Chapter 41: Crossfire in the Canopy"Look at the perimeter wall, Max," Arabella hissed, her grip tightening on his forearm until the bone ached. She jerked her chin toward the tall, iron-spiked fence bordering the rear service alley. Two more silhouetted figures had just dropped silently over the brickwork, landing with the practiced, light-footed roll of trained operatives. "They didn't just come to knock on the front door. They boxed us in before the car engine even died."Max cursed under his breath, dropping his weight into a defensive crouch beside the heavy mahogany doorframe. "So it's a pincer movement. How did they find us this fast? Menteng is supposed to be a ghost sector for anyone outside the old diplomatic corps.""A ghost sector only works if you aren't leaking digital exhaust," Arabella snapped back, her eyes darting between the front entryway and the dark hallway leading to the kitchen. She racked the slide of her suppressed automatic, chambering a round with a sharp,

Chapter 43: The Mask of the Dead Man"Are you seriously accusing me of leaking my own location?" Max whispered, his voice sharp enough to cut glass as he tracked the slow, deliberate turn of the brass doorknob on the kitchen door. "I’m the one currently classified by Interpol and Lucius’s board as a rotting corpse at the bottom of the Tandjung Priok harbor. Why would I invite an execution squad to tea?""Panic makes brilliant men stupid," Arabella hissed back, not an inch of her attention wavering from the creeping shadow beneath the doorframe. "You wanted to check your bank accounts, Max. You wanted to know if your empire was completely gone. Greed or desperation—take your pick, but one of them made you slip.""I used a secure proxy," Max ground out, his knuckles whitening around the grip of his pistol. "The hardware was clean. If there’s a leak, it’s not from my end. And right now, arguing about who screwed up the OpSec won't stop those Cleaners from turning us into Swiss cheese."T

Chapter 45: Shadows in the Ballroom"The back exit is blowing in the wind," Arabella said, stepping over the twitching Cleaner without a glance and shoving the kitchen door wider with her boot. "Which means they came in pairs. Minimum. If one team was breaching the front, the other was covering the escape route."Max didn’t hesitate. He rushed to the rear window, peering into the overgrown Menteng garden where hibiscus bushes cast jagged shadows under the amber glow of distant streetlamps. "No footprints on the gravel. They used the service lane behind the wall. They knew the layout of this estate better than the last owner did.""Which brings us right back to my original hypothesis," Arabella muttered, checking the magazine of her pistol with a practiced flick of her thumb. "Someone gave them the floor plan. And unless the ghosts of Menteng are moonlighting for Lucius, it’s someone who knew we were moving here today.""I told you, my operational security was airtight," Max snapped, h

Chapter 47: The Auctioneer’s Shadow"Which circles us right back to the glaring hole in our defenses," Arabella murmured, sliding the fresh magazine into her sidearm with a sharp click that sounded like a hammer blow in the quiet kitchen. "We have a leak, Max. A fresh one. And it’s bleeding us dry before we even draw our first real breath in this city."Max didn’t blink. His mind raced past the immediate threat of the dead Cleaner on the Persian rug, past the smell of cordite lingering in the humid Menteng air, straight to the core of the problem. "Orion," he said, the name tasting like ash on his tongue. "The mole from Act II. I thought we burned his network down to the foundations when we hit the Old Town data drop.""Networks don't burn, Max. They mutate," Arabella shot back, stepping over the threshold into the overgrown garden. She crouched low behind a concrete planter, her eyes scanning the shadows. "And if Orion is still feeding Lucius our location, then every safehouse we tou

Chapter 49: The Menteng Trap"Flattering, really," Arabella muttered, her lips curling into a cold, predatory smile. "Let’s give him a corpse he can actually bury.""Don't get romantic," Max whispered, ducking as another suppressed round chipped the stone rim of the garden fountain, spraying white dust across his dark jacket. "Orion isn't here for a firefight. He’s an auditor with a gun, not a field operative. If he’s risking his neck in person, it means Lucius’s board is fracturing. The numbers aren't balancing, and Orion’s masters want proof of life—or rather, proof of death—before they cut off the corporate liquidity completely.""Then let's stop talking about corporate governance and start returning fire," Arabella snapped, her elbow braced against the mossy top of the low wall. She didn't wait for his permission. Two crisp cracks echoed from her sidearm, the sound tearing through the humid Jakarta night, followed immediately by a heavy, wet thud on the asphalt of the service alle