Chapter 69 Targeted Love
Eli’s POV
My eyes kept going back to the same line like it could change if I stared hard enough.
Neutralized includes discreditation, imprisonment, or final removal.
The hotel room felt too warm. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that usually meant something was about to break. My thumb rubbed the edge of the tablet until my skin went numb, but the words stayed sharp.
Across the small table, Sloane sat very still, shoulders squared, jaw locked. Her face had that clean, dangerous calm that came right before she did something reckless and brilliant.
I forced a breath. “It’s a plan,” I said. “Not a prophecy.”
She didn’t blink. “It’s a plan with your name in it.”
“Not my name,” I corrected automatically, because my brain reached for technicalities when my gut was trying to fold in on itself. “Shepherd One.”
Her mouth curved without humor. “You’re the only person I know who can read final removal and still try to soften it with a codename.”
I set the tablet down and leaned back, like distance would make it less real. “I’ve lived with target lists most of my adult life,” I said. “This doesn’t change the math.”
“It changes my math,” she snapped.
The sharpness in her voice hit me harder than the words on the screen. I hated that. I hated how fast my body wanted to get up, cross the room, and fix her tone by holding her until it smoothed out. I hated that I could not actually fix what this was.
“Sloane,” I said, keeping my voice low, “I’m not trying to be brave. I’m trying to be useful. If they want to come for me, fine. But you cannot let that pull you into stupid choices.”
Her eyes flashed. “Stupid choices like loving you.”
I went still.
She stood so fast her chair scraped the floor. “They want to neutralize you so I accept their offer,” she said, voice tight. “They wrote it down. Like a recipe. You think I’m going to respond to that by acting smaller. By hiding you. By pretending you don’t exist.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend,” I said. “I’m asking you to stop giving them clean footage. No more rooftop silhouettes. No more public kisses. We lower the profile until we can cut the hand holding the gun.”
“You think lowering the profile saves you,” she said. “That’s your sickness. Martyr mode in a nice suit.”
I swallowed. Because she was not wrong. Part of me still believed that if I took the hit, if I walked away from her light, the damage would stop spreading.
“I’m trying to keep you breathing,” I said.
“And I’m trying to keep you alive,” she shot back. “Even if it is inconvenient for your guilt.”
The room went quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet. A knife between ribs.
I stood slowly and stepped closer, careful. “They want us divided,” I said. “They want you alone. They want me either gone or used as proof you should obey them. If we start fighting each other, we hand them the win.”
Her breath hitched. Not a sob. Not weakness. Anger trying to turn into something else and refusing.
I lifted my hands, not touching yet. “Tell me what you want,” I said.
“I want you to stop talking like dying is a valid strategy,” she said. “I want you to stop trying to make your absence the solution.”
I let the words land. Then I nodded once. “Okay,” I said. “No noble exits. No disappearing acts. But we do get smarter.”
She tilted her head, suspicious. “Meaning.”
“Meaning we keep what we are,” I said. “We don’t disavow. We don’t play ashamed. But we stop making it easy for cameras to turn us into a headline. We act like professionals in public, even when we’re dying to touch each other. Then we go private and we don’t apologize.”
A beat.
“And,” I added, “we stop relying on Ward alone. If they want to strangle me through contracts and reputation, we build a web that doesn’t care about contracts.”
Her expression shifted. Not soft, but focused. “Echo Circle,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” I said. “Alina’s people. Ash. Mila. Jonas. Rhea. We spread the work. We spread the protection. No single point of failure. No single company they can threaten into obedience.”
Sloane stared at me for a long moment. Then she stepped into my space and set her palm flat against my chest, right over my heartbeat.
“If they think killing you gets them me,” she said quietly, “they don’t understand either of us.”
The contact burned in the best and worst way. I covered her hand with mine. “Then we make sure they never get to learn,” I said.
We spent the next hour on logistics. New comm channels. Rotating meet locations. Who knew what. What we shared with Lucas and what we kept off Ward systems entirely. What we sent to Harper. Which Zurich routes were clean. Which ones were likely watched.
By the time we left the hotel for a low key dinner, my head felt steadier. Not safe. Just steadier. Like I had shifted from fear into motion.
The street outside smelled like rain and hot asphalt. Zurich nightlife was quiet compared to New York, but my eyes still picked out every reflective surface, every idling vehicle, every pair of footsteps that matched ours too closely.
Sloane walked beside me, coat buttoned, hair loose. Her hand brushed mine once, casual, then stayed close without actually holding on. It felt like a dare.
We were two blocks from the restaurant when the motorcycle came.
The engine roar cut through the calm like a saw. Headlight blasting toward us, too fast, too straight. My body moved before thought finished forming.
“Down,” I shouted, and shoved Sloane behind a parked van.
The first shot cracked the air. Glass exploded somewhere to our left.
Sloane gasped, eyes wide, and I threw myself over her anyway, because final removal or not, I was not letting them take her while I was still breathing.