Blood and Betrayal
I grabbed a match from the mantle and struck it.
“What are you doing?” Silas roared, lunging for me.
I dropped the match. The gilt-edged pages, soaked in the dry rot of twenty years, caught instantly. The secrets of the Ares empire—the murders, the bribes, the “Conditioning”—erupted into a wall of orange flame.
“I’m clearing the site,” I said.
Silas tackled me, the weight of him slamming me into the mahogany desk. We hit the floor, a tangle of limbs and fury. I felt the detonator fly from his hand, skidding across the floor toward the vault.