, his father drank until his hands shook. Blamed Brooks for the betrayal—for being too soft. Too smart. Too much like her.
There were years of silence between them.
When his father finally died—pale and slumped on the couch beside a half-eaten TV dinner—Brooks didn’t cry. He’d already learned the truth:
Love was chaos. And women like her only left wreckage in their wake.
So he built systems instead. Files. Order. Control.
Who needed charm when you had surveillance? Or muscles, when you had metadata?
He didn’t need to be liked when he could see everything—every pattern, every lie, every desire the others tried to hide.
And for a while, it worked.
Until her.
Talia Cross.
She walked into the academy orientation as if she owned the place.
