The first breach happened without sound.Elias watched it unfold on the screens as Legacy’s operatives slipped deeper into the estate, moving with the confidence of people who believed they were unseen. Their heat signatures glided between structures, hugging blind spots that had been deliberately left open. Every step they took was a confirmation that the bait had worked.“Count?” Elias asked quietly.Rowan answered at once. “Eight inside the inner perimeter. Possibly more hanging back.”Elias nodded once. “They’re disciplined. They won’t rush.”Mara stood beside him, arms folded, eyes locked on the monitors. “They’re heading toward the west wing. Exactly where the fake vulnerability is.”“Yes,” Elias said. “They think that’s where the fracture is.”Ethan’s voice crackled through the comm. “Intercepted a whisper channel. They’re confident. Too confident.”Elias allowed himself a slow breath. Confidence made people careless. Carelessness was expensive.“Do nothing,” Elias said. “Let t

Morning arrived without ceremony.The estate woke slowly, like a body easing out of shock. Guards changed shifts. Systems ran diagnostics. The rain finally stopped, leaving the air clean and sharp, the kind that made every sound carry. Elias stood on the balcony overlooking the eastern grounds, coffee untouched in his hand, eyes tracking movement below.Everything looked normal.That was what bothered him.Mara joined him a few minutes later, holding a tablet against her chest. “Interrogation reports are in. Preliminary ones, at least.”Elias didn’t look away from the grounds. “And?”“Most of them are trained to resist. But they’re not immune to pressure.” She glanced at the screen. “One of the captured operatives confirmed that Legacy didn’t expect the estate to adapt this fast.”Elias’s mouth curved slightly. “Good.”“They also confirmed something else,” Mara added.Elias finally turned. “Which is?”“They weren’t here to assassinate you,” she said carefully. “They were here to evalu

The night deepened, and with it came the kind of silence that pressed against the ears. Inside the estate, every corridor, every room, every breath felt measured. Elias stood at the center of it all, not pacing, not restless, but alert in a way that bordered on predatory. The trap was closing. He could feel it.The central node team had slowed exactly as predicted.Ethan’s voice came through first. “They’re hesitating. Internal comms are fractured. Someone countermanded an order and now they’re arguing about authority.”Elias allowed himself a thin smile. “Legacy hates uncertainty. It’s where they fracture.”Mara leaned over the console beside him, eyes scanning shifting data. “They’re circling Corridor Seven. That corridor doesn’t exist on their last internal maps.”“Which means they think it’s safe,” Elias said. “It isn’t.”Rowan cut in sharply. “Northern team is getting restless. They’ve realized they’re not being rescued.”“Let them stew,” Elias replied. “Desperation makes people

The first real consequence of Blackline arrived just after noon.Elias was in the strategy room with Mara and Rowan when Ethan walked in without knocking, his expression sharper than usual. He didn’t speak at first. He simply dropped a tablet onto the table and stepped back.Mara picked it up, scanned the screen, then swore under her breath. “They pulled it.”Rowan leaned over her shoulder. “Pulled what?”“The Geneva account,” Mara said. “Not frozen. Not flagged. Just… gone. Like it never existed.”Elias felt it settle in his chest, heavy but controlled. “That was our cleanest channel.”“Yes,” Mara replied. “Which means Legacy didn’t just cut access. They rewrote history.”Rowan straightened slowly. “That takes authority. High-level authority.”Elias nodded. “Blackline isn’t a warning. It’s a declaration.”Silence followed. Not panic. Not confusion. Just the quiet recalibration of people who understood what escalation really meant.Ethan broke it. “It’s not just financial. Two journal

Elias returned before dawn, but not to the parts of the estate that still carried the illusion of normal operations. He moved through the older wing instead, the one built long before digital warfare became fashionable, where walls were thick, corridors narrow, and silence felt earned rather than engineered. This section of the estate had no screens mounted on the walls, no soft hum of servers bleeding into the air. It was where decisions were made when noise became dangerous.The sky outside was still dark, heavy with the kind of gray that came before rain. Elias paused briefly at the tall window overlooking the eastern grounds, watching the faint outline of trees sway in the early wind. He had learned long ago that dawn was when truths surfaced. People were tired then, less guarded. Systems were still recalibrating. And enemies tended to believe they were ahead.He stepped into the room without ceremony.Mara sat at the long wooden table, sleeves rolled up, dark hair pulled back, a