Chapter 8 The Old Friend

The world shrank to the cold light of the phone screen and the picture of those men around our jet. The smiling man by the landing gear wasn’t just a worker. He was a threat. A promise of something awful waiting for us in the air.

My blood went cold. I couldn’t breathe. I just stared, my mind screaming one word over and over: Sabotage.

Julian’s reaction was the opposite of mine. The brief, shocking fear on his face was gone, wiped away so completely it might never have been there. What replaced it was a scary, total calm. He was a hunter who had just seen the trap, and every instinct was now fixed on survival.

He didn’t waste a second.

“Kim,” his voice was low, a sharp sound in the tense quiet of the car. “Lose them. Now.”

Mr. Kim’s hands tightened on the wheel.

“Sir.” He didn’t ask questions. He just acted.

The sedan, which had been moving smoothly through traffic, suddenly turned hard right, cutting down a narrow side alley I didn’t think was wide enough for a bike. Trash cans scattered. The sound of screeching tires and angry horns echoed behind us.

I was thrown against the door, my shoulder hitting the window. Isabella let out a sharp, upset yowl from her carrier.

Julian didn’t flinch. He was already on his phone, his fingers flying across the screen. He wasn’t making a call. He was typing into that strange, secret chat app.

Julian: Our main plane is compromised. Photo proof of tampering sent to your secure server. Location: Gimpo secondary hangar. Find where the image text came from. I want names. Now.

The reply was instant, but this time, there were no emojis.

Cipher: Got it. Looking. Starting Protocol 7. Stand by.

“Protocol 7?” I whispered, my voice shaking.

“A backup plan,” Julian said, his eyes never leaving his phone. “We’re switching to a different plane. A less… obvious one.”

The car shot out of the alley and onto a wider service road, skidding a little on the wet pavement. Mr. Kim drove with a scary, precise skill, his eyes constantly moving between the road and the mirrors.

“We have a tail, sir,” Mr. Kim reported, his voice calm. “Black SUV. Two cars back.”

My heart leaped into my throat. I turned in my seat, trying to see. There it was. A big black shape, stubbornly keeping up with us. Julian didn’t even look.

“Lose them.”

Mr. Kim nodded. He waited until the last second before an intersection, then hit the gas, running a red light and swerving into oncoming traffic for a terrifying moment before cutting down another side street. The SUV, caught by surprise, was blocked by a truck that had suddenly stopped.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“Don’t relax yet,” Julian said coldly. “They knew our main route and our main jet. They will have other plans.”

He was right. The feeling of relief vanished, replaced by a deeper, wider fear. This wasn’t a random attack. This was planned. Aethelstan knew everything.

We arrived at a different, much older-looking hangar on the far side of the airfield. It looked unused. Mr. Kim drove straight through an open hangar door without slowing down, and we were plunged into dim, dusty light.

Another jet waited inside. It was smaller, older, and looked much less impressive than the sleek death trap we’d just avoided. A man in a simple flight jacket stood waiting, his face serious.

Julian was out of the car before it fully stopped, Isabella’s carrier in hand.

“Status?” he snapped at the pilot.

“Ready to go, sir. Filed a new flight plan for Nagoya. Longer, but less expected.”

“Good.” Julian turned to me. “Miss Sharpe. Move.”

I scrambled out, grabbing my suitcase and the binders, my legs feeling weak. The urgency was catching, terrifying. We were running. We were hiding.

Within minutes, we were strapped into the old but working seats of the older jet. The engines started with a louder, rougher sound than the other plane. There were no fancy interiors or special water bowls here. This was a tool for getting away.

As we taxied for takeoff, Julian spent the whole time on his phone, his face lit by the screen, a deep frown on his features. He was fighting a silent war over text, his fingers a blur.

I just stared out the window, watching Aethelburg disappear beneath the clouds. The fear was still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it was now mixed with something else. Awe.

I had just seen Julian Thorne as he really is. Not the boardroom CEO, but the leader in a crisis. He hadn’t panicked. He’d assessed, adapted, and started a new plan in under a minute. He was ruthless, smart, and scarily efficient.

The flight to Japan was tense and quiet. Julian worked non-stop. I tried to do the same, looking over the Shimura papers, but the words blurred. All I could see was the smiling man by the landing gear.

We landed in Nagoya without trouble. A different car was waiting. As we drove the rest of the way to Tokyo, the silence stretched again, but it was a different kind of quiet. The danger had passed, for now, leaving a shared, keyed-up tiredness in its place.

I finally found my voice.

“Who were they?” I asked, my voice small in the quiet car.

“Aethelstan,” he said, the name a swear word. “Their CEO likes to send messages. This was his newest one.”

“But the text… it said ‘an old friend’.”

Julian’s jaw tightened. “In my world, Miss Sharpe, there is no such thing as an old friend. Only past allies and future enemies.”

He looked out the window at the neon-lit streets of Tokyo flashing past.

“They knew about the cat. They knew she was a weak point. That means their information is… personal.”

The meaning hung in the air, more frightening than the SUV chase. The mole wasn’t just leaking business plans. They were leaking him. His habits. His weaknesses.

We pulled up to the Andaz. The glamour of the hotel felt like a joke after the day we’d had. A bellman took our bags. Julian handed Isabella’s carrier to him with quiet, specific instructions.

He turned to me as we walked through the shiny lobby.

“The video call is in one hour. My suite. Be ready.”

I just nodded, too tired to speak.

An hour later, I stood outside the door to his best suite, my laptop and notes held to my chest like a shield. I took a deep breath and knocked. He opened the door.

He’d changed into a clean, dark suit, but he looked exhausted. The strain was showing around his eyes. The suite was huge, with big windows overlooking the Tokyo skyline. A large monitor was set up on the desk, already showing a waiting screen for the video call.

He didn’t offer me a drink or make small talk. He just pointed to a chair.

“Sit. They’re connecting now.”

For the next forty-five minutes, I watched him become someone else completely. The man who had been gently talking to his cat, the man who had looked briefly afraid in the car—he was gone. On that screen, he was Julian Thorne, giant of industry.

He spoke to the vague figures on the monitor—the ‘Sigma’ list—with cold, absolute authority. He took apart Aethelstan’s moves, guessed their next step, and gave orders in a voice that allowed no argument. He was three steps ahead of everyone in the virtual room.

I saw the respect, and the fear, in the faces of the others. He wasn’t just their client or coworker; he was their boss. And I was his assistant, quietly feeding him information, pulling up charts on my laptop before he even asked for them.

We worked in perfect, silent sync. He’d glance at me, and I’d already have the file open. He’d mention a number, and I’d slide a note with the exact calculation across the desk. It was the most exciting and terrifying experience of my life.

When the call ended, he leaned back in his chair, finally looking at me. The intensity faded, leaving behind pure exhaustion.

“You did well,” he said.

It was simple. Direct. And it meant more than any fancy praise.

“Thank you, sir.”

We sat in silence for a moment, the only sound the low noise of the city beyond the windows.

His phone buzzed. A message from ‘Cipher’.

Cipher: Trace done. The photo was sent from a throwaway phone, location hidden. Professional job. But I found a digital mark in the image data. Tiny, almost gone. It’s the same mark I found on the keylogger malware put on Victoria’s computer.

Julian’s face went very still. He read the message aloud, his voice dangerously quiet. The mole. The person trying to frame Victoria and the person who tried to sabotage our jet were the same person.

He looked up from the phone, his eyes meeting mine. The exhaustion was gone, replaced by a cold, burning anger.

“It’s not an outsider,” he said, his voice low and full of venom. “The leak isn’t from some unknown Aethelstan spy.”

He held my gaze, and the next words hit like a punch.

“The person who tried to kill us today is inside Aethelgard.”