Erick met his eyes without flinching. Inside, his thoughts raced through every contingency he had built over five years. Helix is fighting back. The loyalty protocols are buying us minutes. Use them. He calculated distances, exit routes, and Luca’s obvious panic. The man was brilliant but greedy—greed made people sloppy.A single nod from Erick was all it took.Ivan, despite his wounds, lunged forward with surprising speed and slammed into the nearest guard. Remi drove her elbow into the second man’s throat. In the chaos, Erick grabbed Luca’s wrist, twisting hard until the pistol clattered to the floor. He drove a knee into Luca’s stomach, sending the rival billionaire crashing into a console.“Helix—emergency relocation protocol,” Erick whispered into his hidden earpiece.The remaining lights died completely. Darkness swallowed the room. Emergency sirens began wailing in the distance—Helix’s diversion, pulling external attention away from their position.“Out the back tunnel!” Erick b

His body ached with every movement, but he pushed through. Keep everything together.His focus was crucial for the empire, the team, and Remi and her mother. He resisted exhaustion and pain.Remi noticed his grimace and gently pressed a cool cloth to his forehead. “You’re burning up again,” she murmured. “At least let me change the bandages while you work.”He nodded, allowing her to tend to him. Her touch was careful, almost tender. For a moment, the chaos of the room faded. Just her fingers on his skin, the quiet focus in her eyes.“You don’t have to do this from the bed,” she whispered. “We can slow down.”Erick caught her wrist gently. “We can’t. But having you here…” He let the sentence hang, the rare vulnerability slipping through. “It makes it easier.”Jacqueline cleared her throat from her chair. “Incoming. My uncle says federal vans are moving toward two of our decoy locations. They’re testing the waters.”Erick’s eyes hardened. He switched windows, triggering another counter

Erick walked alone up the long driveway. Pain shot through his ribs with every step. The floodlights burned down on him. The Laurent mansion waited ahead like a trap.No more pretending.The front doors opened. Leroy stood there with armed guards. Dominique was beside him, eyes wide. Michel paced behind them. Evelyn watched from the shadows.“Quade,” Leroy said. “You came alone. Smart.”Erick stopped. “Where is Remi’s mother?”Leroy smiled. “Safe for now. But that can change.”Dominique stepped forward. “Erick… you came back for me?”Erick looked at her coldly. “I came for Remi’s mother. Where is she?”Domin

Erick leaned back into the pillows, his jaw tight. The painkillers were barely doing anything against the latest wave of pain hitting him. The wound on his temple had split open again, sending a thin streak of blood down his cheek. But he didn’t seem to notice; his eyes—cold and focused—never left the screens. Remi squeezed his hand. “What does Ghost Core actually do?” she asked, her voice still sounding scratchy from their escape through the tunnels. “It makes Helix a ghost,” Erick said, his other hand still flying across the keyboard. “To anyone on the outside, the system looks dead. Luca will think he’s winning, but really, we’re just watching him from the dark. Every move he makes, every backdoor he tries to kick in… we log it. We learn his patterns. And then we hit him.” Jacqueline crossed her arms, glancing between Erick and the monitors. “You’re betting everything on an AI that’s already been compromised. If Luca actually breaks through—” “He won’t,” Erick cut her off. “Hel

The new safe house was an old subway maintenance station, buried deep under the industrial edge of Brooklyn.Between the reinforced concrete and the air-gapped servers, it was one of Ivan’s old “just in case” spots.When the blast doors finally hissed shut behind them, the team let out a collective breath—but the relief didn’t last.Erick limped into the command center, clutching the encrypted laptop like a lifeline.Every step felt like a knife in his ribs, but he waved off the medic. He couldn’t afford to be sedated; he needed to think.“Status,” he rasped.Aria’s hologram flickered on the table, her expression tense.“Ghost Core is holding, but Luca just cracked another sub-node. He’s using Helix’s predictive models against us. We’ve got maybe four hours before the feds move in on the seizure order.”Remi stayed glued to Erick’s side, her hand pressed against his back as if she could physically hold him together.She was bandaged up herself, her own side aching with every move, but