FAZER LOGINSelene's Pov I stared at the message for a long time, my heart pounding somewhere near my throat but I went anyway.The café was small, tucked between a laundromat and a shuttered bookstore, the kind of place no one from Kaelen's circle would ever think to look for me. I sat in the back booth exactly as instructed, my hands wrapped around a cup of tea I had no intention of drinking.He was late enough that I'd nearly convinced myself he wasn't coming at all, then a man slid into the seat across from me without a word of greeting.He was unremarkable, had average height and putting on a gray jacket. It was the kind of face you'd forget five minutes after passing him on the street. Nothing about him matched the low, careful voice I recognized instantly once he spoke."You shouldn't have come," he said."You shouldn't have known my name," I countered, the words coming out steadier than I felt. "Or which household account I was calling from. Who are you working for?""That's not informat
Selene's POVI bought a new phone the next morning, paid cash, and registered it under a name that wasn't mine, in a shop across town where nobody would recognize an Ashthorn face.I got in the car and told myself it was a smart thing to do, not a guilty one.Three days passed before he texted the new number, no explanation for how he'd found it.(Got something. Not everything. You want it in pieces or all at once?)(All at once,) I typed back.A file arrived a minute later. I opened it in the parking garage beneath my usual salon, engine running, doors locked, feeling ridiculous and terrified in equal measure.Most of it was ordinary. Silver Crescent Holdings' public filings. News clippings about Lyra's rise from nothing. A photo of her at some business dinner, looking poised and untouchable in a way that made my stomach twist with envy.Then a section near the bottom, labeled only 'Sterling — restricted.'Half the page was blacked out. What remained read like fragments torn out of c
Selene's POVKaelen didn't bring up the schedule again after that night in the study, which somehow felt worse than if he had. He simply watched me now, in a careful and quiet way, like the way you watch something you no longer trust not to bite.I told myself I hadn't done anything wrong yet.'Yet' was doing a lot of work in that sentence, and I knew it.---The gossip found me two days later, the way it always seemed to lately."Did you hear about Alpha Nightvale?" one of the kitchen maids murmured to another, not realizing how close I stood behind the pantry door. "At the hotel pool nearly every afternoon. With the Sterling woman's children.""The investment judge? Isn't that strange, mixing business like that?" The other asked, gossip evident in her voice."Strange or not, my cousin works the front desk there. Says he brings his own nephew along so it looks casual. Says the mother sits right there with him. Laughing. Comfortable, like old friends." The first one continued.I stepp
Lyra's POVFarrah called just after noon, and this time I put her on speaker without hesitation, needing Marcus to hear every word alongside me, needing a witness to whatever she was about to say."I traced the edit on your incorporation filing," she said, her voice crisp and businesslike, carrying the particular steadiness of someone who had delivered bad news often enough to have smoothed all the hesitation out of it. "Shell account. Offshore. Closed two days after the edit went through, with no personal name attached to it anywhere in the registry.""A dead end," I said, already bracing myself for the disappointment, my fingers tightening around my coffee cup."I thought so too, at first," Farrah said. "Until your security contact sent me the delivery account tied to those six food orders about an hour ago. I almost didn't bother cross-referencing them. I'm glad I did."Marcus straightened in his chair beside me, setting down the tablet he'd been scrolling through all morning. "And
Lyra's POVMarcus arrived within the hour, his jacket still damp from the rain outside, his expression already grim before I'd said a single word to him."Nina called me on the way over," he said, setting his bag down on the table with more force than necessary. "Walk me through everything. From the beginning. Don't leave anything out, even if it seems small."So I did. I told him about the first plate of chicken, the coffee that arrived exactly ten minutes before a meeting I hadn't told anyone I was nervous about, the warm bread from a bakery I'd mentioned once in passing. I told him about Cassian's confusion, how genuine it had seemed, how it had somehow made everything worse instead of better. I told him about the six orders stretching back to a day before I'd even agreed to return to Black Ridge City, and about the message that had arrived while Nina and I sat frozen at the table."I want everything cross-checked," I said, pacing in front of the window while he listened, his jaw g
Lyra's POVI saw him two days later, at the Alliance office.Cassian looked up from behind his desk the moment I stepped through the door, already halfway to a smile before he'd fully registered it was me."Lyra." He set his pen down. "I wasn't expecting you until Thursday.""I wasn't planning to come until Thursday," I admitted, closing the door behind me. "Something's been on my mind.""That sounds ominous." He said."Maybe a little." I crossed the room and sat in the chair across from his desk, smoothing my skirt nervously. "Thank you," I said, before I lost whatever nerve had carried me there. "For the meals."He looked up, genuinely puzzled, his brow furrowing in a way that told me immediately his confusion wasn't performed. "I sent one coffee. Yesterday morning, before your meeting with the auditors. You looked like you needed it.""Just one?" I asked in surprise."Just one," he said slowly, something shifting in his expression as he read whatever was happening on my face. He le







