2025-05-21 04:35:50
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243. Peace
The road curved like a slow exhale through the hills, winding past sleepy farms and sun-drenched meadows. It had been hours since they left the city, and Van couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen so much uninterrupted sky.The car hummed along peacefully. Ivy sat beside him, shoes off, one foot tucked under her leg, watching the landscape drift past like it was a moving painting. In the backseat, the twins were asleep, heads leaning together, a pair of sticky juice boxes clutched in their hands. The patched-up bear with the eye patch rested in one twin’s lap like a guardian.Van didn’t want to jinx it, but: it was quiet. The good kind.“No traffic, no headlines, no phone calls,” Ivy murmured, eyes still on the view. “Are we sure this isn’t a dream?”Van glanced at her, a soft smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “If it is, don’t wake me.”★★★The cottage was nestled at the edge of a small lakeside town, tucked behind a row of whispering pines and wrapped in weathered stone. I
242. The Preparation
The next morning, Van stood in the walk-in closet, frowning at a suitcase that somehow already looked overstuffed.“Are we moving to another country?” he asked, holding up a silk scarf with confusion.Ivy, sitting on the bed with her laptop, laughed. “That scarf is for the beach. Or a windy mountain top. Or just to look cute. Do you really want to be caught unprepared again?”Van held the scarf up like it had personally offended him. “I’ve survived armed raids and smear campaigns. I think I can handle a vacation without resorting to silk accessories.”“You say that now,” Ivy said, tapping away on her laptop. “But the moment we land and there’s a breeze, you’ll be begging me for it.”He rolled his eyes but gently folded the scarf and placed it back. The closet was cluttered with clothes they hadn’t touched in months — a visual map of everything they’d been through. Dust on tuxedos. Sand was still trapped in a pair of Ivy’s wedges from the day she had to run with the twins from armed me
241. Peace
The scent of roasted chicken and saffron rice hung gently in the air, winding through the halls like a memory too good to be true.Van stood at the doorway of the dining room, frozen for a moment. Not out of fear — not this time — but out of wonder. Ivy was laughing softly as she set plates on the long oak table. The twins were running circles around Boyd, who had spilled a glass of juice and was pretending to faint dramatically. Dan, true to form, was balancing three wine glasses in one hand and a stack of napkins in the other like it was some kind of circus act. And at the head of the table sat Van’s mother, serene and unbothered, watching it all unfold with the quiet poise of a queen who’d seen her kingdom fall and rise again.Van inhaled, deep and grateful.“I still can't believe you're all here,” he murmured, stepping up behind Ivy.She turned to him, her eyes suddenly glassy with emotion. “Every day I was scared. Scared I'd get a call... or worse, that I'd hear about you on th
240. Finish What Was Started
The night was unusually silent.Not the silence of peace — but of breath being held. A world reeling from the weight of revelation, unsure whether to grieve, rage, or rebuild.Van sat alone now.No screens. No headlines. Just a notebook, And a name.Moses Wilson.They had all thought Moses was just a footnote in Bianca’s saga. A crooked politician with a broken marriage and a buried past.But the files said otherwise.He wasn’t just complicit. He was engineered into the machine.While Barron pulled strings in shadows, Moses built the facade — legitimacy, funding, diplomacy. He made evil look respectable. Necessary. Patriotic.And worst of all?He survived.“Why didn’t we see it?” Dan whispered, scrolling through new data.“Because we were looking for a monster,” Rita answered. “And Moses knew how to smile like a savior.”They traced his last confirmed location to an old diplomatic outpost repurposed as a wellness center in Kigali.An underground fortress, hidden behind the mask of pea
239. Torchlight
The building didn’t have a name. No signage, no records, no address in any public system.Just a black tower wrapped in mirrored glass, hidden in the sprawl of Victoria estate like a cancer cell pretending to be clean.They called it Torchlight.... And it was the beginning of everything.Van sat in the back of a stolen SUV, staring up at it. He wore a maintenance uniform. ID forged. Eyes steady. Heart cold.Dan was on comms. Rita stayed in the field car two blocks away, satellite scans rolling across her screen.There was no backup. No police and no press.Just a man with nothing left to lose — and a mission that couldn’t wait another day.“Security’s lighter than I expected,” Dan murmured.“Which means,” Rita replied, “they’re watching another way.”Van stepped out, fastened his gloves, and walked straight through the side entrance. The guard barely looked up.He moved like he belonged. That was the trick.Inside, the silence was sterile. No echoes, no chatter. Just carpeted wealth a
238. A Firestorm
The city held its breath.Smoke rose from newsrooms and safe houses. Unmarked vans snatched voices from sidewalks. Bloggers disappeared mid-stream. Phones rang, then never rang again.Barron wasn’t hiding anymore.He was hunting.Van and his team had relocated to an underground parking garage — no lights, no signals. Just cold concrete and old shadows.Boyd paced with a limp, pistol in hand.Dan typed furiously, bouncing IP addresses and rerouting backup servers. Rita was on her phone, trying to confirm who was still alive.Van sat silent, staring at the wall. Listening. Thinking.“Two more allies are gone,” Rita said. “One in Westview. The other is on the island. Both executed.”Dan muttered, “They’ve activated the Tier Five Protocol.”Van’s eyes shifted.“That’s black-bag level,” Boyd said. “I thought that was a myth.”“It’s real,” Van said. “It means they’ll burn the whole city before they let us win.”Suddenly, Rita’s phone buzzed. Blocked number.She answered — speaker on.A dist
237. The Broadcast
Van didn’t speak for a long time.He just stared at the photograph, the edges frayed from age, the faces too familiar. Barron in his early thirties, standing beside another man in a charcoal suit, his hand resting on a briefcase.The man was smiling.Van’s father.Van didn't know much about his father but from what he remembered, he was a well respected person in society. Now this photo was telling another story.“Tell me this is fake,” Van said, voice low, eyes locked on Raúl.Raúl looked older in the Vault’s flickering light. Tired.“I can’t.”“Then tell me why.”Raúl gestured to the files scattered around them. “Because your father helped build it. The machine. The system. He wasn’t just in it—he was one of the architects.”Rita sat down slowly, mouth parted in disbelief.“But why would she hide this?” she asked. “Bianca loved Van. She wanted him to clear his name.”Raúl nodded. “And that’s why she buried this folder behind every wall she could build. Because if it got out… no one
236. The Vault
Rain lashed the windshield like claws. Van’s eyes never left the gravel road as the SUV bumped its way into the dense woods outside town. Beside him, Rita clutched the folder of Bianca’s final instructions — hand-written, buried deep inside one of the tapes. A location and the coordinates and it only had one word: Vault. They’d left Boyd behind, still recovering. Dan stayed in the city to coordinate legal teams and media fire. Moses’ arrest had cracked Barron’s shell, but it wasn’t enough to destroy him. The Vault… this could be. At the end of the muddy path stood an old caretaker’s house — forgotten, overgrown. A tall fence covered in rusted thorns circled the structure. Bianca had been thorough. Too thorough for someone with nothing to hide. Van stepped out first, gun drawn. Rita followed, flashlight shaking in her grip. Inside, the air smelled of mold and cold iron. The house was empty — save for a steel door in the floor, half-concealed beneath a rotting carpet. Rita k
235. Moses
The hotel suite was silent except for the low hum of jazz from the sound system. Moses Wilson sipped his scotch with slow deliberation, staring out at the midnight skyline. Lagos never slept. Neither did his paranoia.Behind him, a shadow shifted. Barron’s man. Silent. Suited. Soulless.“Is it done?” Moses asked, still looking out the window.The man replied with a clipped nod. “The ambush failed. Van escaped.”Moses exhaled hard through his nose. “Then what the hell are you standing here for?”The man didn’t flinch. “He has the tapes. The girl delivered them.”Moses spun around. “What tapes?”“Bianca’s.”Moses froze.That name still hit like a blade between the ribs.The past — the lies, the betrayal, the fear.She was supposed to be buried.He set the glass down, slower than necessary. “She promised me… she swore she destroyed them.”The man shrugged. “She lied. Van’s seen them. And now he knows about you.”Moses walked slowly to the liquor cart, but his hand trembled as he reached
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