Jimmy hated basements. Hated the smell of them, damp concrete and old wiring, the particular kind of cold that got into a man's knees and stayed there no matter how many space heaters he ran. But basements were where the good servers lived, tucked under bars and laundromats and dead storefronts across Vienna, humming away behind false walls where no landlord ever thought to look, and if he wanted the kind of information Nate was paying for, this was where he had to sit.Three monitors glowed in front of him, the only light in the room besides a single bare bulb he kept switched off more often than on. Cable snaked across the floor in loops thick enough to trip a man who didn't know the room by feel. He did. He'd built half of it himself, spliced connections that weren't supposed to exist between databases that weren't supposed to talk to each other.On the left screen, a wire transfer record sat frozen mid-trace, a string of account numbers he'd been peeling back for six straight hour

Mark watched the news ticker crawl along the bottom of his study television with the sound muted, DeLuclean Soap's name scrolling past under a headline about a mystery buyout, and felt nothing that could be called surprise. He'd known for months this was coming, in the vague way a man knows a storm is coming from the color of the sky. He just hadn't expected it to move this fast, or this cleanly. He picked up his phone and dialed his personal banker instead of calling Xavier to commiserate. There would be time for that later, or there wouldn't, depending on how the next few weeks went. "Mr. Lucius," the banker answered, professionally bright even at this hour, the way people got when they were paid enough to be bright on command. "What can I do for you?" "I want to discuss moving some assets," Mark said, standing at the window that overlooked the compound the three mansions, the orchards, the fish ponds his father had been so proud of, all of it looking smaller to him lately than

Nate stepped through the loading bay doors a few minutes after the lights came back up, unhurried, hands in his coat pockets, boots crunching over a scatter of spent brass that Jo's people would sweep up before dawn. He took in the scene without any particular reaction six men zip-tied along the concrete, Dark Crimson members standing over them with the loose, satisfied posture of soldiers who'd barely broken a sweat. "Casualties?" he asked. "None on our side, sir," Wilton reported, straightening. "Ron caught a graze on the forearm, nothing that needs more than a bandage. Their side's all breathing, per your instructions." "Good." Nate's gaze moved along the row of prisoners until it settled on Doyle, still on his knees where two Dark Crimson members had hauled him up, wrists bound behind his back, blood crusting along one eyebrow where the concrete had caught him. "This the one who kept swapping plates on us?" "That's him." Nate crouched in front of Doyle, close enough that the

The study smelled like old smoke and older grief. Xavier hadn't opened the windows in three days, and the curtains stayed shut even at noon, so the only light came from a single desk lamp throwing a jaundiced circle over a blotter he hadn't written on in weeks. A bottle sat within reach of his chair. It had been full that morning. It wasn't anymore. He heard the car in the driveway before the maid announced anything. Two doors, not one. He already knew who it was without looking, the way a man knows a storm's coming from the pressure behind his eyes. Mark came in first, Damian a step behind him, both of them dressed like they'd come from somewhere important, both of them looking at Xavier like he was something spilled on a carpet that hadn't been cleaned up yet. "You look like hell," Mark said, not sitting down, arms folded, coat still buttoned like he intended to leave the second this conversation stopped being useful to him. "Thank you for noticing." Xavier didn't get up either

Nate sat in the same chair for a long time after the door clicked shut, the glass of amber liquid still untouched on the table beside him, condensation gathering slow rings into the wood. Somewhere below, he heard the faint hum of William's car pulling out of the building's private drive, tires rolling smooth over wet pavement, and then nothing. Just the apartment, and the quiet, and the two letters sitting in his mind like a splinter that had finally worked its way to the surface after weeks under the skin. “Fredric.” He'd kept his face perfectly still when William said it. Years of practice made that easy six months on Grimace Island teaching a man to swallow every reaction before it ever reached his eyes, because in that place, a flinch was an invitation and a wince was a death sentence. He'd learned to bury things so deep that even he sometimes had trouble finding them again. But this one hadn't needed digging. This one had surfaced the instant William said the name, matching i