Chapter 29: LINES DRAWN

Chapter 29: LINES DRAWN
Living in Steve Freeman’s penthouse was starting to feel like being adopted by a very rich, very moody panther.

You don’t really know what room you’re allowed in. You don’t really know when it’s okay to approach. And sometimes you catch it watching you from a shadowed corner, and you’re not sure if it’s making sure you’re safe or making sure you don’t wander too far.

Mark had been clear, be transparent, stay visible, follow protocol.
Steve was the opposite. Controlled. Quiet. Not so much I’m here to protect you as I own the space you stand in.

And maybe, in a way I didn’t want to unpack, that kind of protection felt… harder to shake off.

It started small.

Mark texted to ask if I was okay? Steve intercepted and answered She’s fine. My I’m fine didn’t even make it out of drafts before the conversation was already over.

Mark wanted me to drop by the station for a “quick check-in.” Steve’s version of that was, “Whatever you have to say to her, you can say to me.”

One man was drawing perimeter lines in chalk.
The other was carving them into marble.

By the third day, the tension had a pulse of its own. I felt it in the way Dante hovered a fraction closer than usual, in the way Steve’s voice flattened whenever Mark’s name came up.

Dinner that night was quiet. Not awkward-quiet... more like the kind where every word you do speak has to pass through three internal filters before it escapes.

We were at the smaller dining table, not the one that could seat a minor European government. Steve was in a dark shirt, sleeves rolled, tie gone. He had that unbothered billionaire thing down to an art — leaning back, fork in hand, like the world was just one more problem he could buy an answer to.

Halfway through my plate, he said it.

“So.” Fork clinked against porcelain. “How long have you known O’Brien?”

Casual. Too casual. Like a detective pretending to ask where you were last night.

“High school,” I said, without looking up.

“Mm.” He speared something green, chewed slow. “Close?”

I took a sip of water I didn’t need. “Small school. Everyone was close.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.”

A flicker in his eyes, amusement or irritation, I couldn’t tell. Maybe both.

Dante came in to clear plates. Steve let the subject drop, but it didn’t feel like he’d let it go.

Later, I ended up on the couch with my laptop, pretending to work while Steve made a series of phone calls from his office. Every now and then, his voice would sharpen just enough to bleed through the closed door. My name never came up, but I still knew those conversations were about me. Or around me.

Around ten, I headed to the guest room-that-wasn’t-really-a-guest-room-anymore. My coat was still draped over the chair from earlier, when I’d gone downstairs to grab a coffee from the lobby café.

I picked it up... heavier than I remembered.

The weight wasn’t in the fabric.

It was in the pocket.

I reached in. Fingers brushed cold metal.

And when I pulled it out, the breath left my lungs.

Not another card.

A listening device.

Small. Black. So light it could’ve been sewn into the lining without me noticing.

Except this one hadn’t been in my coat before tonight.