Alle Kapitel von THE DEVIL'S TOY CAME FOR REVENGE : Kapitel 51 – Kapitel 56

HENDRIX The vault held more than I expected — not just the physical ledger I'd already seen pieces of, but boxes of supplementary files, cross-referenced and indexed in a system that took me several frustrating minutes to understand before I found the section devoted to names rather than transactions.Vale, L. The entry sat exactly where alphabetical order would have placed it, thicker than I expected, a full folder rather than a single page.I pulled it free and knelt on the vault's cold floor to read it, the emergency lighting weak enough that I had to tilt the pages toward the thin glow to make out the typed entries.The first document was the acquisition order, authorized under Mara's hand, listing Liora as leverage against an unnamed witness. The second confirmed Silas's role, a transport log noting his signature on her holding assignment, dates spanning the weeks he'd admitted visiting her. The third was Damir's own transport record, his name beside two separate dates — the in

ERDEM I didn't have him restrained the way the first two interrogations had required. There was no need — he came without being forced, his expression carrying the same flat exhaustion it had held in the vault."Sit," I said, once Konstantin had closed the door behind us.He sat. I remained standing."Vera," I said. "Tell me about her. Everything.""She's my handler and my aunt, technically, though the relationship has always been more professional." His voice stayed low, stripped of the emotion that had cracked through it in the vault. "Niko.""Works with her. Against you both, as far as I can tell, playing each of you for whatever advantage the moment offers." Something flickered across his face — not quite guilt. "I don't know the full extent of what they've arranged between them."I studied his face, searching for something I could use against him. Regret. Guilt. Anything that would tell me that what we had, had mattered enough for him to hate himself for destroying it

HENDRIX The gunfire started before dawn, close enough to my room that I was moving before I’d fully woken, old instinct carrying me off the bed and into a crouch beside the door. I found the door locked from the outside — Erdem’s precaution, I realized it had probably been locked hours earlier, some attempt to keep me secured. It didn't matter now. I worked the lock with a wire I'd kept hidden, and it opened.What is happening?The corridor outside was in chaos — guards running in both directions, some toward the fighting, others away from it. I pressed against the wall, cataloguing threats, and moved toward the records room rather than away from the fighting, because whatever was happening tonight, I understood with cold certainty that the Red Ledger's full evidence needed to survive it. Smoke had already begun filling the lower corridors by the time I reached them, acrid and thick enough to sting my eyes, and I kept low, moving through it with my sleeve pressed against my face. I p