The safe house on Broomhill Drive was anything but safe. It was disguised as a failed tech startup, with a flickering neon sign that still read CortexNode, and glass walls smeared with fingerprints and dust. But Kabri knew better. His source in Marseille had confirmed it weeks ago—Fred’s Scottish front was laundering cryptocurrency through a silent cold-storage vault built beneath the building.Kabri stood across the street, perched on the rooftop of a disused bakery. The chill wind of Glasgow scraped across his face. He had been watching for three days, tracking every shift change, every delivery, every cigarette break taken by the guards at the rear entrance. The patterns were tight. Too tight. This wasn't just any outpost. This was a vault Fred trusted.And tonight, Kabri would break it.At 02:17, the electricity went out.A rolling blackout had conveniently swept through the West End, a planned sabotage courtesy of Yusuf’s embedded engineer. In that twelve-minute window, the secur

The cottage was too quiet.Kabri sat by the fire, the empty mug in his hand now lukewarm. The rain outside had stopped, but the storm inside him refused to. Shadows from the flickering hearth stretched across the wooden floorboards like grasping fingers—like echoes of the decision he still hadn’t made.He hadn’t seen Evelyn in two days.No call. No message. No signs.He hadn’t told Yusuf yet. That silence was dangerous in itself. He could already feel the rival leader’s suspicion pressing in from afar like a pair of cold hands tightening around his future.But Kabri wasn’t sure if he was trying to protect Evelyn... or delay the inevitable.He rose and paced the room. His thoughts dragged through the mud of memory. Their conversations played back in fragments:“I never knew my father well...”“History hides more than it reveals, Kabri...”Lies—maybe. But what if there was truth hidden in the seams? What if Evelyn was as much a pawn in Fred’s world as he once was?Kabri clenched his jaw

The fog rolled thick through the Scottish highlands as Kabri parked his stolen sedan just off the rocky edge of a glen. The engine hissed in the cold, and the hills before him lay silent under the gray weight of dawn.He hadn’t slept.Not properly.The air outside was dense with the scent of moss, rain, and age—like even nature itself remembered secrets that should have stayed buried. Kabri stepped out into the wind and walked toward the crag, his boots crunching against gravel, eyes fixed on the dark outline of an abandoned castle farther up the slope.Fred had once used it to host European allies—he called it “The Smoke Room.”Kabri now called it Target Four.He had three of Fred’s empire nodes already turned to ash—Paris, Brussels, Marseille. Two more to burn.And yet… something inside him trembled.Not fear.Guilt. A tremor in the soul.As he lit a cigarette and took a drag, he saw the shadow before he heard the voice.It was faint.But it was him.“Still smoking that cheap London

The kiss had meant more than either of them would admit.It hadn’t been planned, or slow, or gentle. It had been a collision—of grief, of truth, of the thousand shards they each carried within their ribs.Now, in the dawn light that filtered through the castle’s weathered glass, Kabri stood by the window while Evelyn lay curled on the threadbare sofa, wrapped in an old tartan blanket, clutching her mother’s final journal like a lifeline.He watched the moorlands beyond—sheets of mist rolling in off the loch, trees bowing under the weight of morning fog. The silence between them wasn’t peaceful. It was sharpened like a dagger placed gently on a lover’s chest.Kabri reached into his coat, pulled out the GPS tracker Yusuf had given him. He held it between two fingers, stared at it.There was a mic inside it.Yusuf had been listening.All this time.The old Kabri—the Kabri who bled loyalty in exchange for a shared bottle of rage and war—would have crushed the tracker and gone hunting. But

The light of the laptop screen cast pale shadows on Kabri’s face. The flickering flame of the candle danced against the moisture-stained wall of the bothy, but Kabri didn’t move. He sat like stone, locked in place, staring at the screen.The video had ended—but his brother's voice still echoed in his skull.“I didn’t betray you, brother. I betrayed them.”The silence that followed was deafening. Outside, a Scottish gale whistled through the broken windows, tugging at the old wooden frame like a child pulling on the hem of an angry father. Rain spattered the cracked panes in a slow, weeping rhythm.Kabri pressed play on the next file.Another video opened. Jamil again—this time in motion. He was in a moving car, his face half-lit, as if he'd set up the camera on the dashboard.“I don't have time,” Jamil muttered, glancing over his shoulder. “They’re tracking me. I think Fred knows. Maybe even Yusuf.”Kabri leaned in closer.Jamil continued: “I've pulled files. Logistics manifests. Port