LOGINChapter 64The first thing I felt was the beeping.Steady. Mechanical. Annoying.Then the pain — duller now, muffled by drugs, but still there, a deep ache in my side that reminded me I was alive.I opened my eyes to white walls and the faint smell of antiseptic. Hospital. Private room. The kind of place where questions weren’t asked.Riven was in the chair beside the bed, elbows on his knees, head down. He looked like he hadn’t slept. There was a fresh bandage on his arm where Kane had grazed him. Lila was curled up in the armchair across the room, asleep under a blanket.I tried to sit up. The room tilted, but less violently than before. Tubes tugged at my arm. Monitors beeped faster.Riven’s head snapped up. “Easy. You’ve been out for almost twelve hours. They had to transfuse you twice.”I swallowed. My throat was raw. “Lila?”“She’s okay. Shaken, but okay. She hasn’t left your side except to sleep.”Lila stirred at the sound of my voice. She sat up, eyes wide, then rushed to the
Chapter 63The building rose ahead like a fortress of glass and steel — one of Marcus’s private holdings in the heart of the financial district. High security, private elevators, the kind of place that didn’t ask questions. Riven killed the headlights a block away. My hands were slick with blood on the passenger seat. I could barely feel my fingers anymore.Two hours twenty-five minutes.“We go in quiet,” Riven said, checking his gun. “Kane knows the layout. He’ll be expecting us.”I nodded, but the motion sent the world spinning. I gripped the door handle until my knuckles whitened. “Lila first. Then we deal with Kane.”Riven looked at me. The streetlight caught the cut on his forehead, still bleeding. “You’re barely conscious. Stay behind me.”I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. My body was shutting down, but my mind refused to let go. Not yet.We slipped through a service entrance using Kane’s old codes. The corridors were dimly lit, silent except for the hum of air conditioning. Every ste
Chapter 62The road stretched ahead like a dark ribbon into nothing. I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other pressed hard against my side. Blood seeped between my fingers, warm and constant. Every bump sent fresh agony through my ribs, but I kept my foot on the accelerator. The closer signal was moving again — slow, deliberate, as if Marcus wanted me to catch up just enough to hope.Two hours forty minutes.The guilt was heavier than the pain. I had chosen proximity over certainty. Speed over caution. I would never forgive myself if something happened to Lila because of this decision. Riven had said her name first in the clip. I had gone against it.The car swerved slightly as another wave of dizziness hit. I corrected it at the last second, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached. The factory lights had long since faded behind me. Now there was only the empty industrial zone, abandoned buildings and chain-link fences flashing past in the headlights. My vision kept tunneling, black
Chapter 61Darkness.Then pain — sharp, insistent, pulling me back to the surface.I woke on the cold concrete, cheek pressed into my own blood. The metallic taste coated my tongue. My side felt raw and open, the stitches long since overwhelmed. The bandage was a sodden mess. Every heartbeat pushed more warmth out, spreading slow and steady across the floor beneath me.“Riven…” The name left my lips as little more than a breath. The comms remained silent. No crackle. No response. Nothing but the heavy quiet of the empty factory pressing down on me.I tried to rise. My arms shook and collapsed under my weight. The gun rested just beyond my fingertips, taunting. I dragged myself forward inch by painful inch, leaving a trail behind me. The dizziness rolled through my head in relentless waves, each one threatening to drag me back into unconsciousness. My vision narrowed to a tunnel. I kept moving anyway.My phone vibrated in my pocket. The motion sent fresh agony through my side. I pulled
Chapter 60Riven’s words hung between us like a blade.“The deeper signal is slower. More likely the real one. Marcus wants us to rush the obvious — and you’re in no condition to run into another trap.”I stared at the two blinking dots on the screen. My vision blurred at the edges. Blood continued to seep through my shirt, sticky and warm. The pain had moved past burning into a deep, nauseating throb that made every breath feel borrowed.“We take the closer one,” I said again, voice low. “We can’t afford to guess wrong on the long shot.”Riven’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look at me. “And if it’s a trap? You can barely stand. If something goes wrong, I’m not losing both of you tonight.”The fracture cracked wider.For the first time since the warehouse, we weren’t standing on the same side of the choice.“Riven,” I said, the name rough in my throat. “We don’t have time for this.”He was already pulling the car over. The engine idled. He looked at me then, eyes raw with everything we st
Chapter 59The tracker blinked on Riven’s phone, a small red dot moving northeast. We followed in silence, headlights off, the engine a low growl. My side burned hotter with every turn. Blood had soaked through the bandage completely now. Each breath pulled at the stitches like barbed wire. The dizziness was getting worse, the edges of my vision tunneling.Riven kept glancing over. “You’re losing too much blood.”“Drive.”The target building appeared — an abandoned distribution center, windows boarded, fence sagging. The dot stopped dead in the center. We parked two blocks away and approached on foot. My legs felt heavy. I leaned against a container for a breath, blood warm against my palm. Six hours had become five. Time was collapsing faster than we could move.We slipped through a side door. The interior was vast and dark, moonlight slicing through gaps in the roof. Crates and old pallets formed a maze.Too quiet.Riven raised a hand. We froze.Lights snapped on — harsh fluorescent
Chapter 48Mercer cracked by 9:15 a.m.Elias sent the footage without comment. I watched it once in the study, door locked, volume low. Mercer pacing his apartment like a trapped animal, voice cracking as he left another voicemail for the vice chairman. “They’re onto us. Voss knows. I can feel it.
Chapter 46I didn’t confront him that night.Instead I watched.Riven moved through the penthouse like a man walking on thin ice — careful steps, quiet voice, eyes that never quite settled on mine for long. He checked on Lila twice, made her tea with the precision of someone who had done it a thous
Chapter 45The tracker lit up at 11:03 a.m.I was alone in the study when the alert hit my secondary laptop. The poisoned file had been accessed. Downloaded. Forwarded to Marcus’s encrypted server. Riven’s credentials. No mistake. No shadow account. Just clear, undeniable proof.I stared at the scr
Chapter 44I set the poisoned file at 4:12 a.m. while Riven slept.It looked real. A full ledger of offshore accounts, complete with dummy transactions and my forged digital signature. But the moment it was accessed from an external IP, it would trigger a silent alert and plant a tracker. If Riven







