"Who's Sarto?" Sawyer's voice had gone thin, the fear she'd walked in with sharpening into something closer to panic now that Killian's calm had cracked into urgency."Someone Jack apparently pays to make problems disappear." Killian steered her away from the glass front of the lobby, out of any sightline from the street. "Chen — get her to the service elevator. I want her somewhere that isn't a documented guest room."Chen was already moving, a hand light on Sawyer's shoulder, guiding her toward the staff corridor with the kind of unhurried authority that made people follow without thinking to argue. "This way. Quickly, not frantically. Frantic gets noticed."Sawyer went, glancing back once at Killian. "What about you?""I'm not the one they're worried about finding." Killian's eyes stayed on the street beyond the glass, though the sedan was long gone. "You are. You heard something you weren't supposed to hear, and now you're the only living proof Jack said the word 'accident' out lo

The office fell silent except for the reporter's voice, still cycling through the same three facts dressed up in increasingly urgent language — missing, struggle, no suspect named. Elias hadn't moved from his chair, staring at the screen like it might correct itself if he waited long enough."If Jack's gone," Elias said finally, "then whoever took him already knows about Meridian Holdings. Which means my two days just became considerably less than that.""Or it has nothing to do with the money." Killian was already running through the list of people with a reason to want Jack Moore removed, and the list was longer than it should have been for a man who'd faked his own death to avoid exactly this kind of attention. "Sarto works for whoever pays him. If someone paid him more to take Jack instead of protect him—""Sarto wouldn't turn on a client mid-contract. It would end his business permanently. No one in that world would ever hire him again." Elias's jaw tightened. "Which means this w

The drive to the outskirts of the city took forty minutes, Chen navigating from memory alone, refusing to explain how he still knew every back road leading toward a prison neither of them was supposed to be able to find without official clearance."You're not actually planning to walk up to the front gate," Chen said, breaking the silence somewhere past the last cluster of streetlights. "Killian. Tell me that's not the plan.""It's not the plan." Killian watched the landscape thin out, trees replacing buildings, the road narrowing until it barely qualified as one. "The warden doesn't take unscheduled visitors. He'll know I'm coming before I'm close enough to see the walls. Which means the only way in is if he decides he wants to see me.""And you think he will.""I think a man who's been orchestrating my entire life since I walked through his gates isn't going to pass up the chance to finally have this conversation face to face." Killian's voice was steady, certain in a way that unset

Killian didn't move toward the gate."You're asking me to trade Jack's life for an answer to a question you're not even sure you want answered." He held Hale's gaze steady. "That's not a partnership offer. That's a hostage negotiation wearing a nicer suit."Something almost like delight crossed Hale's face. "You're not wrong. I've never pretended otherwise. But consider — every relationship of consequence in your life so far has been exactly that, hasn't it? Cassandra traded your freedom for her silence. Chen traded ten years of hiding for the chance to shape you. Even the Order's offer was a hostage negotiation, just a more elegant one. I'm simply the first person honest enough to call it what it is.""Honesty doesn't make it acceptable.""No. But it does make it easier to negotiate with." Hale resumed walking, slower this time, giving Killian room to decide whether to follow. "You have leverage here that you haven't used yet, Mr. Dante. You could walk back to that car, call every jo

Diane's silence went on a beat too long, and in the space of it, Cassandra felt something inside her go cold and very still."Mother." Her voice had lost its edge, replaced by something closer to disbelief clawing its way toward certainty. "Answer me. Is this you?""No." Diane's response came too fast, too clipped, the kind of denial that sounded rehearsed rather than felt. "I would never threaten you, Cassandra, whatever else you think of me.""Then how do you explain the first message? The one from four in the morning, sent from a terminal on my own floor?" Cassandra rose from her desk, phone still gripped in one hand. "You admitted to that one yourself, Mother. Sitting right there in your office, like it was nothing.""That message was mine. I don't deny it." Diane's composure cracked at the edges, something unfamiliar bleeding through — not guilt exactly, but the particular defensiveness of someone who'd been caught doing less than they were being accused of. "This one isn't. I do