Lahat ng Kabanata ng Shadows of Desire: Kabanata 131 - Kabanata 140

Morning came on with the thin light of a hospital corridor—sterile and too honest. We gathered in the control room without announcing it, as if our bodies remembered the choreography better than our minds: Victor checking the time, Marco already wired into his screens, Leo with coffee he wouldn’t drink, Elise with a tote that could fix a small war, Jennifer leaning near the door like she owned the air. Lena came last, blue coat, messenger bag, and a steadiness in her step that had been rehearsed into her bones.“This is the last handoff,” Marco said, no preamble. “We don’t need them to print. We need them to say it.” He lifted the tiny recorder from a velvet tray, the capsule so small it looked imaginary. “We go for voice today, not pixels.”Elise held out a hand; Lena gave her the lapel of the coat. Elise’s hands were warm, professional, almost ceremonial as she fixed the wire into place—two points of contact sewn between lining and seam, a whisper of copper laid flat like a secret v

The day we set the trap, the air inside Elysium felt like it was waiting to exhale. You could hear it in the careful clicks of Marco’s keyboard, the low hum of the server, the soft tap of Victor’s pen against the edge of the console. Even the walls seemed to lean closer, listening.Lena stood in the middle of the room, holding her phone like a weapon she wasn’t sure she wanted to fire. The fake dossier—a fabricated scandal too tempting for any gossip reporter to resist—waited in her drafts, its bait set to look irresistible: an exclusive story about internal betrayals and unverified photos of “secret sessions.” It was the kind of story that Adrian and his tabloid vultures would chase like blood in the water.Victor’s voice was steady. “Once you hit send, there’s no undoing it. They’ll bite. They always bite.”Lena’s hand trembled slightly, but her jaw locked firm. She’d rehearsed this moment a dozen times, every breath, every line. “Let them choke on it,” she said, pressing her thumb

Morning arrived like a knock I didn’t want to answer. The light through my blinds was colorless, hospital clean. I lay there for a breath, feeling the echo of Victor’s voice in the server room—the way “I’m trying” had sounded both terrifying and holy. For a minute I wanted to stay folded in that memory, to live where the war fell silent. Then my phone vibrated on the nightstand, the kind of insistence that means the world is still turning whether or not you’re ready.I reached for it, throat already tight.A message flashed in the group thread Marco had set up for operations: Channel 2 in 10. Lena got a text. No exclamation point. Marco knows punctuation is gasoline.The adrenaline was there before my feet hit the floor. I dressed by muscle memory—black jeans, sweater, hair yanked back with the decisiveness I reserve for deadlines and danger—and jogged the four blocks to Elysium, breath skritching in cold air. The building opened for me with its familiar hush, lemon oil and copper and

I didn't really sleep—just drifted in and out. When the alarm went off at six, I was already awake, staring at the city bathed in that uncertain blue light outside my window. Adrian's voice kept echoing in my head: "Every little god bleeds when you show the crowd he's human." Like a bad song I couldn't shake. The difference now? We had it on tape. Evidence isn't mercy, but it gives your anger somewhere to live besides your chest.I boiled water, oversteeped tea I wouldn't touch, and opened my laptop to stare at a blank document. The cursor blinked like a heartbeat. Buried in a hidden folder was the piece I'd written nights ago—six thousand words of pure fury wrapped around research. That article had been written in white-hot anger. Today needed something colder, sharper.I created a new document and typed a headline that cut straight to the point:*Anatomy of a Tabloid: Coercion, Extortion, and the Business of Manufactured Shame*The title looked too clean for the mess beneath it. Goo

Morning had that rinsed, after-rain clarity that makes the city’s edges look new. I woke before the alarm, the quiet so complete I could hear the building next door flex and settle. Elysium was closed to members again—the injunction had bought us time, and Victor intended to spend it like a miser: carefully, deliberately. I walked there with coffee cooling against my palms, the air bright and clean enough to taste.Inside, the main hall still smelled faintly of garlic and candle smoke from dinner, a domestic ghost haunting chandeliers. Somewhere, Elise’s kettle clicked off. Farther in, a door sighed shut with the politeness of someone trying not to wake a sleeping house.I wasn’t looking for anyone. I told myself that. I was going to the library to work through footnotes and fix two sentences in my draft that insisted on being melodramatic. But when I reached the mezzanine, I heard voices in the library—low, careful, the kind of pitch men use when the truth is fragile and the walls ar