NEON HEARTBEATS: His To Protect

--- *CHAPTER ONE* *48:00:00* The email hit her inbox at 3:14 AM. No subject. No sender. Just four words and a timer that started bleeding the second she opened it. *BURN OR WE BURN YOU.* *48:00:00* Lila Rose Vex didn’t flinch. She’d been staring at worse for 25 years. Vex Corp was never a gift. It was a leash. Her father built it to choke cities. Two years ago he decided London was too independent. His plan was simple: kill the grid. Every hospital. Every train. Every streetlight from Camden to Canary Wharf. Then wait. Wait for the city to go dark and cold and scared. And when they were begging, he’d sell them power. Sell them light. Sell them their lives back at a price they couldn’t refuse. Own London. She, Damian, and Ava stopped him. They pulled the files. They called the authorities. They watched him get dragged out in handcuffs while the news called him a terrorist and a madman. She thought that was the end. She thought prison would shut him up. She was wrong. The timer ticked down to *47:59:43*. His board survived. Seven old men in tailored suits who didn’t get named in the indictment. And now they wanted blood for the humiliation. Her phone vibrated on the marble counter. Once. Twice. Twelve times in thirty seconds. Unknown number. Lila let it ring. It rang again. She picked up on the 13th. "Say it or hang up," she said. Her voice was smoke and broken glass. Silence. The kind of silence that had weight. Then: "Lila." The name hit her like a fist to the sternum. Four years. Four years since she’d heard that voice say her name like it meant something. "Don’t," she said quietly. Too quietly. "Don’t you dare say my name, Blackwood." Marcus Reid Blackwood. The ghost who trained her. The ghost who left her bleeding on a bathroom floor and called it mercy. The ghost who swore he’d never come back. "I wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t bad," he said. His voice was gravel dragged over steel. No warmth. No apologies. Just fact. "Your father’s board put a contract out on you six hours ago. Ten million dollars. Forty-eight hours. They want it messy. They want Vex Corp’s stock to tank so they can buy it back for pennies and pretend none of this ever happened." Lila poured whiskey into a crystal glass. She didn’t drink it. She just watched the liquid catch the blue light from her laptop. "And you’re telling me because?" "Because I’m the one they hired to find you first." The glass cracked in her hand. A thin line of blood welled on her palm. "Congratulations," she said. "You get paid either way." "I don’t get paid if you’re dead." "Maybe I’d prefer that." Another silence. She could hear him breathing. Measured. Controlled. Like he was standing in a room with a gun to his head and didn’t care. "You still check the locks three times," he said finally. "You still sleep with a knife under your pillow. You still haven’t left Zurich." A pause. "You’re out of time, Lila." Rage boiled up her throat, hot and acidic. "Are you threatening me?" "I’m telling you the truth." She heard an elevator ding in the background on his end. "I’m downstairs. Come down. Or I come up and we have this conversation with your neighbors filming it for TikTok." She could hang up. She could run out the back, take the service elevator, disappear into Zurich’s rain. But forty-eight hours wasn’t enough to outrun Vex Corp. Not with her father in a prison cell probably smiling at the chaos. Not with the board pulling strings from Geneva and Dubai and places she couldn’t reach. "Fine," she said. "Lobby. Five minutes." She hung up before he could answer. The elevator ride down was forty-two floors of memory. Of being nineteen and stupid and thinking she could save him. Of taking a knife meant for his throat. Of him carrying her out, his face breaking in a way she’d never seen. Of him saying, "I’m leaving so you don’t have to watch me die." Of her saying, "If you walk out that door, don’t come back." The doors opened to an empty lobby. Rain smeared the floor-to-ceiling glass. Zurich glittered outside like a knife. And there he was. Marcus Reid Blackwood in black. Suit soaked through. Water dripping from his hair onto his shoulders. Scar through his left eyebrow. Eyes that missed nothing. He looked older. Harder. Like the last four years had sanded him down to nothing but edges. His gaze swept her once. Black coat. Combat boots. The knife on her belt she didn’t bother hiding. The blood on her hand from the glass. "You’re hurt," he said. "I’m furious," she corrected. "There’s a difference." "Not to me." He didn’t move closer. Smart. Because if he did, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Hit him. Kiss him. Both. "Car’s outside," he said. "We leave now or we don’t leave." "And where exactly are we going, _bodyguard_?" She put enough venom on the word to kill. "Somewhere they can’t find you for forty-eight hours." He finally met her eyes. Really met them. "Somewhere I can keep you breathing." "Professional only," she said. The words tasted like ash. "Of course." His jaw ticked. They walked out into the rain together. Not touching. Not talking. The car was a black SUV with tinted windows. Bulletproof. Of course it was. He opened the passenger door for her. She slid in without looking at him. The drive was ten minutes of silence that felt like screaming. Zurich passed by in neon blurs. Rain on the windows. The GPS silent. Finally he spoke. "Your father’s still talking," he said. "Even from prison. He’s telling the board to finish what he started. Shut down Vex Corp. Sell it off. Erase you." Lila stared out the window. "Let him talk." "He’s not the only one." Marcus’s knuckles were white on the wheel. "The board hired three teams. I’m just the first. The other two are ex-military. They won’t hesitate." "So what’s the plan?" "We disappear." He turned down a side street. Then another. Checking mirrors. Checking shadows. "Forty-eight hours. We stay off grid. We figure out who’s paying and we cut the head off." "And then?" "And then you go back to running Vex Corp and pretending I never existed." The words landed like a punch. Professional only. The safehouse was a concrete building on the edge of the city. No windows. One door. He parked, killed the engine, and looked at her for the first time since the lobby. "Rules," he said. "You don’t leave my sight. You don’t answer unknown calls. You don’t sleep unless I’m in the room." Lila laughed. It came out wrong. Shaky. "You don’t get to make rules for me anymore, Marcus. You forfeited that right when you walked away." "I walked away so you wouldn’t have to watch me die for you." "Bullshit." She unbuckled her seatbelt. Turned to face him. "You left because it was easier. Because staying meant feeling something and you’re too much of a coward for that." Something flickered in his eyes. Pain. Guilt. Rage. Then it was gone. "I’m not here for forgiveness," he said quietly. "I’m here because if I don’t keep you alive, no one will." He got out. She followed. Inside, the safehouse was bare. One bed. One chair. One table. He dropped a duffel on the floor. Thud. Burner phone. Laptop. Gun. Cuffs. Med kit. "Sleep," he said. "I’m not tired." "You will be." He took the chair. Sat. Gun on his lap. "I’ll watch." Lila stared at him. At the man who left her. At the man who was now the only thing between her and a bullet. "Professional only," she said again. Softer this time. Marcus didn’t answer. He just leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. But his hand never left the gun. Outside, the rain kept falling. Inside, the timer on her phone hit *47:30:00*. She lay on the bed. Didn’t sleep. He sat in the chair. Didn’t blink. And somewhere in Zurich, seven old men were counting down too. ---