LOGINAce's PovWe got her out of the building. We put her in the vehicle before the thirty minute check-in window closed. Her two personal security personnel had made the correct calculation. I outlined the satellite relay situation. I explained what it meant for the Syndicate if she did not cooperate fully.They stood down without resistance.She sat in the back between Nikolai and Ivan. I sat in the front. Rem drove, for the first twelve minutes of the drive, nobody said anything. The silence carried everything unsaid.I watched Nikolai in the mirror.He sat against the left door. His arms were crossed. He faced the window. His expression was the version I had never seen before. Not the cold calculating version. Not the possessive version. Not the grief management version. Something underneath all of those. Something from before all of them had formed.
Nikolai's PovThe imposter was handled in four minutes. Rem identified the substitution point from exterior camera footage. We had the person secured in the lower level within the hour. The questioning was efficient. It yielded immediate results.He gave us the location. A facility on the west side of the city. The same financial district building where Ace had met Veris, the Syndicate had been using it as their primary hub. They hid in plain sight the entire time.Ivan had been taken there.I faced Ace across the table. "We go now.""Two of us." His voice was flat. "Rem stays here. He maintains the satellite relay for continuous coverage.""Yes.""If we do not return in two hours, Rem releases everything. The full package. Everything we have built against them.""Yes.""Nikolai." He
Ace's PovWe stood up and walked into the bedroom.Ivan shoved me against the wall the second the door closed. The fight still burned between us, but it had turned into something raw and physical that needed release. Nikolai sat on the edge of the bed watching, arms crossed."Turn around," Ivan ordered.I faced the wall. He yanked my pants down roughly and kicked my feet apart."Spread your ass for me," he said. "Show us exactly what we are protecting."I reached back with both hands and pulled my cheeks apart, exposing my hole. My face was flushed against the wall."Beg," he told me."Please, Ivan," I said, voice rough. "I need it hard. I need to feel this."He spat thickly on my hole, watching it drip down. He spat again, then dropped to his knees and buried his tongue inside
Ivan’s PovI heard the plan and I heard the part Ace was not fully naming. I went to the far side of the room because if I stayed at the table I was going to say things in an order that would not help anyone.I stood there for two minutes. Then I turned around."No," I said.Ace looked at me. "Ivan.""No," I said again. I came back to the table. "You do not go into that room on a plan where walking out is the preferred outcome but not the required one. That structure is unacceptable.""The mission requires.""The mission does not require you to die," I said. "You are building a plan where your death is an acceptable variable and I am telling you it is not. We reject that variable completely.""You do not get to decide that for me.""I am not deciding it," I said. "I am refusing to participate in it or support it in any form.""You do not have to participate," Ace said. "The plan works without your participation if the transmission is set.""Then the plan does not happen," I said.Ace
Ace's PovI stood at the wall for a long time and then I went to my room and closed the door. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed.I did not cry. I was past the point where crying was the response my body produced to loss. I sat in the dark and held the weight of it and let it be what it was. The reality settled in layers that pressed down without relief.Daniel Reyes had spent twenty years looking for me. He had built a federal career as a mechanism to find his son. He had stopped a live broadcast the moment I asked him to.He had agreed to drop a twenty year case in exchange for a relationship that had lasted exactly two conversations. The loss carried a specific kind of finality that refused to soften.The Syndicate had killed him and used my name to do it. That part was deliberate provocation designed to force a reaction.I
Nikolai's PovThere was silence for a while. I finally spoke up."A verdict. You are both looking at me like you have already decided something and you are waiting for me to confirm it. Like the pattern of solo meetings has already been judged and the conclusion drawn about my intentions.""What have we decided. Lay out what you think we are seeing when we look at the choices you have made over the past days."Ace looked at both of us. "That I am going to join them. That the meetings and the information and the distance over the past two days means I am actually considering becoming what the Syndicate wants me to become. That the infiltration is shifting into genuine alignment on my side and the original plan is fading."Neither of us said anything immediately, letting the accusation hang."I am not. I am doing exactly what we agreed to at the s
Ace's PovThe assault hit the east side at four in the morning.Nikolai had been awake for it. I had been awake for it. Ivan was awake for it despite the shoulder and the instructions and the fact that he was supposed to be in bed.&n
Nikolai's PovWhen Ace came into my office I was already waiting.I had been watching his face in the sitting room and seen the second. There was no anger in it.The person standing in my office was the same one wh
Ivan's PovThe doctor had just finished stitching up my wound when I heard them talking through the slightly open bedroom door. Ace and his uncle, the man who had ordered the attack that nearly killed me."Kill the twins and inherit everythi
Ace's PovThree days after Ivan went down I asked to meet my uncle.Ivan was stable and angry about the sling and eating everything that was brought to him and conducting what he called low impact operational work from his bed, which Nikolai







