Three Years Earlier — Washington, D.C.
Lexa Quinn moved like a storm cloaked in control, her footsteps soft but purposeful as she crossed the marble floor of the Federal Intelligence Bureau's cyber operations wing. The building was a fortress of glass and steel, humming with surveillance tech and silent ambition. She belonged here—not just because she was brilliant, but because she was dangerous.
On paper, Lexa was a federal data analyst. Off paper, she was a forensic architect of corruption. Her specialty was exposing fraud buried deep inside government networks—false identities, ghost contracts, shell companies funded by federal budgets. She'd built her career on digging through data until she found blood.
Lately, she'd been tracing a strange trail of vanishing funds linked to private prison contracts. The deeper she looked, the more twisted it became—undocumented inmate transfers, offshore payments to shell companies, federal dollars disappearing into smoke. It all pointed to a name that didn't exist on any official registry:
Blackridge Correctional Complex.
Her gut twisted. Something about Blackridge felt wrong. She initiated a Level-5 trace on the funding chain and immediately, resistance pushed back. Firewalls she hadn't seen before. Redirection loops. A soft alarm, maybe. Lexa knew one thing—someone didn't want this file touched.
She logged off. Something told her she was being watched.
That's when he showed up.
"Digging into ghosts again?"
Lexa looked up sharply. Agent Damon Cross leaned in her doorway, arms crossed, a smirk playing on his face. His reputation preceded him—an internal affairs agent who had taken down a deputy director and lived to tell the tale.
She narrowed her eyes. "Are you tracking my keystrokes now?"
"Just the ones that light up red." He stepped inside. "You stumbled into Blackridge, didn't you?"
Lexa didn't answer. Instead, she watched him carefully. Damon moved like someone who didn't trust anyone, not even himself.
"Why do you know that name?" she asked finally.
"Because I've been chasing it for two years," he said, his voice low. "But this thing isn't just dirty. It's radioactive."
He handed her a secure folder. Inside were partial manifests, prisoner IDs that didn't appear in federal records, offshore wire transfers. There was even a photo—men in restraints, faces blurred, standing in front of a red logo painted on concrete: Blackridge.
Lexa exhaled slowly. "This is bigger than I thought."
"They're covering it from the inside," Damon said. "And if you keep poking around, you'll be next."
She gave him a flat look. "I don't scare easy."
"I noticed."
Their eyes held for a moment too long.
---
The Beginning of Something Else
Over the next few weeks, Lexa and Damon formed a secret alliance. They met in archive basements, encrypted chatrooms, and even in Lexa's apartment once—under the pretense of syncing data.
Their working relationship was intense and cerebral. Damon admired Lexa's precision; Lexa trusted his instincts, even when she didn't want to. But beneath the late-night screen glows and urgent case updates, something else bloomed: tension. Quiet. Sharp. And growing.
It was Damon who made the first move—sort of.
One Friday evening, he texted her:
> "Off the record. Meet me. 8PM. 47th and L Street."
"Dress warm. Not formal."
Lexa frowned at the screen. Damon wasn't the type to socialize. He lived like a shadow, constantly moving between truths.
She arrived anyway.
It was a food truck festival tucked inside an old industrial lot, strings of Edison bulbs lighting up the cool air. The smell of grilled steak and spices wafted through the air. Live music echoed from the center stage.
Damon stood beside a Korean barbecue truck, wearing a dark hoodie and jeans. He looked… different. Relaxed. Still guarded, but not the usual fortress.
Lexa approached slowly. "So this is your version of a safehouse?"
He handed her a plate. "If they're going to kill us, we might as well die with short ribs."
She smirked, accepting the food. They walked the lot, joking about federal bureaucracy, laughing at awful song lyrics. When Lexa shivered, he handed her his jacket without asking.
For a moment, she forgot about firewalls and prison records.
They sat on the hood of his car under a buzzing streetlamp, paper plates empty, silence between them.
"You ever wonder what you'd be doing if you weren't chasing ghosts?" Damon asked quietly.
Lexa stared up at the stars. "Maybe teaching. Something quiet. Somewhere nobody knows my name."
He chuckled. "I can't picture you behind a desk in Idaho."
She glanced at him. "What about you?"
"I'd still be chasing something," he admitted. "But maybe... with better company."
Lexa blinked. Their eyes met, and the silence thickened.
He leaned in—just enough to make her pulse spike—but stopped short. Respectful. Controlled.
"You scare me sometimes," he said.
"Good," she whispered.
They didn't kiss that night. But it was the first time Lexa went home with questions that had nothing to do with the case.
The off-duty night at the food truck festival became the first of many.
After that, they fell into an unspoken rhythm. Damon started showing up at her office under the guise of "updates," but he'd bring coffee just the way she liked it—no cream, double shot, burnt sugar on the rim. She began to recognize the shape of his silhouette before he knocked. And when the long nights stretched past midnight, it wasn't unusual for them to order takeout and hunch over glowing monitors together, sleeves rolled up, their voices low.
Lexa never let people in. Not really. But Damon didn't push. He stayed just on the edge of closeness, challenging her, frustrating her, making her laugh when she least expected it.
Once, they got caught in the rain walking out of the archives. Damon tried to shield her with his coat, and she shoved it back into his chest.
"I'm not fragile, Cross."
"Didn't say you were."
They ended up soaked, laughing like idiots in the parking garage.
Another night, they worked at her apartment again—just to avoid network logs at the office. Lexa cooked. Damon leaned against her counter with a beer in hand, watching her stir sauce into pasta.
"You ever let anyone in your space like this?" he asked.
Lexa glanced at him over her shoulder. "You're not in. You're visiting."
He smiled, slow and crooked. "Fair. But I think I'm getting close."
That night, after the case files were spread across her coffee table and the room buzzed with warm light, Damon fell asleep on her couch.
Lexa stood there for a moment, watching him. His jaw had softened. His fingers twitched slightly in sleep, as if dreaming about something he couldn't catch. She hesitated… then gently laid a blanket over him.
When he woke up, nothing was said. But after that, she stopped locking the door when she knew he might come over.
---
Two Months Later
They didn't need to define what they were. There was no time. The case was escalating.
They discovered a secure subnetwork buried under Bureau mainframes. It required two senior clearance codes to unlock—codes that should never have been linked to the same system.
One of them was Lexa's.
The discovery shook her. "I've never accessed this node. Damon—someone's using my clearance."
He turned cold. "That's not possible without your biometric sign-in."
Lexa's heart thundered. "Unless someone cloned it."
Damon didn't say anything right away. He reached out, gently touching her wrist. "We're being set up."
"We?"
He nodded. "You're not the only one they've been watching."
That night, Lexa stayed at his place. For safety, they said. But as the walls closed in around them, proximity became necessity. They slept in the same bed, back to back, but neither really slept.
Around 2 a.m., Damon spoke into the dark.
"If this goes south, you run. Understand?"
She turned over, facing him. "Don't you dare put this on me alone."
His voice was low. "Lex—"
"No. We finish this together."
Their foreheads almost touched. The moment swelled, charged with something sharp and unspoken.
But again—he didn't kiss her.
Neither did she.
---
One Week Before the Arrest
The tension between them had reached a tipping point.
Damon brushed her fingers when passing a document. Lexa lingered just a little longer when returning it. Their voices dropped without reason. Their silences grew louder.
One night, they were standing in a parking garage again, talking too long about too little.
"I think I was wrong," Damon murmured.
Lexa arched a brow. "About what?"
"You. Letting people in." He looked at her like he was memorizing something. "You don't just let them in—you choose them."
She didn't say anything.
He stepped closer. Not to intimidate. Just to be near.
Their hands were inches apart. Breath slow. Heavy.
This time, when he leaned in, she didn't move.
But a car alarm blared a few levels down. The moment shattered.
They both pulled back.
Damon gave her a small smile. "Rain check?"
Lexa swallowed the disappointment. "Yeah."
But the rain never came.
---
The Day of Her Arrest
The day began like any other. Lexa entered the bureau, scanned in, went straight to her terminal. That's when she noticed the breach report flagged on her profile.
Unauthorized access.
Her clearance had been used during hours she hadn't been in the building. A full download of her classified investigation had been conducted. Worse — that data had been leaked through an internal proxy that led back to her workstation.
Her blood went cold.
She raced through layers of logs and timestamps. Someone had framed her. Someone with internal knowledge.
She rushed to the director's office — but he wasn't there. No one was. She called Damon. Voicemail.
The sun had set when she returned to the building. Alone.
Lexa needed to scrub her trail, find the real breach before internal security did. As she slid her badge and entered the cyber wing, the silence was suffocating. She powered on her station, only to find her credentials already locked.
And then the lights flickered.
Boots thundered down the hallway.
Black-clad agents surrounded her. Guns drawn. Faces masked.
"Lexa Quinn, you're under arrest for treason against the United States. Step away from the terminal."
She lifted her hands slowly, heart pounding.
Among the agents, one figure stood back.
Damon.
He didn't move. Didn't speak.
Just watched.
Lexa's knees nearly gave. "You—"
But the cuffs were already on her wrists.
She stood, blinking under the weight of disbelief.
"You think I hacked our own servers?" She demanded. " This is a setup!"
They didn't care. The cuffs were cold, the ride silent.
And Damon?
She'd let him in. She'd let him close.
And he said nothing the moment she became a liability.
---
The Night of Her Arrest
They kept her in an interrogation room for nine hours. No lawyer. No answers. Only accusations: espionage, internal sabotage, federal breach.
Evidence? Her login traces. Her access. The data tied to her name.
And a witness statement.
Damon Cross.
He testified that she'd gone rogue. That she'd broken into off-limits files, refused to back down.
He told them she was compromised.
Lexa stared at the official transcript in silence.
They offered her a deal — plead guilty, serve five years. She refused.
They gave her ten.
In the courtroom, Damon never looked at her.
---
Present Day — Blackridge Prison, Cellblock D
Lexa sat in her cell, back against the concrete wall. The air smelled of iron and sweat. Her hands were steady, but her mind was burning.
Three years.
Three years of silence. Of being treated like a traitor. Of nightmares. Of fury.
But now, whispers circled through the block.
A new overseer had arrived. Internal investigation, they said.
Federal background.
Lexa's blood ran cold.
Damon was here.
Not as an inmate.
As staff.
Was he here to bury the past for good?
Or had he come to finish what he started?
Either way, Lexa knew one thing for sure:
This time, she wouldn't be the one betrayed.
This time, she'd be the one holding the knife.