He looked around the table with the slow, measuring gaze of a man who was counting faces and finding every single one of them insufficient."So my question is simple. Where is the family head? Where is the man who calls himself the Architect? Where is the person who is directing actions that put me in the field against targets I would never have moved against if I had been given complete information?"Whitley Lancaster straightened in his chair. His jaw clenched."The Architect's identity is compartmentalized for the security of the entire organization. You were given what you needed to execute your assignment, and you executed it. That's the arrangement.""The arrangement." Marco Montana repeated the word the way a man repeats something a child has said that is so stupid it requires a moment of silence before responding. "You're telling me that I threw an armored car across a road and nearly killed two men, and the person who ordered it is hiding behind a word like compartmentalized?

"None of them moved on the Willson Group before the attack." Marcus leaned back and looked at the ceiling with the narrowed eyes of a man assembling a puzzle whose pieces were arriving in an order designed to mislead."None. Zero contact. Zero interest. Zero commercial inquiries. The Willson Group did not exist on any of their radar until Abbott and Potter were officially dead." Carlo set the tablet down. "If absorbing the Willson Group were the League's primary objective, it would have been their first move. You don't kill two financial allies and then casually stroll toward the main target as an afterthought.""They moved on my allies first. They're approaching the Group secondarily." Marcus's dragon ring pulsed once against his thumb. "Which means they know, or suspect, who actually owns the Willson Group.""And they've chosen to treat you as a separate problem from it." Carlo's face tightened with the expression of a man who had arrived at the same conclusion and did not like wher

Marcus stood at the window of the Willson Group's top floor office with his phone pressed to his ear and his eyes fixed on the lights of Five-River Province spreading below him like a nervous system he was learning to read."Hold your people back from the Ridge family." His voice carried the flat certainty of a man issuing an order he had already thought through from every available angle. "Nobody moves. Nobody watches openly. Nobody does anything that tells Truman Ridge we know what we know."Carlo Neri's breathing was steady on the other end. "The evidence points directly at him, Marcus. The butler. The Boulevard League meetings. The concealed death of his grandson. Every thread runs through that house.""Every thread runs through that house and I still don't have the full picture." Marcus turned the dragon ring on his thumb twice, the ancient energy inside it pulsing against his skin like a second heartbeat. "I need to know who else participated in the Mount Everest rebellion befor

"Aldo Marcelli." The butler set the teapot down and lowered his voice to the register of someone sharing information that required context. "His son Bruno Marcelli was involved in a highway confrontation several weeks ago. A situation that went badly. Aldo has been seeking identification of the individuals responsible.""Seeking identification." Stanley's eyebrows rose. "He came to the Boulevard League to identify someone who hurt his son?""His son was humiliated on a public highway by two men whose identities have proven remarkably difficult to establish through conventional channels. Aldo Marcelli is not a patient man, and he is not accustomed to being unable to find people he is looking for." The butler smoothed his jacket. "He brought the footage."Aldo Marcelli looked up from his laptop and found Stanley Isolde watching him. He closed the laptop halfway and stood with the coiled energy of a man who had been sitting still for too long and welcomed any excuse to engage with anothe

He stayed on the rooftop and kept listening. The Skyfire channels were cycling through route confirmations when a different frequency cut through."Alternate route seven is prepped. Charge is live. Timer set to remote detonation on visual confirmation."Marcus went still.He pulled the signal apart in his head. Alternate route seven ran along the old industrial corridor, less than four hundred meters from his current position. Someone had rigged a hidden charge along one of the convoy's backup routes. Not the primary. The backup."That's not defense." Marcus's jaw tightened. "That's a test. They want to see who takes the bait."He moved across the rooftop in four strides and dropped down to the fire escape. The industrial corridor was dark and empty. He could feel the charge before he saw it. A faint electrical hum buried under a drainage grate near the third intersection.The convoy's advance scouts were already moving through the corridor. Two vehicles, lights off, running the route