Zariah woke up on the couch, Dorian's coat draped over her like a blanket. It still smelled like rain and something expensive maybe regret. He'd stayed few hours but when she woke up again after sunrise, he was gone. Not a note, or a text. Just the ghosts of his presence in the quiet.
And the flash drive still untouched on the coffee table.
She sat up, rubbing her face, heart pounding from a half remembered dream. In it, her mother had been whispering something over and over.
"Not everyone who protects you wants you to be free."
She plugged in the flash drive anyway.
Paranoia could kill her. So could not knowing.
A file blinked to life:
WINTERBLOOM_OPERATIONS.docx
The first page was list of offshore account numbers. Swiss banks. Cayman island. Code names like "Fig Tree " and "Zero Echo." Then came invoices. High dollar payments linked to shell corporations. Her mother had annotated it all, a breadcrumb trial left for someone with the guts to follow it.
Then, buried deep in the folder: surveillance photos.
One made Zariah's breath stop.
It was her mother, meeting someone in a parking garage. The timestamp reads two weeks before the accident. The man in the photo is Dorian but his face was partially turned, expression unreadable.
Next to that is a voice mail file with trembling hands, she clicked it.
"If you get this... It means I couldn't stop them. There's more going on than I can explain in one message. Trust is a weapon now, use it wisely."
That was her mother's voice, soft, fierce and final.
Zariah stood up abruptly, almost knocking over the coffee table. Her pulse raced. This wasn't grief anymore. This is war.
Later that night, she found herself back at the gallery. Empty and closed. Just the quiet buzz of florescent light and the echo of her footsteps across concrete floors.
Dorian stood in the middle of the exhibit as if he'd been waiting. "You came," he said.
"I shouldn't have," she replied
"But you did"
She nodded. "I opened the drive."
His expression didn't change but something behind his eyes went darker. "And?"
"You lied to me."
He didn't deny it "Not everything."
"You met her two weeks before she died. Why?"
His hands flexed at his sides. "She asked for my help, she said she had proof that someone on the inside wanted her gone. She was scared."
"So why didn't you protect her?" Zariah's voice cracked.
"I tried but I was ordered to stand down." He looked at her, eyes shadowed. "You didn't get it - Zariah. I was part of it. That company called Winterbloom is not just a business, it's a machine and your mom got caught in the gears."
Zariah stared at him. "And me?"
"You're the one piece they didn't account for"
She took a step toward him. "So what now?"
Dorian reached for her, hesitated, then rested a hand on her cheek, thumb brushing beneath her eyes. "Now I don't lie to you anymore."
Her body trembled at the contact. She hated how natural it felt, how her heart pulled towards him even when every red flag screamed run.
But when he kissed her, slow, like a confession, she didn't pull away.
She kissed him back.
And for one minute, there was no Winterbloom, no surveillance and no mother's voice in the dark.
Just lips and breath and years of tension burning into something that felt dangerous and necessary at once.
When they parted, Zariah whispered, "Every Secret Has a Spine, Dorian. Sooner or later, they stand up."
He nodded "The let's break them before they break you."