Lahat ng Kabanata ng UNDER THE DON’S PROTECTION: Kabanata 151 - Kabanata 160

Amara’s POVThe Lagos night is thick—humid air pressing against skin like wet velvet, distant traffic a low growl beneath the hum of generators. We move through the old compound like ghosts: me, Leo, Kai, Zara. No black tactical gear this time—civilian clothes, dark hoodies, faces half-hidden under baseball caps. We don’t look like a hit squad. We look like kids who took a wrong turn.Elena waits in the same courtyard where we took her down last year. She’s thinner, eyes hollow, but the fire is still there—banked, not extinguished. She nods once when she sees us.“The vault’s clean,” she says. “No new security. They think I’m still in the facility. They don’t know I kept a backdoor.”Leo glances at the rusted door behind her. “And the strain?”“Still there. One vial. Enough to wipe a city if they trigger it wrong. Enough to end them if we do it right.”Kai steps forward—voice low. “We’re not ending anyone tonight. We’re containing.”Zara checks her watch. “Forty minutes until the patr

Amara’s POVThe café is on the top floor of the Silo Hotel, all glass and steel and panoramic views that make Cape Town look like a toy city someone left under a spotlight. Table Mountain looms behind the windows like a sleeping god. I arrive fifteen minutes early. Zara arrives five minutes after me. She takes a table two rows back—black hoodie, earpiece hidden under her hair, eyes never leaving the door. Leo and Kai are on the street below, one in a delivery van, one on a motorcycle. Elena is on encrypted video link from a safe flat in Ikoyi, watching the same feeds we are.Gideon Voss arrives exactly on time.He doesn’t scan the room. Doesn’t check corners. Just walks straight to the reserved table in the far corner—back to the glass, face to the entrance. Charcoal suit, white shirt open at the collar, no tie. Mid-thirties. Clean-shaven. Hair black and parted precisely in the middle. No visible jewelry, no telltale bulges under the jacket. He could be a venture capitalist. He could

Amara’s POVThe café on the top floor of the Silo Hotel is all glass and steel and panoramic views that make Cape Town look like a toy city someone left under a spotlight. Table Mountain looms behind the windows like a sleeping god who’s already made up his mind. I arrive fifteen minutes early. Zara arrives five minutes after me. She takes a table two rows back—black hoodie, earpiece hidden under her hair, eyes never leaving the door. Leo is in a delivery van on the street below, pretending to unload boxes. Kai is on a motorcycle two blocks away, engine idling, ready to move if things go loud. Elena is three thousand kilometers north in Ikoyi, watching the same feeds we are, finger hovering over the dead-man switch that would slag the vault if my heartbeat flatlines.Gideon Voss arrives exactly on time.He doesn’t scan the room. Doesn’t check corners. Just walks straight to the reserved table in the far corner—back to the glass, face to the entrance. Charcoal suit, white shirt open at

Amara’s POV The platform is twenty-three nautical miles off Lagos—rusted legs rising from black water like the skeleton of something prehistoric that refused to die. We approach at 02:17 local time under a moonless sky. No running lights. Engines cut at two miles out. Small black inflatable carries six of us: me, Leo, Kai, Zara, Elena, and Tunde—former Nigerian Navy diver, twenty-nine, eyes like chipped obsidian, recommended by one of Kai’s clinic contacts. He hasn’t spoken more than six words since we met him yesterday. He doesn’t need to. The way he checks his rebreather and straps the suppressed carbine says enough. The platform looms out of the dark—rusted legs rising from black water like the ribcage of something long dead. Thermal imaging shows six heat signatures on the upper deck. Two more below. Gideon’s team. They arrived twelve hours ago—fast boats, silenced engines, no chatter on open channels. They think the strain is still here. They think we’re still reacting. They

Amara’s POVThe Abuja safehouse is a two-storey concrete block in Garki—unmarked, no signage, windows blacked out with heavy film. Inside smells of fresh paint, gun oil and instant coffee. We’ve been here forty-one hours. No one has slept more than three consecutive hours.The containment case sits on the kitchen table under a single hanging bulb—blue glow leaking around the edges like cold fire. The vial inside hasn’t moved, hasn’t changed, but it feels heavier every time I look at it.Leo is at the window—rifle resting on the sill, eyes on the street. Kai is at the laptop—cycling through traffic cams, drone feeds, encrypted chatter. Zara is cleaning weapons at the counter—methodical, angry strokes. Elena sits across from me—tablet open, scrolling through Gideon’s kill list again, cross-referencing names with public records, trying to find patterns we missed.Tunde—our new recruit—is leaning against the wall near the door, arms crossed, silent. He arrived at 03:00 last night carrying