Chapter 310: Watch Over Him

Lucas saw Gracie’s call and answered while already standing up.

He knew what the call meant before she even spoke. A woman like her did not arrive quietly at a private gate and then phone for decoration. She was outside.

"I’m here," Gracie said. "I’m at the gate."

"Hold on," Lucas replied. "I’m coming."

He walked out of the house, crossed the front path, and opened the gate himself. Gracie stood just beyond it with her bag in hand, still carrying the irritation of the long ride on her face. The moment the gate opened, some of that sharpness eased. Not fully. Just enough to show she had finally reached the right place.

Lucas welcomed her in and led her toward the house.

As they walked, Gracie’s eyes moved over the property with open interest. The grounds were clean and controlled. The house itself did not look loud or overdecorated, but everything about it said money with discipline. When her gaze passed the Bugatti near the front, she almost smiled. The car did not look out of place here. If anything, the house made the car look like it had finally come home.

Inside, he took her to the living room.

Gracie sat down, still studying the space, when the first person came down from upstairs.

Mia.

She had clearly prepared for this.

Her hair was done. Her makeup was fresh. Her clothes were chosen with intention rather than comfort. This was not a girl who had casually wandered downstairs for water. This was a girl who had heard a female guest was coming into the house and decided she would not walk into that situation looking ordinary.

She went straight toward Lucas.

Not toward the guest.

Not toward a polite greeting.

Toward him.

Mia stopped very close, close enough that her chest brushed lightly against him as she asked, in a soft domestic voice, whether she should make him anything. To anyone listening, it sounded like a normal question. To anyone watching properly, it was something else entirely.

Her body language was claiming space.

Then, while still angled toward Lucas, Mia’s eyes slid past him and locked onto Gracie.

The look was clean and hostile in a feminine way.

Not loud.

Not dramatic.

Just unmistakable.

You are not taking him.

Gracie caught it at once.

Of course she did. Women did not need subtitles for a message that direct. The pretty face, the close stance, the timing, the soft question that did not need to be asked so close to his chest ~ all of it translated perfectly.

Lucas, meanwhile, understood none of it.

He heard only the surface question and assumed Mia was being helpful. The political war happening three inches from his ribs passed completely over his head.

He turned to Gracie. "Do you want anything?"

Under normal circumstances, Gracie might have asked for water, coffee, or at least used the offer to settle into the room. But after the look Mia had just given her, she was not about to accept a single thing from this house like a relaxed guest making herself comfortable.

"I’m fine," Gracie said.

Her voice was polite.

Her decision was strategic.

Mia stayed close to Lucas a second longer than necessary, then finally eased back, satisfied that the first warning had been delivered.

Gracie sat there looking calm, but inside she was already rewriting the temperature of the visit. She had come to hand over information and talk business with Lucas.

She had not come to enter a silent contest with the women living in his house.

And yet, from the way Mia had looked at her, that contest had already started.

Lucas was still trying to understand what had just happened with Mia when movement on the stairs pulled his attention upward.

Daisy and Debbie were coming down.

And they were dressed.

Not casually.

Not in house clothes.

Dressed.

Daisy looked polished from head to toe, hair done, outfit sharp enough to suggest she had taken the visitor announcement personally. Debbie followed a step behind her, equally put together. Even the faint mark on her face had been carefully covered with makeup, smoothed over until only someone who already knew it was there might notice. They both looked beautiful ~ the kind of beautiful that did not happen by accident in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

If Lucas had not known better, he might have thought the three of them were about to leave for an event.

He did know better.

Or at least, he knew something was happening. He just had no clean translation for it.

Still, he did not dig into the fashion show forming around his living room. Gracie had not come here to be inspected by the household. She had come with results.

Lucas turned back to her. "What did you bring? How did the mission go?"

Gracie was no longer as comfortable as when she first sat down.

It was hard to be comfortable with three beautiful women surrounding the space like soft, well-dressed security units. Mia had already given her one look. Now Daisy and Debbie were adding their own silent versions of the same message. None of them needed to speak. The air itself was doing the talking.

Gracie kept her posture composed anyway. She had survived worse rooms than this.

"I got the chance," she said, staying focused on Lucas. "I transferred everything I could find on his computer. The visible files, the private folders, all of it. Whatever he left accessible after unlocking the system went into this."

As she spoke, she reached into her bag and brought out a small flash drive.

No dramatic flourish. Just a clean, direct handover.

Lucas took it from her fingers and turned it once in his palm. Such a small thing. Light enough to forget in a pocket. Heavy enough, if the content was real, to make a man like Durnik bleed from places he thought were protected.

He looked to Daisy. "Bring your laptop. I want to check this now."

Daisy did not move immediately.

The reluctance was subtle, but it was there. Leaving the living room meant leaving Lucas alone with Gracie, and none of the girls looked enthusiastic about that arrangement. Daisy’s eyes flicked toward Mia, then Debbie, a silent transfer of duty passing between them.

Watch him.

Only after that wordless agreement did Daisy turn toward the stairs.

"I’ll get it," she said.

She went up without rushing, though every step still carried the energy of a person who wanted to be back down before anything interesting could happen in her absence.

Lucas remained where he was, spinning the flash drive slowly between his fingers while he waited.

To him, the important part was simple.

The drive.

The files.

The damage they might contain.

Around him, the atmosphere was doing an entirely different kind of work. Gracie sat with controlled calm. Mia and Debbie kept their places in the room like elegant guards who had not been formally assigned and did not care.

Lucas waited for the big reveal, completely focused on the small piece of plastic in his hand.

The girls, on the other hand, were focused on something else entirely.