جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 20

Renese's POV"If anyone calls me sweetheart in the next five minutes, I'm going to double your interest rates and take your shoes."The six people sitting around the dusty table in the back of the abandoned nightclub went silent as they exchanged confused looks.The club was pitch black except for two emergency lights. The windows were boarded up with thick plywood, and the air smelled like old beer, damp concrete, and fear.I pulled off my plain jacket, draped it over the back of a metal folding chair, and sat down at the head of the table. I was dressed in a simple black hoodie and jeans—nothing fancy, nothing rich, and definitely nothing that looked like the silk dresses I wore inside Augustus Manor.Standing around the table were six of the most useful criminals in Verona Ridge: a twitchy hacker who once broke into the state police database, a former Mikaelson smuggler who knew every blind spot on the harbor docks, an information broker who traded secrets for cash, a disgraced ban

Killian's pov"No fucking way! If I paid every stranger who sent me a text, I’d be broke and living under a bridge." Lane stared at my phone screen in the dim light of the basement, his eyebrows pulled down tight. "Boss, you can't be serious. You're actually thinking about sending money to an untraceable hacker?" "That 'hacker' just saved us from walking right into a trap and starting an all-out war with the Mikaelsons," I said, my voice low and flat. I leaned against the edge of the table, tapping my fingers against the glass screen. The text was still glowing in the dark room: Payment required. Below the words was a single offshore account number and a price tag: five hundred thousand dollars. No name, no bank branch, no explanation. "Killian, think about it," Nestor warned from the doorway, wiping dirt off his knuckles. "Whoever sent that file

Camilla's pov I kept my hands resting calmly on my silk napkin, staring across the long dining table at my father, Lord Thaddeus. He hadn't touched his dinner. He just paced back and forth near the marble fireplace, waving his glass of wine like a weapon while his voice echoed through the empty room. "Do you have any idea how weak we look right now, Camilla?" he barked, slamming his fist onto the table. The crystal glasses rattled loudly. "The wedding of the decade! Cancelled! Thousands of news outlets are laughing at us! The Augustus heir left the altar, and you just stood there like a fool!" "I stood there," I said smoothly, taking a tiny sip of water, "because running after a crazy man with a gun isn't in my job description. Besides, my dress was too tight to run anyway." "This is not a joke!" my father roared, his face turning bright red. "Killian needs a wife, Augustus needs

Killian's POV The senior financial officer sitting in the steel chair trembled so violently that his glasses kept slipping down his sweating nose. It was 3:00 AM. We were inside the basement of Augustus Manor. For six hours straight, my financial team had been tearing apart every wire transfer, shell company, and blind account connected to the October 14th meeting date. And then we found it. An account created just one week before the wedding. "Mr. Augustus, please!" the officer squeaked, pressing his hands flat against the interrogation table. "I just process the international wires for the logistics department! I don't ask who owns the destination accounts!" I didn't argue. I simply picked up a printed sheet of bank statements and slapped it down in front of him. "Fifty thousand dollars sent to a Castel border commander," I said smoothly, slapping down a se

KILLIAN'S POV "It better not be another fake contact telling me she’s sitting in a casino in Paris, I’m going to blow up the casino." Lane rubbed his bloodshot eyes, slumping back into the leather passenger seat of our black sedan as rain lashed against the windshield. "That’s the fourth false lead this week, Killian. We sent a strike team to Madrid, two agents to Rome, and three men to London. Every single lead is a dead end." "She’s out there," I growled, staring out at the dark, wet streets of Verona. "She’s using false passports, moving through blind spots, slipping past every net I cast." "Or she’s drawing you out on purpose," Nestor grunted from the driver’s seat. "Whoever is feeding us these locations is making us waste millions of dollars chasing phantoms across Europe. Renese was smart, boss, but she didn't have international smuggling routes set up