All Chapters of Undercover Hearts: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

MarcusThe news hits before sunrise. One of Bainbridge’s record offices went up in smoke. Not a full building blaze, just a single storage unit, torched neat enough to look like bad wiring if you don’t know better. But Gillespie and I know. They’re scrubbing.I pace Jamie’s living room, phone clamped to my ear, listening to updates filter in. Each detail is a needle. Elena’s not slowing down. She’s accelerating, burning the trail behind her before the Bureau can catch up.Sophia watches from the couch, bundled in one of Jamie’s plaid blankets, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion lining her face. She doesn’t ask what Gillespie said. She reads it on me.“She’s destroying evidence.” Her voice is quiet but certain.I nod. “And planting stories. Whispers about me, about you. Nothing concrete yet, but she’s trying to spin this before the Bureau locks her in.”Jamie emerges from the kitchen with three mugs of tea and sets them down with a flourish that would almost be funny if my chest didn’t

MarcusHerbert Lane looks like a man who’s been caught in a thunderstorm without an umbrella and never dried off. Even sitting in the Bureau’s borrowed conference room, he’s damp with sweat, his shirt sticking to his chest, hair plastered in uncertain directions.“I don’t know if I can do this,” he says for the fifth time, voice trembling. “She’ll kill me. You don’t understand-”“You’ve mentioned,” I cut in, keeping my tone flat. If I let his panic build, we’ll be here all night. “Your choices are pretty simple, Herbert. Prison. Or helping us make sure Elena goes down before she can touch you.”His eyes dart like a cornered animal’s, and I can practically hear the hamster wheel of fear squeaking in his brain. He’s not noble, never will be. But desperation is leverage.“Look,” I add, leaning forward, lowering my voice. “You know Elena. You know Bainbridge. You’re a loose end whether you help us or not. The only shot you have is making yourself more valuable to us than to them.”He swal

MarcusThe café explodes into chaos.Not literally, but it feels like it. One moment Elena is sipping her coffee, smooth and dangerous, the next her eyes snap to Herbert’s chest like she’s spotted the wire. I know that look. Suspicion calcifying into certainty.“Now,” Gillespie barks in my ear.I’m already moving. Door slammed open, boots hitting wet pavement, the kind of tunnel vision that years of Bureau training engrains in you. Target identified, no hesitation.Elena’s chair scrapes back hard enough to topple, coffee spilling across the table like blood. She doesn’t freeze, she pivots sharply, eyes cutting toward the exit. Always running the angles.“Marcus?” Her voice lifts in disbelief, like maybe I’m the one who betrayed her. It hits harder than it should.“FBI,” I shout, badge flashing as I cross the threshold. “Don’t move!”She does the opposite.Her coat flares as she bolts for the back door, heels skidding on the café’s tile. Herbert yelps, nearly tripping over his own chai

Sophia POVThe newsroom feels wrong at night.It’s usually all chatter and phones and the thud-thud of printers, but right now it’s just me, Sullivan, and the kind of buzzing silence that makes you feel like you’re in an echo chamber. The fluorescents hum overhead, way too harsh, bouncing off the stack of papers I’ve already scattered across the long desk. Marrin’s transcripts. Herbert’s half-coherent contribution. My own scribbled timelines. Sullivan leans back in his chair, jacket slung over the back, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He’s been rubbing his temples for twenty minutes. “You know what I’m gonna say.”“Don’t you dare say it,” I mutter, red pen clenched in my fist.He sighs, the kind of sigh that says he’s been editing other people’s disasters for thirty years and this is just another Tuesday. “Sophia, if we go to print now and even a single detail can’t be corroborated-”“If we don’t print now it’ll get buried,” I cut in, sharper than I mean to. My voice echoes in the ca

MarcusThe fallout comes faster than even I expect.Sophia’s article detonates in the middle of the city like a bomb, and instead of calculated retaliation, the mafia responds like an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Thrashing, messy and mean.By Monday morning, the Tribune’s voicemail box is flooded. Some are half-drunk rants about “rats” and “traitors.” Some are colder, the kind you can almost hear being dictated through clenched teeth. We know where your people live. Stop digging.Sullivan forwards the ugliest ones straight to the Bureau. Gillespie listens, lips pressed thin, then arranges police patrols like she’s slotting chess pieces into place.But threats on tape are the least of it.A Bainbridge shell office on the Lower East Side goes up in flames. No casualties, the place had been abandoned for months, but the message is loud and unsubtle. By dawn, reporters are swarming the scene, taking photos of fire-blackened windows and plastering them under Sophia’s headline.An