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Nathan sounded stressed, like he was reading from something he didn’t understand. “It’s not about sales or quality. It’s not about the usual reasons.” He lowered his voice. “It looks like a higher influence. Something above normal business.”

Yvonne’s mouth went dry. “Higher influence?” she echoed. “Name it.”

“I can’t,” Nathan replied. “I don’t have a name, ma’am. I only know what the system says.” He took a breath, then his next words hit harder. “Also… there’s a bounty on you.”

Margaret’s hand
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  • THE SPY IN THE PALACE

    Ethan’s words landed harder than the gun in his hand.“Before I walked through those doors,” he said, his eyes fixed on Darius, “someone warned me.”Ethan let the silence breathe after that sentence. He wanted the weight of it to settle on everyone in the room. The truth often hurt more when it arrived slowly, and right now he could see the first cracks appearing in Darius’s confidence.The room seemed to shrink around that sentence. Even the attendants against the wall seemed afraid to breathe too loudly. The quiet felt unnatural, like the moment before thunder breaks a storm. Everyone understood that the conversation had crossed the point where it could ever return to diplomacy.Darius stared at him, still half-bent from shock, while Colonel Markus Vale stood stiff under Captain Lorne’s gun. The female attendant kept both confiscated weapons in her hands, aiming them at both colonel Vale and General Darius with the confidence of someone who had stopped pretending to be harmless.

  • THE DEAD LOYALIST

    Darius’s voice cracked in a way no one in that room had heard before.“No,” he said again, staring at the body on the floor. “No… it can’t be.”The polished negotiation room no longer looked like a place for politics. It looked like a killing ground dressed in expensive wood and state flags. Brigadier General Rhael Dane lay twisted on the floor beside the table, his face was drained of life, his hand still half-curled as if his body had died before it understood it was finished.Darius moved first.He stumbled around the fallen chair and dropped to his knees beside Rhael with none of the care or pride he had shown minutes earlier. His hands shook as he grabbed the brigadier by the shoulders and turned him slightly.“Rhael!” he shouted. “Rhael, answer me!”The dead man’s head rolled weakly to one side.Darius slapped his cheek once. Then harder.“There must be something I can do!” Darius said, with panic pushing into his voice now. “Talk to me! Rhael!”Colonel Markus Vale had gone pa

  • THE POISON CHOSE THE WRONG MAN

    Poison rarely needed permission to announce its presence.Still nothing happened.The silence grew uncomfortable. Even the soft hum of the room’s ventilation seemed louder than before, as if the building itself was waiting for something terrible to reveal itself.Ethan went on, voice steady. “You came into this room thinking you were negotiating from a throne. You are not. What happened at Linbourgh changed that.”Darius did not react to the words. He only watched.Still nothing.Seconds stretched.Then a full minute.A full minute was far longer than most fast poisons required. The delay pressed against Darius’s confidence, slowly turning certainty into a quiet, creeping doubt.Ethan’s posture remained relaxed. His breathing remained even. His hand did not move toward his stomach. His face did not lose color.Darius felt a thread of unease slide into his chest.For the first time since the toast, the thought crossed his mind that something might have gone wrong. He pushed the idea aw

  • A TOAST TO PEACE... AND DEATH

    Colonel Markus Vale returned with the attendants, and the room seemed to tighten around the silver tray in their hands.Five empty wine glasses rested on it, clear and polished enough to catch the light like sharpened crystal. Beside them sat a dark bottle of imported wine, the label was foreign and expensive. Nothing about it looked dangerous. That was what made it dangerous.In rooms like this, danger rarely announced itself loudly. It arrived quietly, hidden inside courtesy, inside protocol, inside the small rituals powerful men used to pretend their conflicts were civilized.Vale stopped beside the service area and gave the attendants a short nod. “Serve.”The female attendants moved with quiet precision. Their movements were almost rehearsed, years of service had trained them to become invisible during moments like this. Their task was simple—pour, serve, withdraw. They were never meant to notice the politics unfolding around them.One placed the glasses down. Another uncorked

  • THE MOST EXPENSIVE DEMANDS IN VERDANIS

    His anger rose fast, then disappeared under control. Rhael noticed it. So did Ethan. So did Lorne.Years of command training forced the anger back down before it could fully surface. A head of state could not afford open irritation in front of an opponent. Especially not an opponent who was watching every expression with quiet patience.Darius exhaled once and forced his expression back into something composed. “Okay,” he said. “Since that is what you asked for, I will give it to you. Negotiations it is.”He leaned back slightly, as if settling into state business now instead of personal resentment.“Despite what happened at Linbourgh,” he said, “despite the fact that your company building was left untouched and your five million pounds of uranium remained in your possession after certain bad eggs inside the Herold military were exposed, I am still the leader of Verdanis.”His eyes hardened. “And I still have an interest in your uranium resources. Along with certain privileges I fin

  • THE MEETING OF ENEMIES

    The phone ringing at that exact moment felt wrong.Ethan stopped in front of the double doors and pulled the device from his pocket. The screen showed a private number. Captain Lorne noticed the brief shift in his expression, but Ethan’s face settled again almost immediately.He answered in a flat, controlled voice. “Hello.”The woman on the line spoke quickly. Ethan did not interrupt her at first. He only listened, his gaze drifting once to the state guards outside the doors, then to the government aide waiting nearby. Nothing in his posture changed. Nothing in his face gave away the weight of the call.After a few seconds, he spoke again. “A problem with who?”Ethan had learned long ago that the most dangerous information was the kind that arrived at the worst possible moment. A careless reaction could expose more than the warning itself. So he listened quietly, letting the silence shield whatever calculations were already forming in his mind.Captain Lorne’s eyes narrowed slight

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