Kade stood in front of the hotel mirror and adjusted his bow tie. The tuxedo fit perfectly. Expensive fabric. Clean lines. He looked like someone who belonged at a billionaire's gala.His reflection stared back with cold eyes.The pistol in his shoulder holster pressed against his ribs. Small enough to hide. Powerful enough to matter. He checked the magazine one more time and then slid it back into place.His phone buzzed on the bathroom counter. Silisa's name appeared.*Side door near the east garden. I left it unlocked. Security cameras loop at 9:47. You'll have three minutes.*Kade typed back. *Understood.*He grabbed his jacket and walked out of the hotel room. The elevator ride down felt too slow. His heartbeat counted every floor. Lobby. Parking garage. His rental car waited in the corner spot.City B's rich district spread out around him as he drove. Massive houses behind tall gates. Perfect lawns. Trees that probably cost more than most people made in a year.Thorne Manor sat

Kade's choice was to fight.The guard closest to him moved first. Big mistake.Kade grabbed the man's wrist and twisted hard. Bone cracked. The guard screamed and dropped his pistol. Kade kicked him in the chest and sent him flying backward into the wall.The second guard fired. The bullet went wide and hit a bookshelf. Kade dove forward and swept the man's legs. The guard fell hard. His head bounced off the marble floor with a sick thud."Stop him." Celessa's voice cut through the chaos. "Don't kill him. I need him alive."The third guard grabbed Kade from behind. Strong arms locked around his chest. Kade slammed his head backward and felt the guard's nose break. The grip loosened. Kade spun and drove his elbow into the man's throat.The fourth guard tackled him to the ground. They rolled across the carpet. Fists flew. Kade caught a punch to his jaw that made his vision blur. He grabbed the guard's ears and slammed the man's face into his knee.All four guards were down.Celessa stoo

Kade drove through empty streets with the headlights off. Every police car made his stomach clench. Every siren made him check the mirrors.Marcus had dropped him at the garage and left in the sedan. Safer to split up. Harder to track two vehicles than one.The pickup truck handled well despite being old. Kade kept it just below the speed limit. Nothing that would attract attention. Just another late night driver heading home from work.His phone buzzed constantly. Messages from his team. Updates on Thorne security movements. Alerts about increased police presence in certain districts.He ignored most of them and focused on driving.The safe house was forty minutes outside the city center. Small neighborhood. Quiet streets. Houses with dark windows and cars in driveways.Kade parked two blocks away and walked the rest. His shoulder throbbed with each step. The bandage felt wet again. Probably bleeding through.The safe house looked like every other building on the street. Two stories.

The screens in Thorne Manor's private war room were always on. They cycled through financial feeds and security cameras and news channels and internal communications dashboards and the room itself was cool regardless of the season because the equipment generated heat that the climate system worked constantly to offset. Most mornings Celessa came in here at six after her workout and reviewed the overnight summaries with a coffee in hand and left satisfied within twenty minutes.This morning was not most mornings.She stood in front of the center screen where Petra Vance's article filled the display and had been playing on loop for the past forty minutes in a news segment that the anchor was visibly uncomfortable presenting. The anchor kept pausing and rephrasing things as if she could not quite believe she was saying them out loud on television. Behind Celessa six members of her inner security team stood at careful attention along the far wall and none of them spoke and none of them mo

Kade was in a narrow alley off Crane Street when the burner phone buzzed.He had been leaning against the brick wall for the past fifteen minutes watching the mouth of the alley for any tail he might have picked up near the transit station and the street had stayed clear so he pulled out the phone and looked at the screen.The message was encrypted and it came through on a channel he had not given to many people. He read it twice."Mother raging. Suspects everyone. Meet me. Old pier, midnight. I have dates and shipment routes. Come alone."He stared at the screen for a long time without moving.There was no name attached to it but there did not need to be because only one person had this channel number outside of his own team and he had shared it exactly once during a conversation at the Velvet Garden three weeks ago when Silisa had pressed her phone against his under the table and said "just in case" and he had let her because he was not sure yet whether she was useful or dangerous a