ANMELDENDAVINA'S POV"Are you certain you want to start a war with Michael Van Leer?"The question landed across the table with the weight of someone who had seen wars started and understood what they cost before the first move was made. My contact sat with both hands flat on the surface, watching my face, giving me the full space of the silence to reconsider.I had been in this room for twenty minutes. The location was unremarkable, a back office above a laundry on a street that smelled like detergent, water damage, the particular ordinariness of a place nobody looked at twice. I had chosen it for exactly that reason.The copied notebook entries were in the folder between us. Weeks of work, organized by date, cross-referenced by name, built into a timeline that connected Michael's calls, his instructions, his plans, his voice in a hospital room where he thought I was empty.I looked at the folder. Then at the person across from me."My mother spent her life paying for Marcus Van Leer's sins,
ALVIN'S POV"If Sarah becomes a problem, I'll handle her myself."The words were still sitting in my chest, cold, flat, like water during harmattan. Then I pressed my back against the wall beside the window, breathing through my nose, keeping my body still while my brain ran the sentence again.Michael had said it without heat. Without drama. The way you state a contingency you have already thought through and filed away for later use.I pressed closer to the glass, trying to catch more. Fragments came through."Clara.""The network.""Leverage.""Sarah."Her name again... Twice in under five minutes. I watched Rael's mouth form it, watched Michael's face absorb it with controlled stillness.Movement to my left.A figure, security, moving along the far wall of the building with the deliberate pace of someone making rounds rather than responding to something. Still enough time.I pushed off the wall, moved back the way I came, keeping my steps even, my pace unremarkable, the walk of so
CLAUDIA'S POV"Phase one is live."I expressed it to the screen, to the numbers climbing in real time across the left monitor. Not to the guard standing three feet behind me, though he heard it.The guard shifted his weight. "Are you worried about Michael?"I watched the numbers climb. "No.""He signed Rael's agreement.""He signed what Rael put in front of him," I replied. "Michael Van Leer signs things when he believes he is taking control of something. He does not sign things out of submission." I turned my chair slightly toward the monitor on the right, the secondary feed. "He thinks he is managing Rael. Rael thinks he is managing Michael." I picked up my coffee. "Neither of them is looking at me."The guard said nothing."Rael is the variable I watch," I continued. "Michael is predictable. I have known Michael for years, I know how he calculates, I know what he protects, I know which threats make him move and which ones make him go still." I set the coffee down. "Rael is the one
SARAH'S POV"Whatever is happening between all of us can wait."I stood in the middle of the main room, everyone was assembled. I looked at each face in turn. Tom on the couch. Viktor by the door. Alvin in the chair. Garrett near the window, not looking at me. Michael standing to my left, arms crossed, watching the room."Clara cannot wait," I continued. "She is inside the operation right now. She is running assignments right now. Every day she stays in there is another day she is being used by a man who recruited her because of who she is to us." I looked at Tom. "Tell them everything."Tom sat forward. He set his coffee down, folded his hands together, looked at the room with the expression he wore when he was about to deliver something he had been sitting with for too long."Clara currently oversees the management layer between Rael's thirty hidden assets, the ones beneath the sixty winners, and Rael himself," Tom opened. "She does not know the full scope of what she manages. She t
MICHAEL'S POV"Sarah."No answer. I knocked again, then turned the handle and went in.She was on the bed, on her side, facing the wall, still dressed. Her eyes were open, I could tell from the quality of her stillness, the stillness of someone awake, not sleeping, just lying very still because moving required energy she had already used up.I closed the door behind me, crossed the room quietly, sat on the edge of the bed.She didn't turn."What's the matter?" I asked.A long pause. Then she rolled onto her back, looking at the ceiling. Her eyes were red at the edges, her face carrying the particular flatness of someone who had cried recently, stopped, decided not to start again."We need to talk," she replied."Alright."She sat up slowly, pulled her knees toward her chest and looked at me with the expression she wore when she had already made a decision and was about to deliver it without softening it first."I've made up my mind," she told me. "About all of it. About you, Garrett,
ALVIN'S POV"What do you mean Garrett is seeing someone?"Sarah sat up in the bed, the sheet pulling around her.I looked at the ceiling. "Her name is Elizabeth.""Who is she?""It's not my story to tell." I sat up beside her, reached for my shirt on the floor. "Go ask Garrett yourself." I pulled the shirt over my head, and looked at her. "This is what happens when you keep three people on a loop without closing any of the doors. Eventually they stop waiting and they walk through a different one."She opened her mouth.I kept going. "I'm not saying it to hurt you. I'm saying it because it's true." I turned toward her fully. "Garrett isn't a hundred percent in this anymore. Michael has a child coming, which means his attention is going to fracture whether he wants it to or not." I held her gaze. "I'm the only one whose position hasn't changed since the Trial House."She looked at the wall.I watched her face do what it always did when too many things arrived at the same time, that care
FRIEDA'S POV"No! Don't do this!"My voice echoed off the cold concrete walls as Dr. Patricia Moore stepped into the cell, escorted by two large orderlies. "Frieda!" Serena lunged forward, throwing herself between me and the doctor. "Stay away from her, you psycho bitch!"One of the orderlies grab
FRIEDA’S POVMy head pounded as if someone were hammering nails into my skull. Everything hurt. "Where am I?" I tried to sit up, but the room spun violently. "What happened?""Oh, so now you're awake? Perfect timing!" Serena stood in the corner, arms crossed, glaring at me with pure hatred.I blink
ALVIN’S POV"Get up. We need to move now."Serena’s voice thundered through the ringing in my ears. I opened my eyes to black, choking smoke rolling everywhere.My body ached. Burns on my arms, cuts on my face, blood in my mouth, but I was alive.I pushed myself up from the rubble, concrete and twi
CLAUDIA’S POV"Cheers to perfection."I raised my champagne glass toward the woman slumped across me, drugged and restrained in the plush leather seat. Frieda Enriques. My masterpiece, my greatest work of art.The private jet hummed smoothly at 30,000 feet, cruising over the Atlantic. First class al







