جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

༒ ℜ𝔞𝔣𝔣𝔞𝔢𝔩𝔢༒I knew the answer before Reed finished talking.Maybe I'd known it for days, maybe longer. My instincts had been screaming that the leak wasn't coming from one of the younger men desperate to climb the ladder. It wasn't some idiot chasing easy money or trying to impress the wrong people. Whoever had been feeding our enemies knew too much, had access to conversations that never left private rooms, knew how my grandfather thought, knew how I thought, and more importantly, knew exactly which pieces of information were worth selling.That kind of knowledge didn't belong to a soldier.It belonged to someone who had been sitting at the table for years.Reed closed the folder and pushed it toward me."I checked everything twice.""I know.""You haven't even looked.""I don't need to."The room fell quiet.He leaned back in his chair, studying me carefully. "You already know who it is."I let out a slow breath before reaching for the file anyway.The name on the first page

༒ ℑ𝔪𝔯𝔞𝔫༒I didn't sleep.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the photograph again.My father stood among men who had shaped cities from the shadows, men whose names carried enough weight to start wars or bury them before the public ever knew they existed. One of those faces belonged to Rafaele's grandfather. The others weren't strangers either. Some I'd seen in newspapers years ago, smiling beside politicians during charity events. Others appeared in old business reports Pierre and I had uncovered, always hiding behind respectable companies with spotless reputations.Normal people.Successful people.Respected people.Liars.The photograph sat on the table between Rafaele and me, its corners singed from the explosion. Somehow, it had survived when the rest of the safe house hadn't. I couldn't decide whether that was luck or irony.Rafaele slid another folder toward me."This survived too."The edges were burned black, several pages fused together by heat, but the center remained re

༒ ℑ𝔪𝔯𝔞𝔫༒ Imran's POV The room had become strangely familiar. Not because I liked being there, but because I'd spent so many hours surrounded by stacks of fading documents, notebooks with cracked bindings, loose sheets covered in my father's handwriting, and files that smelled like old paper and dust. Every day blurred into the next until I could barely remember when we'd started. Pierre looked worse than I did. Dark circles sat beneath his eyes as he rubbed them for what had to be the hundredth time that morning. "If I have to look at another page full of numbers," he muttered, "I'm going to lose my damn mind." I let out a tired laugh. "You and me both." He leaned back in his chair, stretching until something popped in his shoulder. "Your father really knew how to hide things." "I don't think he wanted anyone finding them easily." "No kidding." Silence settled between us again. Outside the study, I could hear faint voices moving through the house. Rafaele had barely

Rafaele's POVSleep never came.I had spent the entire night staring at documents that refused to let me look away. Every page I turned made the room feel smaller, the air heavier. By dawn, the coffee sitting beside me had gone cold, untouched for hours.I barely noticed.Imran sat across from me, equally exhausted, another folder spread open in front of him. Pierre had fallen asleep in a chair sometime after four in the morning, a notebook still resting on his lap.None of us had expected this.When we found the locker, I believed we would uncover enough to explain why so many people had been chasing Imran and his father for years. I expected names, hidden accounts, maybe proof of a handful of corrupt officials.I was wrong.It wasn't a handful.It was a network.One that stretched through public offices, influential businesses, law enforcement, and powerful families who had spent years presenting themselves as respectable.Every document confirmed another.Every recording supported

Imran's POVI didn't sleep.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Pierre.Not the bruised face from the video.The Pierre I had known for years, the idiot who somehow managed to make me laugh when my entire world was falling apart, the friend who had stood beside me when everyone else decided my father's sins belonged to me too.I couldn't lose him.That thought repeated itself until sunrise.The files lay on the desk exactly where we had left them, neatly organized after days of work. They suddenly felt heavier than paper ever should. Every page represented years of lies, corruption, betrayal, and blood, yet none of it mattered as much as one person's life.I stood there for a long time before making my decision.If I told Rafaele, he would never agree to what I was about to do.He would bring half his men.He would turn the exchange into a battlefield.Maybe he'd win.Maybe he wouldn't.But if anything happened to Pierre because of that...I couldn't live with it.I quietly packed the