Chapter 52 Trigger Points
Sloane’s POV
By midday my face had been turned into a personality disorder on three different sites.
The thoughtful pieces I could handle. The ones that called me complicated, brilliant, haunted. Fine. They at least tried.
It was the other ones. The op ed with my picture under the headline When Trauma Becomes a Brand. The columnist who implied I was using my past like mascara smear, painting it on for sympathy.
And then the especially vile one Harper texted me with a warning label that I did not heed.
The first line made my skin crawl.
From daddy issues to daddies in uniforms, has Sloane Mercer ever met a man in authority she did not try to seduce and then blame.
I read all nine paragraphs. Every word that twisted my disclosures into armchair psychology. That said I craved control and then punished men when they gave it. That took what I had finally peeled back on purpose and smeared it across the floor.
By the end my hands were shaking hard enough that the phone rattled on the desk.
At work I snapped at everyone.
A junior engineer misread a graph and I bit his head off in front of half the team. Ava brought me coffee and I barked at her that if one more person tried to caffeinate me instead of giving me answers I would throw them out the window. Harper came by with a draft response and took one look at my face before backing out like the room was on fire.
It felt like it was. Under my skin.
Eli stayed a few feet away in the war room, watching. Not flinching. It made me angrier and I did not know why.
Around three he approached my desk, moving carefully, like I was a live wire.
“Take the afternoon off from screens,” he said, voice low. “Let Mila monitor the chatter. You have not slept, eaten or left this building properly in forty eight hours. That is not sustainable, Sloane.”
What I heard was, You cannot handle this. Let the adults deal with your mess.
“I am fine,” I said sharply.
“You are vibrating,” he said. “And reading people who are paid to be cruel. That is not going to help you think clearly.”
“I do not need you to curate my reality for me,” I snapped. “I do not need another man telling me what is good for me while he turns my life into a case file.”
He recoiled a fraction, like I had actually hit him. The look on his face told me exactly which ghosts I had just thrown him in a box with. My father. Noah. Men who had documented and dissected me.
“Is that what you think I am doing,” he asked, voice suddenly cold. “Turning you into a file.”
“You stood there and watched them analyze our hallway footage like I was a liability,” I said. “You have entire whiteboards in your head about my risk profile. You keep talking about optics and exits. Forgive me if it feels familiar.”
His jaw clenched. “I am not your father,” he said. “And I am not Noah. I am trying to keep you breathing, not sell you.”
“Then stop acting like you own the terms of my survival,” I shot back. “Stop deciding how much of my own story I am allowed to look at.”
Silence fell over the room. People suddenly found reasons to stare very hard at their monitors.
He looked like he wanted to say a dozen things. Instead he stepped back, hands open.
“Okay,” he said tightly. “You want to watch them tear you apart, do it. I am not going to stand here and watch it with you while you bleed yourself dry.”
That hurt more than it should have. Which meant I was already past rational.
I grabbed my phone and walked. Out of the war room, past glass offices, down into the belly of the building where the air was cooler and the hum was my kind of white noise.
The server room has always been my church. Rows of racks, fans whispering, LEDs blinking in patient patterns. Systems that did what I told them to, not what they thought I deserved.
I slipped inside, shut the heavy door, and sat on the floor between two cabinets. Hugged my knees to my chest. Let the noise wash over me.
When scared, I lash out at whoever is closest. It is a pattern. I know it. Therapy has told me. Harper has told me. Now I had just watched myself do it to the one person who had not earned it.
Eli was not the enemy. He had just become the closest one emotionally, which made him the easiest to hurt.
I stared at my phone for a long time. Then I typed.
Server room. You can come down if you leave the lecture upstairs.
The door hissed open fifteen minutes later. He stepped in, letting it close behind him, the hum swallowing us.
He did not loom. He did not pace. He just lowered himself onto the floor across from me, legs stretched out, back against the opposite rack.
For a second, neither of us spoke. The lights blinked in slow pulses. Green, amber, green. The heartbeat of the place I had built and kept trying not to lose.
“I am sorry,” I said finally. The words felt like someone else’s, but they were true. “For calling you those names. For throwing you in the same pile as him. Them.”
He exhaled. “I am sorry,” he said. “For defaulting to command mode. For making help sound like an order.”
I picked at the frayed knee of my trousers. “If this works,” I said, “we need to learn how to fight without reaching for old ghosts every time. I do not want to keep arguing with my father using your face.”
His mouth crooked. “Fair. I need to stop protecting you like you are already dying,” he said. “Not everyone leaves a courtyard.”
I scooted sideways until our shoulders touched, backs both against the warm metal. The contact was small and huge at once.
We watched the server LEDs together, little points of light flicking data back and forth. All the things we were risking ourselves for, humming feet from our heads.
“This piece,” I nodded at my phone, “hurt. Badly. Not because it was well written. Because it hit every bruise I thought I knew how to cover.”
“I know,” he said. “That is why I wanted to take it away. Not to baby you. To give you room to breathe.”
“Next time, ask,” I said. “Do not just suggest I log off like I am a kid on a screen timer.”
He nodded. “Deal.”
My phone buzzed in my lap. Another opinion piece, I thought, already bracing. Instead I saw Mila’s name.
Summit agenda updated, her message read. New panel. The Future of Integrated Surveillance. Keynote speaker: Noah Rye.
A second line followed.
Private session added. Title: Legacy Architect, Mercer.
My throat went dry.
“The web is moving,” I said.
Beside me, Eli read over my shoulder, his body tensing again.
Fear and fury twisted together in my gut.
They wanted me in London. As a cautionary tale. As a prize. As the one who had once drawn the first god mode diagram and might be stupid enough to pick up the pen again.
I closed my eyes and felt the hum of the servers under my spine.
Old ghosts, new rooms.
If they wanted me there, they were going to get more than they bargained for.