Mag-log inWren I sat staring at the green glow of my dad's terminal window, my spine rigid, my hands resting lifeless on the worn brass casing of the laptop. The quiet inside my head was absolute dead, frozen expanse where pain had turned to stone. When the wooden door of the hotel room gave a sharp, metallic click, I didn't reach for the blue folder. Leander bypassed the lock with the quiet, effortless efficiency of a man who owned the world and everything in it. He stepped over the threshold, looked hollowed out. His suit was rumpled, his shirt collar unbuttoned, his jaw covered in a thick, dark shadow of stubble. The storm in his eyes had burned down to pure, agonizing ash. He stopped three feet inside the small room, his gaze taking in the peeling wallpaper, the stained carpet, and finally settling on me... sitting in the dark, small and cold beneath the humming fluorescent bulb. "Wren," he said. His voice was barely a sound, a rough, scraped whisper that sounded like dry leaves dra
Wren The air in the room died. The silence that followed Leander’s admission suffocated. It pressed against my sternum heavily cold. Leander stood anchored between Jose and me, his heavy chest heaving, his dark coat dripping rainwater onto the Persian rug. His big hands were still poised mid-air, trembling, reaching for me as if he could physically hold together the splintering pieces of my sanity. I looked at him. I looked past him, down at the gaunt, papery shadow sitting in the leather armchair. "Get away from me," I whispered. Leander flinched, a raw, silent agony flaring in his grey eyes. "Wren—" "I said, get away from me!" The scream tore from my throat, breaking through the polite. I snatched my phone from the marble table, grabbed the dark blue leather binder, and backed out of the sitting room. I turned my back on the two Voss men and ran out into the pouring rain. Leander called my name into the night, his voice hollowed out by the wind, but I didn't stop. I slammed
WrenBefore Jose could even open his mouth to offer whatever poisonous half-truth he had prepared, the heavy oak front door of the cottage crashed violently against the stone wall of the entrance hall.The sudden draft swept through the sitting room, making the gas flame in the fireplace leap and hiss.I knew the heavy, commanding stride vibrating through the floorboards before he even stepped into the amber light of the doorway.Leander stood on the threshold.He was soaked to the skin, his dark hair plastered against his forehead, his tailored coat heavy with rain. His tie was gone, the collar of his white shirt unbuttoned, exposing the taut, strained cords of his neck. But it was his face that made the blood run cold in my veins. He looked like a man who had dragged himself through hell to reach this room—his storm-grey eyes wide, wild, and brimming with a terrifying, primal desperation I had never seen in him before.He looked at Jose, sitting pale and gaunt in the armchair, and t
WrenThe paper felt like spun glass beneath my fingertips fragile, transparent, and sharp enough to slice me to the bone. The tears that had been burning in the back of my throat simply evaporated, replaced by a cold, hollow vacuum that filled every corner of my chest. My heart didn't even hammer anymore; it beat with a heavy, muted thud, like a hammer striking wet wood deep underground.I turned the cover page.Section I: Asset Identification & Target Profile.The top paragraph was a clinical summary of my father’s terminal diagnosis. The exact date his oncologist had delivered the news in the small, sterile room in Guys Hospital. The estimated life expectancy. The projected decline of his cognitive faculties. Beside the medical notes was a detailed inventory of our personal bank accounts, the remaining mortgage balance on our tiny Southwark flat, and the exact value of my father’s proprietary encryption algorithms.My dad had been dying, fighting to breathe, worrying about whether
WrenThe air inside the house was thick anf stagnant. It felt like stepping inside an untended tomb or a place frozen in time while the rest of the world kept moving.I closed the heavy door behind me, the latch clicking home with a dull, final thud that echoed down the narrow hallway. My wet coat felt heavy against my shoulders, water dripping from my hem onto the worn, intricate pattern of the Persian rug beneath my boots.Jose shuffled down the hall into a small, shadow-drenched sitting room lit only by the warm, flickering orange glow of a gas fireplace and a single brass reading lamp. He settled himself into a high-backed leather armchair that looked as old and lined as his own skin, gesturing with a frail, age-spotted hand toward the settee opposite him. I stood in the doorway, my hands shoved deep into my coat pockets, my gaze pinned to the old man sitting before me like a specimen under glass."How are you breathing, Jose?" I asked. My voice was low, rasping through my dry th
WrenThe rain drizzled as I crossed the Thames, a thin, silver needle-spray that smeared the headlights of oncoming traffic across my windshield.I didn't take the Range Rover, or any of the armored sedans parked in the Mayfair underground garage, where Leander’s security detail logged tire rotations and GPS coordinates. I took a plain blue hatchback I had hired under my maiden name from a quiet rental agency behind Victoria Station, paying in cash I had withdrawn three weeks ago when I first felt the ground shifting beneath my feet.For months, I had moved through the world like a precious, delicate artifact... transported by private drivers, shielded by bodyguards, wrapped in velvet promises while men in bespoke suits decided what I was allowed to know.That ended tonight.I drove south, leaving the pristine, cream-fronted townhouses of Mayfair far behind, passing through the sprawling, shadowed suburbs until the city gave way to a desolate stretch of Surrey countryside. The roads d







