Marcus Steel leaned against a tree approximately two hundred meters from the highway and bit into an apple he had pulled from his jacket pocket somewhere between the park and the treeline. The crunch was loud in the quiet night air. Below him, through a gap in the branches, the final moments of the fight played out like a stage production viewed from the balcony.Maurice Springs killed Bruno Marcelli. The blade came down. The body dropped. Maurice screamed his promises into the darkness and then disappeared into the trees with his two remaining disciples dragging themselves after him like injured dogs following a wounded wolf.Marcus chewed slowly and watched the empty highway settle into silence.He had deliberately let Maurice leave alive. Death would be too simple. Too clean. Too final. A dead Maurice Springs was a problem that ended on a highway and never produced anything useful again. A living Maurice Springs was a problem that could be aimed, redirected, and detonated at a time

The Volkswagen pulled onto a side street and Abbott killed the engine beneath a streetlight that had burned out weeks ago and hadn't been replaced. The building in front of them was old in the way that buildings in the old town were old.Not charming. Not historical. Just tired. The paint on the entrance panel was peeling in long strips that curled away from the concrete like dead skin. A buzzer panel sat beside the door with wires hanging loose from three of its eight slots. It had probably never worked."Fourth floor," Abbott stepped out and looked up at the building with the familiarity of someone who had climbed those stairs before.They went up without speaking. The stairwell smelled like cooking oil and old plaster and something floral that might have been laundry detergent or might have been someone's attempt to make the hallway livable. Fourth floor. Apartment 401. Abbott knocked twice with a specific rhythm that sounded practiced.The door opened.Rosa Cavalli stood in the do

The door of the horse meat restaurant opened and Marcus Steel stepped inside with Miguel Abbott half a step behind him. The room went quiet.Not the quiet of surprise. Not the quiet of people interrupted mid-conversation. The quiet of assessment. Every head in the restaurant turned toward the entrance with the synchronized precision of people who had been trained to evaluate threats as a reflex rather than a choice. Eyes moved across Marcus and Abbott from top to bottom, measuring weight, checking hands, scanning for weapons, and filing the results in the span of a single breath.Marcus noted it immediately. This was not how civilians reacted to strangers walking into a restaurant. This was how units reacted to movement in a perimeter.Six men occupied two tables near the center of the room. Their plates were half finished. Their postures were relaxed in the specific way that trained people relax, which was not relaxation at all but a lower setting of the same alertness they carried a

Footsteps descended the stairwell with the measured pace of someone who did not rush for anyone. Each step landed with the specific weight of a man who was accustomed to having people brought before him, not the other way around. The sound grew closer and the single bulb in the holding room seemed to dim slightly under the pressure of whatever was about to walk through the door.The door opened.A man in a blue suit stepped into the room. He was tall and lean with sharp features arranged in an expression of controlled irritation. His suit was pressed despite the conditions of the building he occupied, and his shoes were polished in a way that looked deliberate rather than habitual. He carried himself with the impatience of someone whose evening had been interrupted by something beneath his attention.His eyes swept the room. Roosevelt Shaw. The woman pressed against his side. The girl curled near Abbott. Abbott himself, standing against the wall with his arms folded. And Marcus Steel,

Bridger Davis looked at Marcus for a long moment before answering. His fingers stopped tapping the table and went flat against the surface."Yes," Bridger's voice dropped to a level that barely qualified as speech. "Three weeks ago, during a planning meeting in the warehouse, the two envoys stepped aside to have a private conversation. They spoke in Greek. Ancient Greek, specifically. The kind that hasn't been used conversationally in centuries. They were confident that nobody around them understood a word of it.""But you do.""My mother was a classicist. She taught me before I could read English. I sat four meters away pretending to review logistics notes while they discussed the Saint Heir's travel arrangements and security requirements. The word Skyfire came up three times. Twice in the context of the arriving figure's affiliation. Once in reference to a standing directive that apparently predates anything the current leadership inherited.""A standing directive.""Regarding you,