2025-11-06 04:32:29The tavern on Capitol Hill smelled like desperation, cigar ash, and bourbon. Over worn wood, neon beer signs buzzed. Victoria Langford, her silk blouse unbuttoned and one step beyond professional, slid onto a stool. Her red sole flashed warningly as she crossed her legs.
With his Senate badge gleaming and his tie relaxed, Michael Richards sipped whiskey at the end of the counter. Soft in the middle, eyes already hazy, mid-forties.
Victoria's breath warmed his ear as she leaned in close. "Senator, buy a drink for a girl?"
His focus sharpened as he blinked. "Am I acquainted with you?"
"You'll." She gave the bartender a signal. Two things that he is consuming. top shelf.
Michael's eyes shifted to her throat's hollow. "You are not employees."
"Consultant." She clattered her glass on his. "To power."
He took a deep breath. “What sort of consulting?”
"The type that keeps young girls alive." She went down his sleeve with a fingernail. Mira Harrington. Do you recognize this?
He froze his hand on the glass. "Who are you in the hell?"
"A person who is aware that you stole $5 million from Benjamin's war chest." After taking out her phone, she pressed play. The speaker let out his own voice, which had been taped two nights prior and featured slurred numbers and offshore accounts.
Michael went pale. "Switch that off."
Victoria put the phone in her pocket. "First, coordinates. Next, we remove.
He looked about, perspiring. "A safe haven. Anacostia's old textile factory. She's in the basement with Harrison. sedative.
Her lips touched his earlobe as she drew closer. "Well done, boy."
Her slow, deliberate, lipstick-laced, paralytic kiss was poison. Michael's eyes rolled back after widening. His forehead struck the bar as he sagged downward.
Victoria dropped a fifty and wiped her mouth. "Dreams of sweetness."
Entering the alley, she called Alexander. "Textile mill." The basement. Harrison is erratic.
"Copy," he said in a strained voice. "Grayson is on his way."
Forward the file. loyalty was purchased. She sent Michael's confession along. "Either I disappear with the girl, or ten million dollars are wired by dawn."
Alexander's chuckle was cold. “When Mira is in my arms, you will be paid.”
Victoria clicked her heels toward her Jaguar and hung up. Behind her, headlights blazed. One of the black Suburbans screamed to a stop.
With an AR-15 resting on his lap, Grayson leaned out the window. "Climb in. We're running late.
Slipping into the passenger seat, she did so. "Drive."
Tires kissing curbs, the Suburban blasted past red lights. On the wheel, Grayson's knuckles turned white. "Lucy is inside." Verified.
Victoria examined her small, retouched lip color. "She'll sing."
They killed the engine and parked two blocks away from the mill. Broken windows were silvered by moonlight. Grayson gave her goggles for night vision. There are four heat signatures displayed by Thermal. One tiny one. "Basement."
Victoria repositioned the strap. "Harrison?"
"The top floor. smoking while walking the catwalk.
They glided silently across fractured pavement, like shadows. Grayson used bolt cutters to sever the chain link. The mill smelled like machine oil and mold.
With bouncing hips, Victoria ascended the stairs first. With his cigarette blazing, Harrison leaned against the railing.
"Cinder, good evening," she purred.
Startled, he let go of the smoke. "Vick? Benjamin claimed that you had passed away.
"Sorries." Her fingertips followed his collar as she moved closer. "Where is the child?"
Harrison reached for his knife. "Basement. Why?
"Because I'm making money." She caught the knife mid-draw and gave him a hard knee. He felt the sword at his throat. "Keys."
He spewed blood. "Lucy will always be there for you."
Victoria grinned. "Observe me."
Grayson kicked in the basement door downstairs. The wood broke. Lucy Martin whirled, holding a syringe, while Mira lay motionless on a cot.
"Drop it," growled Grayson.
Lucy's gaze flitted. "It's too late. She has been dosed. Her respiration ceases after ten minutes.
With the knife still at Harrison's throat, Victoria went down the stairs. "Antidote."
Manic laughter escaped Lucy's lips. "In my pocket. However, you'll never,
She was interrupted by Grayson's fist. With the syringe sliding, she fell to the ground. He snatched the antidote vial free and zip-tied her wrists.
Mira felt a knot in her chest. The needle was shoved into her thigh by Grayson. The girl's eyes fluttered as she gasped.
Harrison was pushed forward by Victoria. "Open the cage."
He made a mess of the keys. The lock swung. Glock lifted as Tatiana rushed through the side door.
"Where is she?"
Mira was raised by Grayson. "I got her."
Tatiana's knees gave out. She took her daughter and held her in her arms. "Mommy is here, baby."
Harrison sprinted toward the staircase. With a knife to his back, Victoria tripped him. "Are you going somewhere?"
With his mask pulled up and his scar enraged, Alexander emerged in the doorway. "Everyone goes cold."
Lucy cried on the ground. "I once had a son. He was taken by Benjamin. claimed that it was collateral.
Death was Alexander's voice. "Where?"
Encourage the system. Maryland. All I wanted was for him to return.
Tatiana had fire in her eyes. "You bought a ghost with my daughter?"
Lucy shattered her laugh. "All of us are ghosts."
She was yanked up by Grayson. "Now, metro tunnel."
They left with Lucy bleeding from her lip, Harrison zip-tied, and Mira in Tatiana's arms. The Suburban waited.
Alexander got behind the wheel. Harrison and Victoria slid in behind. "Drive."
Mira was rocked by Tatiana. "She is on fire."
Grayson felt her heartbeat. "The antidote is effective. She'll go to sleep.
It buzzed on Victoria's phone. Benjamin: The package is safe. Forward the bonus.
She held out the screen to Alexander.
He tightened his jaw. "Lucy's phone."
Grayson flung it aside. Under his boot, Alexander crushed it.
City lights smeared past as the Suburban rushed toward the tunnel.
With his pistols blazing, Grayson kicked in the safehouse door.
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Chapter 190: Sealed Breath
In the sudden silence, the seed's pulse sounded like a silent thunderclap. It wasn’t a threat. It was true. There was a period at the end of a sentence, but it had rolled under the desk and was just waiting to be picked up. They didn’t speak. They merely stared at the little, black glimmer on the white sand. It was beneath the slide, or where the slide had been, but it was now only a metal curve protruding from the dune that had been washed by the sand. “We could leave it,” Alexander remarked, his voice scratchy. He wrapped a protecting arm around Mira, who was quiet, watching the seed with a child’s somber interest. “Bury it deeper. Forget it’s here.” “It would grow,” Tatiana responded, her own voice weary beyond measure. "In the dark." without anyone to observe it. What kind of story blooms in the dark, alone?” She thought about Benjamin, nurturing his hatred in seclusion. "A perverse one." A spiteful one. Thus, we demolish it. Right now. He took a step toward it, his foot sinki
Chapter 189: Death Fruit
The playground was eerily quiet. There was no longer any wind. The distant sounds of the suburb were gone. On the wood chips, it was just the three of them: Tatiana on her knees, a sobbing seven-year-old Mira clutching to her, and Alexander Harrington's elderly, breathless husk with a jar of his final sigh sitting on his ribcage. The floating orchard was gone. The sky was a neutral, flat blue. The golden swing lay neglected, its chains now dull and inactive. All that existed was this finale. CHAPTER 400. Tatiana stared at the jar. The label was final. Absolute. This was not feasible. It was a receipt. For all the struggles, loops, and love that had unavoidably brought us to this point. To a playground where her spouse died of old age in minutes, his life-force robbed to pay the mortgage of 215 destroyed tragedies. Mira’s small hands clutched her mother’s arm. “Is Daddy sleeping?” The innocent question was a knife. Tatiana said in a cracked voice, "No, sweetheart." “He’s… gone.” I
Chapter 188: Sky Swing
The fruit was a gut-punch of recollection made tangible. Tatiana could hear the ghost of her own cry, feel the slick heat of Alexander's blood through her clothes, and smell the cordite and champagne from the gala. Trapped in that sphere of smoked glass, it was all there, a museum display of her biggest failure. To reach Mira, she would have to fly past it. Its proximity seemed toxic, a psychological radiation that threatened to suck her back into that moment, to make her feel the death that had defined so much of their war. Mira swung, heedless in her enchanted sleep, a trapped princess in a floating necropolis of horrible endings. This is his creation, Tatiana realized, hovering, her twilight wings beating the thin air. In order to trap her among the ruins, he enticed her up here. To remind me of the cost of every victory. Benjamin weaponized their own past since he was no longer able to prevail in a straight fight. She gazed from the Death Fruit to her daughter. A choice. Confr
Chapter 187: Swing Altar
The sight of their daughter, ankle-locked to a golden swing and soaring into the heavens with a puppet’s laugh, broke something in Alexander. The cool, strategic half of him was destroyed, leaving only raw, paternal terror. He yelled, "MIRA!" and lunged for the swing set. However, the swing was no longer fixed to the playground's typical A-frame. The cables stretched skyward, unimaginably long, vanishing into the cloud layer. The actual machinery was someplace in the heavens; the set was really a stand-in. Harrison-13 stood back, his hands in his pockets, gazing with a peaceful, inquisitive look, as if seeing an interesting science experiment. He was no longer the shy boy next door. He served a purpose. A plot device. Tatiana didn’t spend breath on shouts. She stared down at her own body, at the ripped bridal robe. She focused on the region between her shoulder blades, where the storm-cloud wings had erupted. They were gone, but the canal was burnt open. The phantom agony served a
Chapter 186: Priest Smile
The word “granddaughter” hung in the fragrant air of the false cathedral, a spider’s thread of possession. Benjamin’s smile returned, thinner now, harsher. The rebellious bride, Tatiana, was not in his line of sight. His sights were on the prize, the heir. Standing motionless in her maid of honor's gown on Mira-20. Benjamin reiterated, his voice a calming, toxic tune, "The story must go on." We transplant to another branch if one fails to produce fruit. The tree is alive. The orchard endures.” He extended a hand toward Mira. “Come, child. Take your mother’s place at the altar. Accept your legacy. After all, you have a birthright to it. Mira remained still. Her eyes were wide, fixated on Tatiana. She was the seventy-year-old female who had nibbled the apple from Chapter 1. She was aware of the price of legacy. Alexander discovered his voice, a rough rasp of sound. “You don’t touch her.” Benjamin’s gaze flicked to him, amused. “Or what, Alexander? Will you use your naked hands to de
Chapter 185: Gold Wedding
It was triggered by the taste. A circuit was finished when a synapse fired. The rented ranch house, the stormy backyard, the chain-link fence, all of it melted like a watercolor painting in the rain. The sensations from the fruit became reality. The aroma of myrrh and orange flowers permeated the thick, fragrant air of a large, packed room. The sensation of silk became the heavy, structured weight of a wedding gown on her torso. The organ's sound gave way to the grand, soaring sounds of Wagner's "Bridal Chorus." Tatiana blinked. In a vast, gothic church, she stood at the end of a long, red-carpeted aisle. Stained glass windows portraying not saints, but elaborate, abstract patterns of thorns and roses, reflect colored light on the stone floor. Hundreds of guests sat in pews, their faces a jumble of happiness and sorrow. All were dressed in impeccable, formal clothing. She was clutching a bouquet of white roses and black calla lilies. She looked to her left. Alexander stood there
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