The Cold Compromise
He looks at me like he already knows the truth I’ve spent a lifetime hiding.
Ethan Vance—lawman, predator, believer in a system I learned to outthink before I could drink wine. His eyes don’t burn with hate. They study, measure, almost… understand.
They call him incorruptible. Maybe he is. But I’ve seen incorruptible men fall, not to money or power, but to fascination. The kind that crawls under your skin and makes you wonder if the person chasing you might be the only one who truly sees you.
He hunts me by the book. I survive by rewriting it. But somewhere between the pursuit and the silence, between his questions and my lies, the line blurred.
And now, I can’t decide which is more dangerous, losing to him, or wanting him to catch me.
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He isn’t what I expected.
Luca Vitale walks into every room like he owns it, and maybe he does. Calm. Calculated. Dangerous in ways that don’t show up on a rap sheet. He should be just another target, another name I take down and file away.
But there’s something about the way he looks at me. Like he already knows I’m not as untouchable as I pretend to be.
I tell myself it’s strategy, curiosity, control. It’s not. It’s a problem.
Because every time I think I’m closing in, I realise he’s already two steps ahead—and for the first time in my career, I’m not sure if I’m hunting him, or if he’s letting me try.
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Chapter: Thermal TrapChapter 83: The Thermal Trap The frigid air burned through Luca’s lungs as if the mountain itself was trying to freeze him from the inside out. Every breath felt sharp, metallic, and painful. Beside him, Ethan’s steps were uneven and unsteady, each movement sending a jolt of agony through the wound in his side. The two men moved south in silence, descending the last of the steep mountain slopes until the terrain finally levelled out into the long, winding asphalt of the Route Napoleon. The road was abandoned at this altitude. Desolate. A narrow strip of cracked pavement cutting through towering forests of pine and fir. Frost clung to the branches and sparkled in the faint sunlight. Nothing moved. Not even the birds. The air was too cold for anything to linger. It was the fastest path to the coast, which made it the most dangerous one to take. Ethan leaned heavily against Luca’s shoulder. His breathing was shallow and shaky, as if every inhale scraped against raw bone. “We have to
Last Updated: 2026-01-06
Chapter: Scent of Justice Chapter 82: The Scent of Justice The cold that clung to the mountains felt different now. It wasn’t the sharp, cutting cold of dawn anymore. It had settled into something duller, heavier—like the world itself was holding its breath. From the ridge where Luca and Ethan crouched, the entire St. Bernard Pass lay exposed beneath them, a thin white scar along the mountainside. Hours earlier, the place had been a battleground of panic, gunfire, and survival. Now it moved with the quiet precision of a federal operation. Black SUVs rolled in one after another, their tyres carving deliberate lines into the snow. Agents from Hayes’s clean unit stepped out with a kind of calm purpose that came only from knowing exactly what mission they’d been sent for. No shouting. No frantic movements. Just the soft clack of doors and the crunch of boots across frozen ground. Silvio Gatto was dragged out moments later, thrashing and spitting curses that vanished into the cold air. He didn’t look threatenin
Last Updated: 2026-01-05
Chapter: Impromptu Blockade Chapter 81: Impromptu Blockade The high-pitched whine of an approaching vehicle tore through the still, frozen silence of the St. Bernard Pass. Every snow-laden tree seemed to shiver with the sound, and Luca felt a sudden, cold surge of adrenaline tighten in his chest. Ethan’s breathing came shallow, but measured—each exhale a careful ration of oxygen against his fractured ribs. The moment had come, the culmination of all their planning, and yet the unpredictability of human greed and malice made it a knife-edge gamble. Silvio, already trembling with panic, jammed the van into reverse. The tyres churned the snow beneath, sending white clouds curling into the air. He yanked the wheel back and forth, searching desperately for control, trying to escape what he perceived as an ambush. “He’s leaving!” Ethan shouted, his voice hoarse, trembling with both urgency and pain. He shoved the EMP trigger into Luca’s hand. “We have to neutralise the van now!” “Not yet!” Luca snapped, eyes nar
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
Chapter: EMP Trap Chapter 80: The EMP Trap The lodge was a frozen skeleton of its former self. Frost clung to the edges of broken windowpanes, and the smell of damp wood and burnt oil hung thick in the air. Luca moved with quiet, precise urgency, dismantling the old generator for its magnet coils, stripping copper wire from the attic, and twisting it into dense coils around a rusted gas canister. Every movement was deliberate. Every touch was a calculation. Ethan, pale and bruised, leaned heavily against the stone fireplace, ribs tightly bound. Despite the agony in every breath, he was alert, eyes sharp with the cold clarity of a former agent who had never stopped thinking two steps ahead. “The secure vans use a proprietary encryption for the remote ignition bypass,” Ethan explained, his voice rough but controlled. “It’s a low-frequency broadcast. But it needs a sudden surge of power to override it, fry the system. We’re not building an EMP in the usual sense—we’re building an oversized, low-frequ
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
Chapter: Bait Chapter 79: The Bait The lodge was silent except for the faint hum of the generator. Outside, the fog clung to the plateau like a living thing, swallowing the jagged pines and dropping the world into cold, soft grey. Luca found a small, shielded pantry in the far corner of the lodge, the perfect place to make a call that left no trace. He could feel the weight of the moment settle into his chest: contacting Silvio carried immense risk, but the alternative—carrying an injured Ethan down a mountain with Maxwell’s network tightening every hour—was a death sentence. He sat on a splintered wooden crate, balancing the satellite phone in his hand. The SIM was new, anonymous, and temporary, a single-use lifeline. He typed in the dormant emergency number he knew Silvio still monitored. It was an old channel, long considered dead, yet Silvio had kept it as a last tether to the Family’s communication network. The line rang twice. Luca counted in his head. One. Two. And then: “Who is this?”
Last Updated: 2026-01-01
Chapter: Mountain Sanctuary Chapter 78: Mountain Sanctuary The plateau emerged from the fog like a shadowed promise. The old hunting lodge sat nestled among the twisted pines, its rough stone walls muted beneath the morning haze. Luca and Ethan stumbled onto it, bodies battered, lungs burning, hearts hammering—not from exertion alone, but from the relentless, escalating weight of enemies still hunting them. Ethan’s ribs screamed with each breath. He leaned heavily against the thick pine trunks lining the plateau’s edge, fingers pressed to the splints Luca had hastily fashioned in the trees below. “I can’t… I can’t keep this up,” he rasped, voice ragged. Luca ignored the pain in his own legs and the burn in his lungs. He grabbed the heavy back door and shoved with all his strength. It creaked open on rusted hinges, the smell of decay and cold wood washing over them. The lodge was abandoned, a relic of simpler hunts and simpler days. Dust lay thick over the floor, and a faint, lingering scent of old woods
Last Updated: 2025-12-30
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