The first one pulled his weapon. Cole closed the distance before it cleared the holster.He grabbed the man's wrist, twisted it downward, stripped the gun from his hand, and drove his elbow into the man's jaw in a single motion that took less than two seconds. The man hit the pavement like a bag of wet cement.The second attacker swung at the nearest of Victor's men and connected with nothing.Two operatives caught him from opposite sides, one pinning his arm and the other sweeping his legs. He went down hard and stayed down with a knee on the back of his neck and his face pressed into the asphalt.Daniel threw himself at the leader. The man blocked Daniel's first punch and countered with a strike aimed at his throat.Daniel ducked under it, grabbed the man's jacket, and drove his forehead into the leader's nose. The crack echoed off the brick walls. The leader staggered backward with blood pouring from both nostrils.Two of Victor's men stepped in and pinned the leader against the se

Celeste went still. The folder remained open on the table between them, but her hand stopped turning pages."You never told me that." Celeste's voice changed for the first time. Not softened. Shifted. The anger didn't disappear, but something else moved alongside it. Something that looked uncomfortably close to the kind of pain that comes from realizing a wound you thought you understood was actually deeper than you knew."I couldn't." Vivian pressed her hands together on the table. "The people who protected me afterward made it very clear that if I ever told anyone why I did it, the protection would disappear. So I kept quiet. And I kept doing what they asked. Small favors at first. Introductions. Information about certain people. Nothing that seemed dangerous on its own. But over the years, it added up. And I realized I couldn't stop because the moment I stopped being useful to them, I became disposable."Celeste studied her for a long moment. "And the rumors about Emma? The manipul

Logan arrived at the Astor Club at eight AM. The morning light came through the shattered east windows in long, broken lines that made the glass on the floor sparkle like scattered teeth. Security tape blocked the main entrance, but Celeste's people had already cleared a path through the side door for authorized personnel.The lobby still smelled like dust and violence. Overturned chairs. A shattered wine bottle behind the bar. A dent in the counter where one of the attackers had been thrown. The evidence of the previous night's chaos sat in the room like a conversation nobody wanted to finish.Celeste stood near the back wall speaking with two members of her security team. She wore the same blazer from the night before, which told Logan she hadn't gone home. Her posture was rigid, her jaw set, and her eyes carried the focused intensity of a woman who had moved past fear and arrived at something far more useful. Anger.Vivian sat in the private room behind the kitchen, her injured arm

Small enough to miss if you weren't looking for it. Scratched into the metal frame near the bottom hinge, no larger than a thumbnail.Celeste came up behind him. "What is that?"Logan moved his light across the mark. It was a symbol. Two lines crossing through a small circle, with a curved line beneath it. It looked like something between a signature and a brand.Celeste stared at it for a long time. The recognition moved across her face slowly, the way dawn moves across a landscape, one shadow at a time."I've seen this before." Celeste's voice dropped. "Years ago. It appeared in an old Imperial Group security report connected to an internal audit that was classified before anyone on the board could review it. The report was sealed by someone with executive level authority.""Who sealed it?" Logan straightened up."The report was signed by the head of internal security at the time." Celeste crossed her arms. "A man named Philip Kessler. He retired from Imperial Group three years late

Logan turned the Kensington Private Security tag over in his hand one more time before setting it flat on the evidence table where everyone in the room could see it."This was placed at the scene on purpose." Logan's voice was calm, the kind of calm that only made the words land harder. "Whoever did this wanted investigators to find it within thirty minutes and start chasing Kensington employees instead of asking who actually sent the men through that window."Vivian crossed her arms from the other side of the room. The bruise along her cheekbone had deepened overnight into a shade that made the circles under her eyes look permanent."Or maybe one of the attackers dropped it." Vivian tilted her head with the forced patience of a woman who had decided that disagreeing with Logan was now a personal project. "Not everything has to be a conspiracy. Sometimes things fall out of pockets during a fight.""If it fell out of a pocket during a fight, it would have scuff marks from the glass on