The cell door clanged open for the last time. “Reddington.” The guard’s voice echoed off the concrete. “Pack it up. You’re done here.”Done. As if six years of confinement could be reduced to a single word. Fowler Reddington stood, his every movement calm, deliberate. The cot creaked under his weight as he rose.A small duffel sat at the foot of the bed, empty save for the bare necessities: a worn book of military strategy, a watch with a cracked face, and the dog tags he had never let them take.The guard eyed him warily as he gathered his things. Fowler didn’t miss it. Even here, even stripped of uniform and rank, men recognized something in him. A presence. A gravity.The chain link gates rattled open one by one as he was escorted through the labyrinth of steel and stone. Each step forward was measured, controlled. The other inmates watched from behind bars, their voices hushed. Some looked at him with envy, others with fear.One man muttered, “General’s walking.”The words were so

The city smelled of exhaust and ambition. It roared around Fowler in waves car horns blaring, voices shouting over traffic, neon signs buzzing with promises of pleasure and escape. Six years gone, and nothing had changed. Not here.But he had. Fowler Reddington stepped onto the sidewalk like a man reborn, though no one around him knew what had been buried.His boots struck the pavement with quiet certainty. No uniform, no stars, no salutes just a plain jacket, dark jeans, and a presence that made strangers step out of his path without understanding why.Behind him, half a block back, the black sedan idled in traffic. His men, those few who had not abandoned him trailed discreetly. They had wanted to drive him straight to a safehouse, but Fowler had refused.He needed to walk. To breathe the city air. To feel the battlefield beneath his feet again. The world outside prison walls moved fast, but Fowler absorbed it in measured silence.He catalogued the shifts in skyline new towers clawi

The ballroom was alive again, music swelling, laughter forced back into place, champagne flutes raised as though nothing had happened. But Selene heard none of it.Her pulse thundered louder than the orchestra. Her skin still burned where his eyes had touched her.She pushed through the glittering crowd, ignoring the startled murmurs, ignoring Damon’s smirk that followed her like a shadow. She needed air. Space. Distance.The balcony doors slid open, and the night welcomed her with a sharp chill. The city stretched below, a sprawl of lights and steel veins, alive in its restless hum. She gripped the railing, silver nails digging into the metal, willing herself to steady.Her reflection in the glass mocked her a queen in silver silk, flawless on the outside, fractured within. She despised it. She despised him for making her feel it. How dare he walk in here. How dare he stand in front of me like he never fell.Her breath fogged in the night air, uneven, trembling. She hated the tremble

Morning light slanted across the penthouse windows, gilding the city in a haze of gold. To Selene Carter, it brought no warmth.She stood at the kitchen counter, staring into a cup of untouched coffee. Her reflection stared back from the surface poised, perfect, polished yet her fingers trembled against the porcelain.She hadn’t slept. Not a minute. Every time her eyes closed, she saw him. Fowler.His shadow towering over her on the balcony, his voice low, steady, filled with truths he never spoke before. The way he had looked at her, not with hate, not with pleading, but with something far worse.Unshakable certainty. The man had walked out of prison with nothing but scars, yet somehow he was the one untouchable. She had wealth, influence, her family’s name behind her. And yet… she felt cornered.A soft knock broke her thoughts. “Selene?”The voice belonged to her father. Charles Carter never entered a room without sounding like he owned it. She schooled her face into calm, set down

The Carter family library was a fortress of leather-bound volumes and locked drawers, a place where secrets wore dust like armor. Selene Carter stood alone in it, the tick of the grandfather clock loud against the silence.She had not planned to be here. She had planned to bury herself in work, to drown out the memory of Fowler’s eyes steady, unflinching, unbroken. Instead, she had found herself drifting here, to the one room in her father’s estate where answers might be buried.Her hands were steady as she slid open the drawer of her father’s desk. Steady, but her heart hammered. She had never snooped in Charles Carter’s domain before. To do so was to trespass against the iron rule of her family.But doubt gnawed like acid. Damon’s smirk. Charles’s slip. The word “treason” said too deliberately. The shadow in her father’s eyes when she questioned him.Something was wrong. She sifted through neatly arranged files ledgers, contracts, corporate memoranda. Nothing unusual. Her father’s e