Jared did not wait for a second message.The moment he saw the black SUV across the street, his entire demeanor shifted from exhausted to dangerously alert. He grabbed Becky gently by the wrist and pulled her away from the hallway window immediately.“Step back,” he ordered quietly.Becky’s pulse quickened. “Jared—”“Back.”The sharpness in his voice silenced her. Jared moved toward the apartment lights first, switching off the one closest to the window before looking outside again through the narrow edge of the blinds.The SUV remained parked beneath the streetlight.Engine running.Headlights still on.Watching.Becky folded her arms tightly across herself. “You think they’re here for me?”“I think they’re here to send a message.”“That doesn’t answer the question.”Jared looked at her briefly before pulling out his phone. “My security team’s downstairs. Nobody gets near this building without passing them.”“You still trust them after the penthouse situation?”That stopped him.Only

Jared stood frozen near the apartment doorway, phone pressed tightly against his ear as the woman’s voice finished speaking his name. The air inside the room seemed to tighten with him, as if even the walls had begun to listen. Becky noticed it immediately; she straightened from the kitchen counter, her expression shifting from concern to alarm, while Ethan slowly rose from his chair with the instinct of a man who had learned to recognize when conversations turned dangerous.“Who is this?” Jared asked, his voice controlled but edged with something restrained.There was a brief silence on the other end before Evelyn Stone replied, calm but fragile around the edges. “You should have stopped when you had the chance,” she said softly. “Victor Stone’s death was not the beginning. It was the continuation.”Jared’s grip tightened around the phone. “Where are you?”Evelyn refused the question outright, her breathing uneven now. “They are watching you the same way they watched him,” she said,

The drive back from Evelyn Stone’s property was quiet enough to become unbearable.Rain battered the windshield in uneven waves while the forest road stretched endlessly ahead beneath the darkness. Ethan sat in the passenger seat with his laptop balanced against one knee, trying repeatedly to reconnect to secured Diamond Global servers, but every attempt failed before completion. Becky remained in the back seat, arms folded tightly across herself as she stared out the window, though Jared could tell from the reflection in the glass that her attention had not left him once.Jared drove without speaking.The photograph remained beside the gearshift.Howard Diamond.Victor Stone.And the boy standing between them.Damien.That image had unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. Not because of the message written across it, but because of the feeling it had left behind. There was familiarity buried inside it, faint but persistent, clawing at the edge of his memory.“You’re thinking too

For the first time in weeks, the world had stopped collapsing around him.That alone felt unnatural to Jared.The following days passed without another leak, another threat, or another cryptic message appearing across his devices in the middle of the night. Diamond Global’s shares had finally stabilized after the emergency restructuring Howard pushed through with the board, media pressure surrounding Blackridge had begun fading beneath newer scandals, and even the endless online speculation around Jared’s personal life had quieted.Too quiet.Jared noticed it every morning.Every hallway he entered.Every black vehicle parked too long across the street.Every unfamiliar face lingering a second too long near Diamond Global’s headquarters.Damien Stone had disappeared again.And somehow, that felt worse than the attacks themselves.“You’re doing it again.”Becky’s voice pulled Jared from his thoughts as she set her cup down carefully across the café table. Afternoon sunlight filtered so

The silence inside Vice Director Calloway’s office had changed texture.It was no longer administrative or procedural. It had turned sharp, watchful, almost brittle—as if every person in the room had just realized they were standing too close to something that could explode in any direction.Jared remained still, his expression unreadable, though Becky could tell from the subtle tightening of his jaw that something inside him had already shifted. Not panic. Not confusion.Focus.“I want to see him,” Jared said finally.Director Hill gave a short, humorless laugh under his breath. “You want to see the victim now?”Jared turned his eyes toward him slowly. “I didn’t ask you.”The room stiffened immediately.Calloway stepped in quickly, raising a hand. “Jared, Brad is currently under intensive care. He’s only just stabilized. The doctors are still monitoring—”“I said I want to see him,” Jared repeated, voice lower now, more controlled.Becky glanced at him carefully. “Jared, if this is s