LOGINVincent POVLandon Beck. A calm, efficient man in his late thirties who'd been running Hayes Acquisition's operations for the past year. Good at his job. Quiet. Never caused problems. The kind of employee you forgot existed until you needed something done, and then he did it flawlessly.The kind of employee who was perfectly positioned to gut your company from the inside if someone got to him."Has Beck been flagged on anything else?" I asked."I pulled his access logs like you asked. He's been logging into the financial systems after hours. Not frequently. Once or twice a week. Short sessions, usually under ten minutes. But the timestamps correspond with the periods when the affected shipments were in transit."I closed my eyes, then opened them."Cyril, I need you to do something, and I need you to do it without telling anyone. Not Beck, not the warehouse team, not anyone.""Of course.""Pull Beck's personal financials: Bank accounts, property records, anything you can access withou
Vincent POVThe word was "activate."If I pressed it, those eight men would move on the compound. They'd hit Rowan's assault team from the eastern flank, exploiting a blind spot in his positioning that I'd identified from the surveillance data Theo had been feeding me for weeks. They'd break the siege, scatter Rowan's operators, and give Gabriel the window he needed to either escape or counterattack.Gabriel would survive.And he would never know who'd saved him because the eight men in the warehouse didn't know my name. They knew a codename, a handler designation, and an operational protocol. They'd execute the order and extract without ever connecting the intervention to Vincent Hayes, the art dealer from Crescent Harbour with the nice smile.But Rowan would know.Rowan, whom I'd just asked Theo to connect me with six days ago in a dark club with whiskey on my breath and lipstick on my chest. Rowan, who was expecting me to be an ally. Rowan, who had been told, through channels he tr
Vincent POVI drove for forty minutes after leaving Evelyn's house. No destination. No route. Just motion. The car on autopilot, the streets blurring past, my hands on the wheel doing the one thing the rest of me couldn't manage, which was hold steady.I ended up at the coast. A gravel lot overlooking the harbour where the fishing boats came in early and the tourists never bothered because there was nothing to photograph. Just grey water, grey sky, the smell of salt and diesel, and a wooden bench with half the slats missing.I parked, killed the engine and sat.The morning-after pill. She'd said it the way you'd say you were picking up toothpaste. It had been casual, almost automatic, and then the horror dawning across her face as she realized what she'd just told me. As if the act itself wasn't the blow. As if the real damage was me knowing about it.She was right. The knowing was worse.I could have lived without the details. I could have built a wall around the general idea of Evel
Gabriel POVWe pulled through the gates of the compound at eight fifteen. The Bangria residence was nothing like the Wrenfield townhouse in Crescent Harbour. This was a walled estate on three acres in the Highfields district, surrounded by reinforced perimeter fencing, monitored by thirty-six cameras, and staffed by a security team of twelve. The house itself was a sprawling modernist structure of concrete and glass, designed by an architect who'd been told to make it look like a home and had instead produced something that looked like a very elegant bunker.I preferred it that way. Homes could be broken into. Bunkers could not.Mrs Tanner was waiting at the kitchen door. She was a stout Bangria woman in her sixties with silver-streaked hair pulled back in a tight bun and an expression of permanent disapproval that softened only when she was cooking, which was most of the time. She'd been with me for eleven years, outlasting three security chiefs, two accountants, and one assassinatio
Gabriel POVWe drove in silence for a few minutes. The highway merged into the Bangria central district, where the buildings grew taller, the streets grew narrower, and the energy shifted from industrial sprawl to the compressed intensity of a city that never quite decided whether it was thriving or collapsing."Where's Rowan now?" I asked.Leo hesitated. That was unusual. Leo didn't hesitate."We don't have a confirmed location.""You had surveillance on him when he left Crescent Harbour.""We did. He flew private to Lisaro, stayed for eighteen hours, then dropped off the grid. The last confirmed sighting was at the Lisaro port four days ago. Since then, nothing. His phone's dead. His known associates have scattered. The safe houses we identified in Bangria are empty.""All of them?""All seven. Cleared out. Not hastily. Methodically. Furniture removed, communications equipment taken, not a single fingerprint left behind. Whoever cleaned those sites had time and training."Rowan was
Gabriel POVThe flight from Crescent Harbour to Bangria was four hours and sixteen minutes. I spent the first hour going through financial reports, trying to read as much as I could with my dull brain. Rowan used to do all of these for me and explain them carefully afterwards.The second hour reviewing surveillance feeds from three properties. The third hour staring at the back of the seat in front of me, thinking about the way Evelyn's hair had looked spread across her pillow in the dark.The fourth hour I spent being angry at myself for wasting the third.Leo met me at the private terminal. He was standing by the armoured SUV with a tablet in one hand and an expression on his face that told me the news wasn't good. Leo had been with me for six years, and I'd learned to read his face the way most people read headlines. A slightly raised right eyebrow meant a logistical problem. Jaw tight meant a personnel issue. Both hands behind his back meant someone was dead.Today, his jaw was ti
Evelyn POVI fixed my hair one last time in the car's mirror before stepping out.I was late.The entire contract-signing process took almost three hours.One clause turned into ten, one signature turned into three phone calls, and before I knew it, it was already 10:30 AM, which meant I was an hou
Evelyn POVThe conference room was filled with energy and anticipation.Vincent sat across from me at the long mahogany table, flanked by his legal team. I was surrounded by my own lawyers, all of us with documents spread out before us.This was it. The moment that would either save or destroy Benn
Gabriel POV"We got this from the CCTV footage at the Imperial Auction Hall," Rowan said, handing me a tablet with a video playing on it. "Just like you predicted. We were taken to the auction venue. And Miss Bennett was tailed too."I watched the footage in silence. Two sets of men, different grou
Evelyn POVI stared at it for a moment, debating whether or not to answer. I hadn’t spoken to him for the longest time.These days, we hardly cross each other at home either. I came in late and left early before anyone was out of bed. Victoria these days seemed quiet. Often, I’ll say I’ll pop into







