Marek’s grin turned sharp and jagged as his hand openly gripped the hilt of his blade.“Now that is a plan I can follow,” he rumbled, voice thick with dark satisfaction. “After you, Young Master.”Inside, relief surged through him.For hours, Thomas’s cautious logistics and Albert’s digital hand-holding had felt like wearing a suit two sizes too small. To Marek, safety was secondary; effectiveness was everything. He’d been waiting for Tedmond to stop playing the obedient student and start acting like the predator he’d trained him to be.The safe route was for men who feared the dark. This raw, improvised chaos was where real power was tested. He was glad the boy had finally stopped listening to the voices in his ear and started listening to the pulse in his veins.Tedmond paused, gaze shifting to Marek. He noticed the change immediately: the loosened shoulders, the lethal joy dancing in the older man’s eyes. Not for the first time, he wondered how many risks Marek had taken to gr

The ballroom was a sea of masks, each one a lie.Tedmond moved through the crowd with a practiced elegance he hadn’t used in years, his tall frame cutting through the neon fog. He didn’t look like a man who had just scaled a mountain; he looked like a man who owned it.Beside him, Marek was a brooding shadow. Every time a waiter passed with a tray of crystal flutes, Marek’s eyes flicked to the man’s throat, finding an artery before dropping to the drinks.“Relax,” Tedmond breathed, barely audible over the swelling orchestra. “You’re looking for a fight. I need you to look for a conversation.”“Hard to do when my ‘bespoke ensemble’ smells like a midlife crisis and expensive soap,” Marek muttered, the leather bone-mask tilting toward a cluster of men at the center of the room. “See the far pillar? The guy in the gold lion mask. He’s checked his watch every thirty seconds. He’s waiting for a handoff.”Tedmond didn’t look immediately.He accepted a flute of champagne from a passing tray

The Adjutant’s grip on the tablet tightened until his knuckles turned white.As he listened to Tedmond, his eyes tracked him from head to toe, searching for familiarity in the cut of the suit, the quality of the fabric, the subtle tells of belonging.There were none.He couldn’t place him, couldn’t place the voice, the posture, the confidence.And yet, from the way Tedmond spoke, the Adjutant was certain of two things: Tedmond was not one of them… and he was far from ordinary.‘He mentioned Washington, the man thought uneasily. ‘Is he part of that family?’“The network is isolated!” the Adjutant finally snapped. “We switched to physical tablets specifically to avoid—”“Because you’re afraid,” Tedmond cut in smoothly.“But physical tablets leave physical fingerprints. Do you really want to be the man who handed the keys to the Gilded Cage to a ghost because you were too proud to let a specialist verify the encryption?”The Adjutant hesitated.His eyes flicked to the tablet, then back t

Tedmond didn’t wait for her to finish.He knew the physics of a stationary shooter: the moment of greatest vulnerability came just after the end of a sentence.In one explosive motion, Tedmond hurled himself backward, using the weight of his sodden velvet coat to slam into her while simultaneously diving toward the churning water of the fountain. It was a gamble measured in milliseconds.He heard the splash.Felt the cold shock of the water.But he didn’t hear a gunshot.Instead, as he rolled through the waist-deep basin and scrambled to his feet, water cascading from his silver mask, he found himself staring down not one, but two barrels.The woman had stepped back with a dancer’s grace. Her primary weapon remained leveled at his chest, while her left hand had drawn a compact suppressed pistol from a thigh holster, aimed precisely at the spot where Marek had been crouching.“I said,” she repeated, her voice stripped of all amusement, “don’t move.”Tedmond stood dripping, the weight

Outside, the moon was a silver sliver, the wind howling against the reinforced panes.Then Marek’s eyes dropped to the fountain’s base.Water overflowed, slicking the marble beneath the Commander’s high-end tactical boots.Marek reached into a hidden pocket of his crimson cloak and withdrew a small, weighted glass sphere, a flash-bang of a different variety filled with a concentrated, pressurized gas that reacted violently with water.‘Wait for it,’ he told himself. ‘Wait for the boy to make his move.’He saw Tedmond’s posture shift.Saw the way the kid used his voice as a distraction, drawing the woman’s focus into a psychological game.Tedmond was playing the “London consultant” card again, probing for her price.Marek adjusted his grip. He wasn’t worried about the automated turrets the woman had mentioned.He knew where they were… three heat-sensitive units mounted in the cornices. He had already mapped their blind spots.His concern was the Commander’s left hand.The one aimed at