6. Unexpected visitor

Curled up on her armchair, Felicity dug into her Chinese takeout, enjoying the rich flavours and the scent of spices and herbs drifting around her apartment. Finally, after almost a year of worry, the assassins were gone. Oliver had reached out to Ra's directly, insisting that if he didn't deal with his wayward people, Oliver would take the conflict public, endangering both the League and himself.

It hadn't taken long for the League to arrive in full force to stifle the threat.

As daunting as it had been to know Starling City was temporarily overrun with assassins, it was a relief to be able to just… go home after work. Felicity had a mountain of TV shows and books to catch up on, plus a handful of missed calls from her mom. If she didn't reply soon, she'd wind up with a visitor on her doorstep.

I'll call her back tomorrow, she thought, taking another bite of her omelette — vegetarian, since it contained dairy. Tonight, she desperately needed to decompress.

Her doorbell chimed in a series of ascending trills, and she glanced down at her phone. No new messages. Nothing to indicate her mom was on the move. Had she grown impatient even quicker than Felicity had expected?

Sighing, she set the takeout box back on the table, pausing only to stare at it longingly before padding over to the door. She yanked it open before her mom could ring the doorbell again. 'I know I haven't answered your calls, but this is ridic— Oh.'

The person in the hallway wasn't her mom; they weren't even a woman.

Tony Stark stood with his arms folded, looking all kinds of gorgeous with magnetic dark eyes and a form-fitting Pink Floyd shirt. And all kinds of out of place. What business did a billionaire superhero have on her doorstep? Or even in her neighbourhood?

Well, other than Oliver for Arrow business, and Ray that one time, but they were different.

'Are you lost?' she asked. 'Oliver doesn't live anywhere near here.'

'Mind if I barge in?' Even his voice sounded charming. Back at the conference, she hadn't been all that impressed, but then she'd only heard it filtered through a microphone or the metal of his suit.

At least her mom wouldn't blame Felicity for not calling back sooner if she knew this was one of the reasons why. And at least she was sure Tony wasn't an axe murderer.

Well, ninety-nine percent sure. One could never be fully certain.

The corner of Tony's mouth quirked up. 'Whenever I leave the house, paparazzi follow. If I were a serial killer, somebody would have noticed by now.'

'Only if you were bad at it. The smartest criminals are never caught,' she said, then her cheeks heated as her brain caught up to what he'd said, and more importantly, what that meant she'd said. Out loud. Why did her mouth always betray her brain at the worst possible time?

Tony cleared his throat, and she hurriedly stepped back and gestured for him to enter. Whatever he wanted to discuss, it would be better done inside, away from the prying ears of her neighbours. 'You never told me what you're doing here.'

'It's a long story.' Tony's gaze swept across her living room, from the haphazardly stacked books on her shelf to the potted plant beside the TV to the takeout on the side table. His eyes glittered with humour as they landed on her Robin Hood poster, which Diggle had bought her as a joke, though she couldn't imagine where Tony's amusement lay. He took a seat on her couch as if he were a normal dinner guest. 'But you should be able to guess.'

'It better not be because I turned down your job offer years ago.' She grabbed her half-eaten dinner and carried it to the fridge, enjoying the cool rush of air on her still-flushed face. She needed to get her mouth under control before she blurted out something that was more than just embarrassing.

'It's not, although you can bet I was disappointed when I heard that piece of trivia.'

When he didn't elaborate further, clearly prompting her to guess again, she raised her eyebrows pointedly. 'You came all the way out here to play a game of Hot and Cold? Aren't we too old for that?'

He snorted but obliged her, cutting to the chase. 'No. I'm here to ask you why your boss' nightclub has a security system that most businesses couldn't even dream of.'

Her stomach dropped, and she shut the fridge door with a little too much force. 'How would you know that?'

Tony didn't answer; he didn't have to. There was only one way for him to know how tight Verdant's defences were. Somehow, she'd gone keyboard-to-keyboard with Tony Stark without realising it.

She rubbed her forehead, wishing that the threat with the League had gone on for one more day so she wouldn't have been home for this conversation. Then again, better him show up here than the club itself. 'You were the hacker, weren't you? Why would you try to break into your own friend's company?'

'I was following up on a lead about a criminal.'

'Did you find them?' The Arrow, most likely. If so, she already knew he hadn't, or he would have been studying Oliver's living room instead of hers.

'Yes. You might be interested in hearing that we reached a compromise… since Nyssa al Ghul works with your friend, the Arrow.'

What — ? Her heart fluttered. She didn't even know how to begin processing that he knew about Nyssa, let alone that he had enough information about the Arrow to link him to her. 'Who's Nyssa al Ghul?'

He smiled. 'Let's skip this song and dance routine. I know Oliver Queen is the Arrow; it wasn't hard to work out when I put my mind to it. And if he's the vigilante, it explains an awful lot of oddities and question marks about your career trajectory and sudden friendship with him if you're involved too. Besides, I've got this.'

Tony pulled out his phone and showed her several pairs of photos. Each set started with a shot of the Arrow and Spartan entering Verdant after a mission, sometimes alone, sometimes with other members of the team, but always together. The second image in each pair showed Oliver, Diggle and Felicity leaving the club, sometimes accompanied by the others. The timestamps were dated too close to the first in the set to all be coincidences.

Felicity kept her mouth firmly shut. How had he got his hands on those? She'd thought she covered all their bases.

'The security cameras around Verdant have all mysteriously been tampered with,' he said, raising an eyebrow almost accusatorily, 'but I set up a drone across the street.'

The pictures were circumstantial, and she might be able to make the suited-up images look photoshopped if she had enough time. But it would be Tony Stark's word against hers, and she knew which of them would hold more weight in the court of public opinion.

Oliver would be convicted before he ever set foot in a courtroom.

'I don't understand,' she said. 'The Arrow is investigating Verdant? I've got to warn Oliver; he might be stalking after someone at the club.'

'You're a bad liar,' Tony said bluntly, and she sighed because he was right.

They'd realised this couldn't last forever, and that it would most likely end with one or more of them dead or in prison. But she'd never thought the first casualty would be her, the woman behind the screen. 'Entirely hypothetically and not at all because of the pictures you just showed me… what's your stance on vigilantism? Net positive or net negative? A moral obligation for people with the means to do it or a threat to social cohesion?'

He threw his head back and laughed deeply, a stark contrast to his forced guffaws on stage at the conference. Of course his real personality was even more charming than his public persona. 'It depends on the vigilante. Your group has taken out quite a few bad guys who were beginning to show up on my radar, so in your case, net positive.'

'So — and keep in mind that I'm asking for a friend — if you did meet someone who worked with the Arrow, or even the Arrow himself, the likelihood of you turning them over to the police would be…?'

'Virtually zero.'

She let out a slow sigh of relief. 'Then what now? Why didn't you go straight to the Oliver or the club, since you know that's our base of operations?'

He shrugged. 'The club was empty. Besides, I know Oliver, and a friend of mine served with John Diggle; I know what makes them tick. For now, you're the one I'm curious about: the person on the other end of Verdant's security system. We could use someone like you at Stark Industries — in IT, where you belong. But since I doubt you want to leave Starling City anytime soon, I'll settle for you knowing you'll always have an open offer if you want it… and us hopefully having an open channel of communication in case your team or mine ever need to exchange information.'

'I can agree to that.' Vigilantes rarely lived to a ripe old age and retired peacefully. One day, when Oliver hung up his hood or she wearied of this life, she might just take him up on the job.

'Great. Now, how about we discuss the details over dinner? I haven't had mine yet, and you haven't finished yours. There's a restaurant I know uptown. The servers are discreet, and it has a backroom that would give us some privacy.'

'Dinner sounds great.' Not only could she pick his brain about Jarvis, but it would be nice to have someone new to geek out about technology with. She and Barry talked occasionally, but nowhere near enough. 'But backroom or not, we won't be able to talk business there. Your secret identity might be out in the open, but ours aren't, and we need it to stay that way.'

Love at first sight was a lie people told themselves when instant chemistry managed to create something lasting. But when Tony smiled, his entire face lighting up in a way that stole her breath, she felt part of herself shatter and fall. This man was trouble, and she finally understood why women willingly overlooked his reputation.

'Then we'll just have to find something else to talk about until we get back,' he said.

Felicity tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 'I don't think that will be a problem.'