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Quid Pro Quo
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2026-01-20 16:22:52
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The Cold Compromise Burning Ships
Chapter 108: Burning the Ships The sun dipped below the equator and cast a harsh glow over the western sky of São Tomé. The bright orange bled into deep violet until the horizon looked like something torn between fire and night. The world felt suspended between two colours, and for the first time in a long time, silence did not feel dangerous. Luca and Ethan stood on the deck of the Ithaca. The yacht sat still in the quiet bay, unmoving, almost peaceful. It had been prepared for its final task, a task that would remove the last trace of the lives they once lived. The sea was calm and the wind gentle. Everything looked normal. Yet both men felt the weight of the moment tighten around them. Ethan breathed in the warm air and let his gaze sweep across the empty water. A sense of peace, real peace, settled into him. It sank deep into a part of his chest that had been tight for years. “We finished the legal work,” he said. “We said goodbye to everyone who needed a goodbye. We destroyed
The Cold Compromise Safe Harbor
Chapter 106: Safe Harbour The journey stretched across seven long days. It felt like a strange mix of forced rest and constant alertness, the kind that kept both men caught between exhaustion and survival. The Ithaca travelled silently across the South Atlantic, running without lights and refusing to send even a single radio signal. Huge cargo ships ploughed through their routes in the distance, but Luca and Ethan kept their own vessel hidden in the dark paths between them. They moved through waters that were both crowded and lonely, a place where danger could appear at any time. Both men were bruised, sore and carrying the weight of everything they had escaped. They took turns steering the ship and watching the horizon. Their words were few. Their minds were focused on just one goal. They wanted to live long enough to reach the coordinates Luca had chosen months earlier, back when he still believed he would have time to plan his exit instead of running for it. On the eighth morni
The Cold Compromise Quid Pro Quo
Chapter 105: Quid Pro Quo Two days after the chaos had surged through Washington, the world felt strangely quiet. The storm had passed, but its echo still trembled through every corridor of power. The headlines kept screaming about betrayal, espionage and the fall of men who once believed themselves untouchable. For Luca, the silence that followed was the most dangerous part. It was the time when governments calculated their losses, reassessed their threats and decided who needed to disappear for the sake of national order. He knew they would come eventually. Not because they wanted revenge, but because governments hated unanswered questions. They hated loose ends even more. And he and Ethan were the last two threads that could unravel everything if pulled hard enough. But Luca did not intend to be anyone’s loose end. Instead of reaching out to Agent Hayes, who was already drowning in testimony, investigations and political crossfire, Luca turned to the only figure who existed ou
The Cold Compromise Hayes’s Justice
Chapter 104: Hayes’s Justice The chaos began quietly, almost politely, as if the storm wanted to tap softly on the glass before tearing the whole city apart. It started with a muted alert in the upper floors of the Department of Justice, a small change in access permissions, a blinking red line on a security dashboard. At first, no one noticed. Bureaucracy had a way of swallowing anomalies. But then the blinking line duplicated, then spread, then began to cascade like falling dominoes. And in a windowless, off‑the‑grid server room beneath Washington D.C., Agent Hayes watched the collapse with the stillness of a surgeon. Twenty minutes earlier, he had received Luca’s call. The line had been shredded with static, the words barely coherent through the interference of Mediterranean storms and military jamming. But Hayes didn’t need clarity. He needed intention, and Luca’s intention was unmistakable. Activate Final Play. Now the Petrov Ledger—the real ledger, the full unredacted vers
The Cold Compromise Sea Battle
Chapter 102: The Sea Battle The smugglers’ channel was a nightmare in motion. The Ithaca bucked like a wounded animal as it scraped rocks for the second time, the violent shudder tearing through the hull and straight into Ethan’s ribs. His breath hitched, sharp and painful, but he gripped the console and stayed upright. The shallow water churned beneath them, the choppy waves slamming against the hull as if trying to flip the yacht itself. Luca fought the helm with everything he had, every muscle in his arms coiled tight, sweat running down the side of his face despite the cool Mediterranean air. “Depth dropping!” Ethan hissed, his voice tight. His eyes were glued to the sonar, which was blinking red so fast it looked like a heartbeat in panic. “We have less than three feet of clearance, Luca. We need to slow down before we rip the bottom open.” “Slowing down is capture,” Luca shot back. His voice was taut, controlled, but the strain was unmistakable. “We need to hit open water be
The Cold Compromise Giuseppe’s Shadow
Chapter 101: Giuseppe’s Shadow The first shell burst fifty yards astern of the Ithaca, a jagged column of seawater spiralling into the night sky before collapsing back onto the deck with a metallic slap. The impact was purely psychological, a warning more than a weapon, but the concussive shock rattled the reinforced windows and set every onboard alarm screaming. Ethan’s grip tightened on the bulkhead as he shouted over the din. “Giuseppe is not messing around! That was a naval-grade shell. Where did he even get a boat with that kind of firepower?” Luca’s hands were steady on the helm. His eyes scanned the forward scanner, now protesting violently as the yacht entered the unmarked shoals. “The Black Market doesn’t care about end-user agreements,” he snapped. “He’s using an old military patrol cutter. Deep draft, heavy armour. Fast in open water, but useless in this reef.” The Ithaca was built for speed and comfort, not armour. Its shallower V-hull allowed it to skim over waters th
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