The abandoned industrial district sat twelve kilometers outside the city limits, buried inside a maze of crumbling factories and rusted shipping containers that had not seen legitimate business in over a decade.The streets were broken, the streetlights dead, and the only vehicles parked along the perimeter were unmarked vans with blacked out windows and license plates that would trace back to companies that did not exist.Kevin arrived on foot. No vehicle. No backup. No Commander Voss monitoring his position through satellite feeds. Just a man walking through the darkness toward a warehouse whose dim yellow light leaked through gaps in its corrugated walls like infection seeping through a wound.He climbed a fire escape on the adjacent building and settled into a position overlooking the warehouse floor through a shattered window. What he saw confirmed everything Elena had warned him about.The warehouse was not a storage facility. It was an underground market. Thirty, maybe forty me

The leader's free hand moved to his mouth. Kevin lunged forward, but he was half a second too late. The man bit down on something hidden inside his cheek.His body convulsed once, his eyes rolled backward, and he collapsed onto the warehouse floor. A thin line of dark liquid trickled from the corner of his mouth.Kevin knelt beside him and checked his pulse. Gone. Hidden poison capsule. The kind used by operatives who were trained to die rather than compromise their chain of command.Kevin stood slowly and looked down at the dead man's face. Whoever had rebuilt the Crimson Veil had equipped their operatives with suicide protocols. That meant the organization was not just active. It was disciplined, well funded, and terrified of exposure.He searched the warehouse methodically. Inside a locked cabinet near the leader's position, he found a stack of classified documents wrapped in waterproof casing.Transaction records. Communication logs. Payment receipts from foreign groups whose name

"Three sections of footage from cameras twelve, seventeen, and twenty three have been deleted. Not corrupted. Deleted. Someone with administrative access to the exhibition's security system removed those files after the attack." She paused. "Those three cameras covered the corridor where the unidentified individual engaged the attackers. Every other angle has been preserved. Only the ones that would have shown his face are gone."She set down the recorder and stared at the wall. The photograph of the scar was pinned in the center, surrounded by fragments of evidence that all pointed toward the same conclusion."The attackers reacted to him with fear." She whispered it to herself. "Trained military operatives. Elite fighters. And they were terrified of one man. That does not happen unless they knew who he was."She picked up the file she had been building on the War God legend. Rumors.Secondhand accounts.Fragments of declassified reports that mentioned GODsFALL without ever identifyi

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he picked up his briefcase, turned, and left without another word.Sarah sat alone in the silence. She pressed her hands flat against her desk and breathed.The comparison she had been fighting for weeks had finally broken through every wall she had built to keep it out, and now it stood in the center of her mind, impossible to ignore.She pushed it away. She was not ready to admit how much she regretted. Not yet.Meanwhile, three hundred kilometers from Milano, Mara Veyne sat in a darkened office reviewing evidence that most investigators would have dismissed as coincidence. But Mara did not believe in coincidence.She had obtained another piece of footage from the exhibition through a contact inside the port authority's private security network.The recording was short, barely twelve seconds, and showed a section of corridor that the official investigation had classified as empty during the attack.It was not empty.The footage showed three a

Kevin looked up. Richard Brown stood over him wearing a tailored black suit and an expression of open amusement.He was young, mid twenties, with sharp features and eyes that carried the permanent shine of someone who had never been told no by anyone who mattered."I remember you from the exhibition." Richard pulled out the chair across from Kevin and sat down without being invited. "You were standing in the background while that woman, Sterling's CEO, was being escorted to the lower delegation area like a dog sent to eat in the yard."Several guests at nearby tables turned to watch. Richard's voice was calibrated to carry."What exactly are you doing at an auction meant for powerful people?" Richard tilted his head and studied Kevin with the open curiosity of a man examining an insect. "This is not a place for washed up executives from bankrupt companies. The minimum bid tonight would probably buy whatever is left of Sterling Group's entire weapons division."Kevin looked at him with