LOGINFire had a sound.It wasn't a sound that people imagined in movies, only wood bursting, walls groaning with heated expansion, and glass shattering as if it were bones. The hunger was extreme. The entire safe house was crumbling slowly.Lilian woke up choking.The smoke slid into her lungs even before fear could reach her brain. A harsh, burning inhale wrenched her from sleep. Her eyes flashed open; her skin was stinging; the room was misty with gray mist. In a dizzy flash of a moment, she thought she was back in Chris's penthouse, awakening from the nightmare."And then she smelled gas."“Jack!” Her voice came out hoarseThe door swung open immediately.Jack Macon didn't ask questions. He had never asked questions when his instincts had been the driving force. He took three strides across the room and caught her wrist with his fingers.“Fire!” he yelled, already moving. “We've got only two minutes.”The hallway was a smoke-filled tunnel.The alarm lights started to flicker, and the wa
The safehouse was not meant to be noticed.That was the word Jack Macon had used—invisible. No digital trail. No neighbors worth bribing. Then there were no cameras speaking to the city grid. Only a small building nestled between an abandoned laundromat and an office belonging to a dentist who hadn’t seen a patient in years.However, Lilian had learned one thing since Spring Street.Invisible things still bled.She sat with her knees drawn to her chest, near the edge of the small bed. She listened with all of her attention to the thrum of the refrigerator from the other room. The apartment had the faint scent of antiseptic and wood. Jack had cleaned the entire thing himself, scrubbing each surface until she had watched him, silent, methodical, and deliberate, like men who'd seen too much only ever were.“Are you okay?” Jack asked quietly from the doorway."Yes," Lilian nodded, although this is not completely true.“I keep thinking I heard something,” she said. “Footsteps. Car tires.”
The fall was loud.This is what Chris Newton always believed.He longed to shout. To scream. The smash of glass or the pounding of fists against marble walls. A loss of everything could accompany a claim of chaos: sirens blaring, headlines flashing, betrayal shouted to the bright sky.But instead, it came quietly.It had a notification tone.Chris was alone in the penthouse apartment, standing in front of floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the city he once controlled. The lights of the city glittered like a string of jewels; tonight they glittered insincerely—remotely beyond his reach.His phone rang once.Then again.Unknown Number.His eyebrows furrowed, and irritation flashed through his expression. The numbers that he didn't remember were something of a plague on him these days. Lawyers and bankers are only two examples of many that he didn't even bother remembering anymore. Almost he didn't give it any mind.Almost.This text message contained no messages.A video file only.
The scream never arrived.It was what unsettled the neighbors later, when the police asked questions and wrote things down under the harsh lighting of the corridor. Doris had not screamed. Not when the door opened. Not when the hand clamped over her mouth. Not even when fear finally found its way to her and emptied her chest.Fear had learned silence first.The flat had a trace of soap and floral-Kelvin's idea of comfort. Doris could hear herself standing at the kitchen sink, washing a cup that she hadn't even used. Her mind was racing with loops. There was Rita's name stuck in her like a splinter that she couldn't remove.Rita knew.She always knew.The clicking of the lock came softly.Too softly.Doris turned.The woman in the doorway wore beige—harmless, forgettable. Her hair was pulled back with clean lines, her makeup subtle. She could have been a neighbor. A courier. A friend.“She smiled.”“Hello, DorDoris's air turned intoRita entered and closed the door behind her very car
The realization didn't come suddenly.It was slow. Quiet. Creeping beneath the surface until the structure no longer had a way to deny damage.Lilian sat across from Jack Macon in his car, parked beneath the looming shadow of a half-completed skyscraper. Rain dripped lazy paths across the windshield, smearing a city into shades of light and dark. She did not notice. She was fixed on the file open in her lap, a set of pages she had read not once but twice, a third time in a futile attempt to alter the reality she read.It didn't"She's always there," Lilian whispered, more to herself than to Jack. "At every turning point."Jack did not interrupt. He learned when not to speak.Lilian turned another page. Dates. Transfers. Names. Shell companies merging into other shell companies like a set of Russian nested dolls. Everything is so very clinical on paper. Bloodless.But she could sense it now, Rita’s fingerprints all over her life.Before the divorce.During the separation.After the pap
Kelvin didn’t shut the door.That, more than anything, scared Doris.He closed it quietly behind him, turned the lock with deliberate distinctness, and stood a moment with his shoulders against the door, as bearing himself up against a force that might at any instant break in with the breaking of the truth.Doris sits at the edge of the couch, clenching her fists together so tightly that her knuckles are white from the tension. She had been expecting this. She knew that one day this would have to happen. The pressure of the lies became too much to bear, too heavy, like bricks pressed against her chest."Kelvin crossed the room slowly.Kelvin“Sit,” he said.His voice wasn't raised. It wasn't angry. The even, calm tone so far from the man she loved disintegrated her heart. He meant he already knew something. Enough.Doris swallowed hard and did as she was told.Kelvin decided to sit on the armchair opposite her but never did. Instead, he leaned into the chair, his hands planted on the







