Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 61 - Chapitre 67

The study was quiet except for the sound of Dimitri's pen moving across paper and the occasional soft displacement of air as Xavier pulled books from the shelf, looked at their spines with the expression of someone who was not really reading titles but needed something to do with his hands.Dimitri worked through the files without looking up. Numbers. Names. The kind of administrative detail that needed to exist on paper rather than only in his head. He penned notes in the margins in the shorthand that only he could read and moved to the next page."I was genuinely shocked when you called and said you needed to talk," Xavier said from the direction of the bookshelf."Do not read too much into it," Dimitri said without raising his head."I am reading everything into it," Xavier said pleasantly. "A whole Dimitri Volkov called me back and said the words we need to talk. With his actual mouth. Into an actual phone." He replaced the book he was holding. "That deserves to be commemorated so

She had felt it before Chloe even appeared.The feeling had started somewhere between her second sip of soft drink and the moment the bartender moved on to the next guest. A prickling at the back of her neck. The specific uncomfortable awareness of eyes that were not just glancing but holding. She had turned and looked at the direction it seemed to come from and found nothing except the usual organized chaos of the evening. People moving between tables. Staff weaving through with trays. Clusters of suited men laughing at something someone had said. The band playing underneath all of it.Nothing.Nobody was looking at her.She had turned back to her drink and told herself she was being paranoid. That evening and the crowd and the unfamiliarity of being in a large public space after weeks in a penthouse had made her sensitive to things that were not there.And then the voice came from directly behind her."Hello, Nat."She turned slowly.Chloe stood there in a deep red dress that stoppe

The private room was small and deliberately unremarkable.No windows. No decoration. Just four walls and a low ceiling and a collection of monitors that covered every surface available, each screen showing a different angle of the building, inside and outside, the feeds running in real time and in stored playback simultaneously. The man standing in the middle of it all was average height, average build, the kind of person whose entire professional value was that nobody remembered him after leaving the room. He bowed when Dimitri and Xavier walked in and wasted no time."There are people who came into the party tonight whose faces were not registered in the system," he said. He stepped aside and turned the desktop screen toward Dimitri.Dimitri leaned forward and scrolled.The screen showed a series of entry captures. Most of them clean, green checkmarks beside each face, names and clearance levels attached. But scattered through the results were different entries. Faces with a blank w