جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 30

Elena closed the door behind her with a soft click that sounded far too controlled for the tension in the room.“I see the timeline has accelerated for everyone,” she said. “How fortunate that I arrived before any new signatures made the situation more complicated than it already is.”I still held the pen. My fingers had gone cold around it. Hale’s expression remained carefully neutral, but the way he closed the case of secondary copies told me he understood exactly how dangerous the next minutes could become. Riven did not move from his chair. He watched Elena with the same calm attention he always used when the stakes rose.Elena walked further into the room and stopped near the table. Her eyes moved from the partially covered documents to my face.“Put the pen down, Nora.”I did not.“You do not give orders in this room,” I said.Her mouth curved slightly. “I give orders wherever the consequences of disobedience still belong to me. That includes this room. That includes you.”Riven

I called Riven with hands that would not stop shaking.He answered on the first ring. “Nora.”“She took him.” My voice sounded wrong in my own ears, too thin and too sharp. “Theo is gone. His room is empty. She sent a message. She said he is safe for now and that it depends on the choice I make by morning.”There was a short silence on the line. When Riven spoke again the calm in his voice was tighter than usual.“Stay where you are. Do not leave the apartment. Do not contact her. I am on my way.”“She already has him.”“I know. Stay there.”The call ended. I stood in the middle of the living room with the phone pressed against my palm hard enough to hurt. The apartment felt larger and emptier than it ever had. Every quiet corner seemed to announce Theo’s absence. I walked back to his room and stood in the doorway, staring at the bare desk and the missing sketchbook. The ordinary details of his life made the fear sharper instead of softer.I tried to think clearly. Elena wanted a deci

Riven did not take me to any of the previous locations.He drove to a black-glass building near the river, parked in a private bay, and led me through a service elevator that required both a key card and a code. The doors opened directly into a wide, dark apartment. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the water and the scattered lights of the opposite bank. No soft furniture. No wasted space. A large bed. A long table. A single leather chair facing the glass.The moment the elevator doors sealed he turned the locks.“Clothes off.”I did not move fast enough.He closed the distance, gripped the hem of my shirt, and pulled it over my head in one hard motion. The fabric cleared my arms before I could protest. His hands went to my jeans next, yanking the button open, shoving denim and underwear down together until I had to step out of them or fall. Cool air hit bare skin. My pulse slammed.“Riven—”“Quiet.”He walked me backward until the backs of my thighs met the edge of the bed. One firm p

The attack came through the apartment.Riven’s phone lit up while we were still on the bridge. One of his men spoke two sentences. Riven’s foot hit the floor. The car surged forward hard enough that the seatbelt locked across my chest.“What happened?”“Two people tried the building. Not police. Not hers on paper. They used a maintenance key that should not have existed. My team intercepted. One is down. The other ran.”“Theo—”“Untouched. They never reached the floor. But the attempt is the message.”He took the next exit at a speed that made the tires protest, cut through a service road, and pulled into the underground bay of the black-glass building again. This time he did not wait for me to follow. He opened my door, took my arm, and moved us through the service elevator with the same controlled urgency as the night before.Inside the apartment he locked every point of entry, then turned on a secondary system that sealed the elevator itself. Only then did he look at me fully.“She

Riven drove without headlights until the industrial corridor swallowed the car.He spoke only once. “The bridge is bait. The real target is the dual-channel backup node. She wants us racing across the city while she cuts the last physical failsafe. We reach it first or the copies become negotiable again.”The node sat inside a decommissioned water-treatment annex two kilometers from the river. Chain-link, rusted cameras, one working floodlight. Riven killed the engine fifty meters out and handed me a second magazine.“Three steps. No heroics. If the perimeter is already breached you stay behind cover and you shoot anything that advances.”We moved low along the fence line. The lock on the side gate had been cut clean. Fresh metal shavings still caught the light. Riven’s jaw flexed once. He pushed the gate open with his foot and raised his weapon.Inside, the annex smelled of wet concrete and old oil. A single corridor led toward the control room that housed the backup node. Halfway do