Ethan's povThe war room had been running for six straight hours by the time my phone finally lit up on the table, Friday evening bleeding slowly into night without anyone in the room noticing the shift had even happened."Voss's team has gone completely dark," Marcus Reyes said, pacing the length of the boardroom, a printout in one hand. "No further contact with Carter Group. No further movement on the letter of intent. Whatever they found when they broke through Meridian's final layer, it stopped them cold.""That's not good news," Priya said, not looking up from her laptop. "That's worse than the pressure campaign, honestly. Voss escalating, we understand. Voss going silent means someone above him took the information seriously enough to freeze the entire operation.""Meaning they know the name," Tomlin said. "Evan Black. And whoever's actually in charge decided that name was dangerous enough to stop everything rather than keep pushing forward, which tells us more about how much i

Ethan's pov Four days since I'd last called her, and by that Thursday morning, gray and overcast the way most mornings at the harbor tended to be, I understood the silence had stopped being protective and started being cruel.The Director's warning after Voss's discovery had pulled every resource I had into lockdown, security sweeps on every location connected to my actual life, Marcus Reyes doubling patrols around the penthouse, the harbor path, even Maya's gallery, though I'd made sure that particular detail stayed far enough removed that she'd never notice the extra unmarked car parked across the street most evenings, engine idling low, plainclothes and unremarkable, exactly the way I'd wanted it.I told myself the silence was protecting her. Four days without a word, without an explanation of any kind, while I tried to understand how close Dominion had actually come to my real name, and what it might cost her simply to be seen standing near me if they ever closed that final dista

Diane's pov Ten full days since I'd sent that message, and by the following Monday morning I'd stopped checking my phone every few minutes and started, instead, checking it only every few hours, which felt, in its own small, exhausting way, like actual progress.Marcus found me in the kitchen that morning, coffee in hand, watching the rain streak down the window over the sink instead of actually making breakfast the way I'd told the staff I would handle myself."Still nothing?" Marcus asked, settling into his chair across from me."Still nothing." I didn't look away from the window. "I've made my peace with it, mostly. He doesn't owe me a response. I understand that, even if some part of me keeps hoping anyway, every single morning.""Ten days isn't forever, Diane. Not really.""It's not nothing either, Marcus." I finally turned to face him, the coffee gone lukewarm in my hands. "I keep thinking about what I'd do, in his position, after everything. I don't know that I'd answer eithe

Lucas's pov I made it as far as the parking garage before my hands started shaking, and I had to stand there a full minute, keys pressed hard enough into my palm to leave a mark, before I trusted myself to drive at all.A car alarm went off somewhere on the level above me, three chirps and silence, and I flinched at it harder than the sound warranted.The board had bought my explanation whole. That was the part that should have felt like relief, watching Wexler's shoulders drop, watching Patricia Holt's pen finally stop tapping against her legal pad, watching the whole room exhale at once like a held breath finally released. Instead it sat in my chest like something swallowed too fast, lodged wrong, refusing to settle no matter how many times I tried to talk myself past it.I hadn't lied, exactly. That was what I kept telling myself, driving out of the garage into gray midmorning traffic, wipers pushing a fine mist off the windshield though it never quite qualified as rain. I'd found

Ethan's pov Maya's voice came through the phone warm and a little breathless, paint fumes probably still thick in the gallery around her, and I found myself smiling at the ceiling of my office before I'd even registered doing it."You'll never guess what Danny did," she said, and I could hear the grin in it before she'd said another word."Tell me everything.""Asked the girl. Actual words, actual eye contact, none of the constipated hovering I warned him against." Something clattered on her end, a brush against a jar probably, and she laughed at her own clumsiness before continuing. "She said yes. He's insufferable now. Texted me eleven times this morning with increasingly dramatic descriptions of how it happened.""Sounds like he inherited your flair for storytelling.""Watch it, Carter."I leaned back in my chair, the late afternoon light cutting long across my desk, catching dust motes drifting slow in the air near the window, and let myself sit in the easy warmth of the call a m