All Chapters of THE DEAN'S ASSASSIN : Chapter 101 - Chapter 105

POV ARIA ​The cold steel of Elias’s combat knife pressed into the papery, trembling skin over my father’s carotid artery. I could feel the rhythmic, rapid flutter of his pulse against the tempered edge, a fragile, terrified beat that proved Arthur Kane was still made of bone and blood, not the god-like myth he’d let the world build around him.​The vault beneath the Highland sanctuary smelled of damp peat, ozone, and the metallic tang of dried blood. Dust motes danced in the stark amber beam of the single overhead work light.​"Aria..." Arthur rasped. His throat moved against the blade, a microscopic fraction of an inch from opening a fatal seam. His milky, age-clouded eyes widened, reflecting my bruised face at me, streaked with soot and hollowed out by twelve years of running from his shadow. "Little bird... what are you doing?"​"I’m stopping the engine," I said. My voice didn't shake. The tremor that had plagued my left hand for six months was gone, replaced by a terrifying, abso

​POV ARIA The rain in Rotterdam didn't fall; it blew sideways off the North Sea, tasting of diesel fuel, salt, and industrial rust.​Massive, robotic gantry cranes towered over the Maasvlakte container terminal like colossal steel giraffes, their automated arms moving shipping containers back and forth under the glare of high-powered sodium floodlights.​Elias drove the battered, stolen Volvo estate into the shadow of a stacked mountain of rusted red freight boxes. He cut the headlights, letting the engine die into a wet, idling metallic hum.​"You're bleeding again," Elias said quietly.​He reached across the console with a clean white cloth, gently dabbing at the dark, dried line of blood beneath my nose. His touch was incredibly soft, a sharp contrast to the cold, killing machine he had been three hours ago in the Highlands.​I looked at my hands in the dim green glow of the dashboard clock. The golden ring around my pupils was pulsing rhythmically now, synchronized with the digit

POV ARIA ​The rain on the open deck of the Sea-Titan was a relentless, freezing assault that blinded our vision and turned the steel floor plates into an ice rink.​Elias and I crouched behind a heavy steel mooring winch, the cold iron biting through our soaked clothes. Twenty yards ahead, two bipedal security drones stepped out onto the main catwalk, their red optical lenses sweeping the deck in slow, rhythmic arcs.​PING... PING... PING...​The active sonar sensors on the drones were sending out high-frequency acoustic pulses, mapping every inch of the cargo deck in real-time.​"If those sensors hit us, we're scrap," Elias whispered in my ear, his breath hot against my wet cheek. "We have no heavy weapons. My carbine is out of ammo. We have one knife, two flashbangs, and a body that’s failing."​I pressed my back against the cold winch, closing my eyes.​I didn't want to use the interface. I could feel the thin, delicate blood vessels behind my eyes throbbing violently, a warning f