All Chapters of Crave Me,Kill Me: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The meeting place wasn’t a building.It was a grave.Buried in the West Bronx beneath a condemned warehouse, a half-demolished subway platform still accessible through a maintenance tunnel.Nova had tracked the number one of a dozen rotating dead drops used by disbanded intelligence contractors. Whoever this man was, he didn’t just survive the system.He used to run in it.Aria stepped out of the darkness, boots scraping old stone, flashlight in one hand, blade tucked into her coat.The man waited near a rusted column.Late 40s, maybe 50. Pale. Trim. Eyes like static. No weapon drawn, but his whole body read like one.“You came,” he said.“You called me Eden.”“I saw you die,” he replied. “Or thought I did.”She didn’t ask how he knew.Only one kind of man spoke with that kind of certainty.“You were there that night?” she asked.“I was backup. Hired to run cleanup if it got messy.”“And it did.”He nodded. “They underestimated the target.”Aria stiffened. “The man who died…?”“Wasn

The safehouse was cold. Not broken, just unfinished.No art on the walls. No plants. No mirrors.Nova sat on the floor in sweats, wires spilling from her laptop like veins. Coffee in one hand, tablet in the other, dark hair tied into a no-nonsense knot.She looked up the second Aria walked in.“Cassian?” Nova asked.Aria shook her head.Nova exhaled. “Good.”Aria dropped her bag. “Why?”“Because if you came here for comfort, I don’t do that anymore. But if you came for fire ”“I did.”Nova nodded once. “Then close the door. You’re gonna want both hands for this.”Aria sat beside her on the concrete, the sting of betrayal still clinging to her bones. Not just Cassian’s silence. Her own weakness.“I want to go at them directly,” she said.“Too early,” Nova replied, already swiping through code. “We need access. Leverage. Data trails.”“You have something?”Nova tapped her tablet and flipped it toward her.A map of LLCs, off-shore holdings, and laundering networks all tied to a single

The signal led her three hours north.No signs. No fences. Just a crumbling medical center deep in the forest, its exterior half-eaten by ivy and time. The kind of place where people disappeared long before they were missed.Aria parked a quarter mile out.Moved in silence.The tracker was pulsing louder now synced to Nova’s pendant. A final failsafe. If it pinged inside this building, it meant Nova had been brought here alive.The door was unlocked.The halls? Silent.Everything inside was still powered faint lights, a humming backup generator in the subbasement.She slipped through the corridors like memory.And then… she found it.Room 6B.Door slightly ajar.On the floor: scuff marks. Burned wires. A shattered comm link Nova’s.She was close.Aria stepped in. And froze.There were screens on one wall.Live feeds.Some empty.One showing a cell Nova, hands bound, still breathing, slouched but upright.She was alive.But it wasn’t the only feed.Another screen showed a room

Aria laid the drive on the table between them.Cassian didn’t touch it.Not because he was afraid of what was on it but because he already knew.“These are the names?” he asked quietly.She nodded.“Twelve direct collaborators. Six inside the board. Three shell CEOs. One private military liaison.”“And?”“And one,” Aria said, voice tight, “is your father’s personal legal architect.”Cassian sat back. “Merrin Dovall.”“You knew?”He nodded once. “He drew the Blackbird contracts. He was the one who pitched memory suppression as a ‘non-lethal containment solution.’”Aria’s hands curled slightly on the table.“I want them all,” she said.Cassian didn’t argue.But he didn’t agree out loud.Instead, he pulled out a separate file thin, encrypted, marked with an old ValeCorp sub-code.He slid it toward her.“What’s this?”“The only person who can break Elena’s system.”Aria raised an eyebrow. “Another hacker?”Cassian’s voice dropped.“Not exactly.She’s not code.She’s history.”He opene

The door unsealed with a breath.Not a click. Not a buzz.Like the room itself gave permission.Aria stepped through first. Cassian behind her. His hands didn’t tremble, but his silence did.Delia stood in the center of the room.No guards.No restraints.No fear.She looked at her son first then at Aria.And when she spoke, her voice was smooth, low, and devastatingly clear:“I’ve been waiting for you both.”Cassian didn’t speak.Aria did.“You’re alive.”Delia tilted her head. “They never meant to kill me. Just remove me from the equation.”“Why?”Delia smiled faintly.“Because Charles was never afraid of me. He was afraid of what I believed about the system.”Aria stepped closer.“And what was that?”“That it needed someone like you to survive.”Aria blinked. “Me?”“You were the only Blackbird subject who didn’t shatter. You were meant to be erased but I buried a code inside your survival.”Aria froze.“What code?”Delia walked to the table in the center of the room and pulled