2025-08-06 09:59:48The Hollow Bridge job came with no standard playbook. No detailed maps, no recon intel. Just a black envelope, a location, and a time.
Midnight.
That was Fred’s favorite hour—when London blurred between shadow and steel, and even the law moved slower, blinking under the weight of its own fatigue. That night, the city lay drenched in mist and menace. The Thames was a dark vein pulsing beneath the bridge, sluggish and swollen from autumn rains.
Kabri checked the time: 11:52 PM.
He and Jamil sat in a black BMW M3, engine off, parked along a fenced service road fifty meters from Hollow Bridge’s underpass. Their job was simple, according to Fred: clean up the mess left by a failed courier. The guy had apparently flipped mid-run, tried to sell intel to a third party. Fred found out and “corrected” the problem.
Now it was on Kabri and Jamil to erase the trace.
But something already felt off.
Fred was never vague about cleanup. He didn’t do grey areas. He gave names, times, bullets. Tonight, he had only said:
“Burn the corpse. Leave no teeth. Deliver the metal case if it’s still intact. And for God's sake, don’t open it.”
Kabri tapped his foot.
Jamil lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. “You nervous?”
Kabri kept his eyes on the bridge. “When Fred says, ‘don’t open it,’ what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”
“Open it.”
Kabri smirked. “Exactly.”
They stepped out of the car and crossed the wet tarmac silently. Kabri had the Glock, suppressed. Jamil carried a small crowbar and a waterproof duffel bag. They reached the stairwell beneath the bridge—the iron steps rusted, half-swallowed by weeds. The only sound was the occasional hum of tires overhead and the wind kissing the steel beams above.
They moved fast and quiet, like wolves bred for back alleys.
Beneath Hollow Bridge, the underpass sprawled wider than expected. Broken cement pillars stood like gravestones, graffiti bleeding across them like tribal war paint. And there, against the far pillar, slumped a body wrapped in plastic.
Kabri approached first.
Male. Mid-thirties. Shot twice in the chest, once in the throat. Dried blood crusted over a shattered jaw. He was still warm.
“Fresh,” Kabri murmured.
“Too fresh,” Jamil added. “We’re not cleaners. This isn’t our timing.”
Kabri crouched and peeled open the plastic just enough to inspect the corpse. The man’s ID hung from a blood-smeared lanyard.
Name: Ramin Asfour
Alias: Sparrow
Clearance: Internal – Fred’s Circle
Kabri stared at the badge, then back at Jamil. “He was one of Fred’s inside men.”
Jamil frowned. “Then why is he dead?”
They looked around.
No metal case in sight.
“I don’t like this,” Kabri said. “Something stinks.”
Jamil searched the area, flashlight sweeping across concrete and moss. He found a trail of fresh footprints leading behind a broken barricade, where a small steel case sat wedged between bricks.
He knelt.
Clean exterior. Heavy. Double-locked.
Jamil brought it to Kabri.
“He said don’t open it.”
Kabri snorted. “So?”
Jamil placed it on the ground and wedged the crowbar into the seam. “You think he’s testing us?”
“Or setting us up.”
The lid popped open with a hiss of released pressure.
Inside, padded in gray foam, sat two things:
A microdrive.
And a severed thumb.
Both stared up at them like artifacts from a darker world.
Jamil recoiled. “Jesus…”
Kabri looked at the microdrive. It had a red insignia on it—one he hadn’t seen before. A circle within a triangle. Government? Private military? Unknown.
“Not your typical courier drop,” Jamil muttered.
Kabri closed the lid. “We take this straight to Fred. No copies. No detours. No errors.”
But his gut told him they were already too late.
Back in the car, they drove in silence.
The rain had thickened, drumming hard against the windshield.
At 12:43 AM, Fred called.
Kabri answered on speaker.
“Status?” Fred asked, flat and cold.
“Body found. Double-tap execution. We retrieved the case. Intact.”
“Was the drive inside?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Fred said. “Bring it to Dock 17. South Gate. Burn the body and ditch your clothes.”
“Roger that.”
Fred hung up.
No questions.
No curiosity.
And that confirmed it.
Fred knew more than he said.
They reached Dock 17 an hour later. A shipping container site by the docks, shielded from cameras and police routes by paid-off logistics crews. Fred had owned it for years. When they arrived, the gates were already open.
An SUV idled near the edge of the shipping lane.
A man stepped out—face hidden under a beanie, coat collar raised. Kabri recognized him. Lionel. Fred’s “postman.” When something needed disappearing—fast, quiet, forever—Lionel handled it.
He didn’t speak.
Just opened the SUV’s trunk.
Kabri placed the case inside and shut it without a word.
Lionel handed him a burner phone.
Kabri glanced at Jamil. “Why the new device?”
Lionel only said: “Protocol.”
Then drove away.
Later that night, as Kabri burned their clothes in a barrel fire near an abandoned rail yard, he watched Jamil from the corner of his eye. His friend looked distant. Distracted.
“Something’s eating you,” Kabri said.
Jamil stared at the flames. “It’s this whole job, man. You ever feel like Fred’s not cleaning up loose ends, but manufacturing them?”
Kabri raised a brow. “You saying Ramin didn’t flip?”
“I’m saying he might’ve been silenced. Maybe he knew too much.”
Kabri didn’t respond immediately.
Then: “You trust Fred?”
Jamil’s answer came too slow.
“More than most.”
“But not completely.”
“Do you?”
Kabri’s eyes stayed on the fire. “I don’t even trust us.”
Unbeknownst to them, back at Dock 17, Fred stood in a darkened control room inside the main container office. His personal terminal showed a video feed of Kabri and Jamil at Hollow Bridge—recorded via a hidden lens embedded in the underpass.
He watched as they opened the case.
Saw their expressions.
Watched how Kabri’s hands trembled ever so slightly before they closed the lid.
A man stepped in behind Fred.
Yusuf.
“You were right,” Yusuf said. “They opened it.”
Fred didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“And they saw the thumb.”
Yusuf chuckled. “Think they suspect?”
“Jamil might.”
Fred turned, eyes cold. “Keep watching him. But Kabri? He still believes.”
Yusuf poured a drink. “For now.”
Fred reached into his drawer, pulled out a second case.
Identical to the one Kabri had delivered.
He opened it.
No thumb.
No drive.
Just a single note:
“One betrays for gold. The other for truth.”
Fred smiled.
“They just don’t know which is which.”
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Latest Chapter
Chapter 241
The grave was modest.No ornate stone, no flowers, no names.Just two mounds of earth beneath an acacia tree, a flat rock marking the space between them. And beside it, a small wooden box — weathered by sand, protected by silence.Amir brought his daughter here for the first time on her twelfth birthday.She had never met them — the men buried here. She knew of them only as shadows from her father’s stories. But even at twelve, she felt the weight in the air. The silence. The ache.She knelt between the graves and whispered a greeting, as if sensing they were listening.Amir stood a few paces back, arms crossed, heart heavy. He wasn’t sure he could explain everything — not all at once. Not the betrayals. Not the lies. Not the love. But something told him it was time.Not to forget.But to pass it on.“Tell me,” she said quietly, looking at the mound on the right. “Was he the one who hurt people?”Amir nodded slowly.“Yes. But he also tried to save someone.”She turned to the other gra
Chapter 240
The desert swallowed sound.No sirens. No engines. No voices. Only the wind, scraping against forgotten stones like a memory refusing to be buried.Kabri was gone. Jamil too. The last gunshot had echoed across the cliffs like thunder splitting the sky — and then... silence.Weeks passed.Then months.And in time, all the great fires died. The burned-out mansion crumbled under vines in the hills of Portugal. The hideouts turned to dust. The names “Kabri” and “Jamil” passed through intelligence circles as rumors, then as ghost stories, then not at all.What remained?Sand.Wind.And one man standing alone — Amir.Amir had returned to the desert not for closure but because he had nowhere else to go.The grave of two brothers lay under a crooked tree near the ruins of their childhood camp. Unmarked, save for a flat stone and a weathered necklace buried beneath the sand. One bullet had ended a war. The second, a legacy.But the story hadn’t really ended.Amir knew that now.He stood at the
Chapter 239
The memory returned uninvited.A patch of afternoon sun spilled through the tall reeds beside the Wadi River, golden and warm, catching the faces of two boys too young to know what blood meant.Kabri was twelve. Jamil, nine.And for the first time in months, their laughter wasn’t stolen — it was real.No shadows yet.No oaths.No guns.Just two brothers in cut-off shorts, muddy knees, and palms sticky with date syrup, daring each other to jump across a deep ditch carved by the rain.“Last one across is a chicken!” Jamil yelled, already sprinting.Kabri snorted. “You say that every time.”“Because you’re always the chicken!”Kabri launched forward.The air split around them as they leapt.Jamil landed first, barely sticking it, wobbling with arms flailing. Kabri came after — feet thudding hard — then fell flat on his back, breath gone.Jamil doubled over laughing. “You landed like a pregnant goat!”Kabri groaned. “I hope the goat kicks you.”They rolled into the grass, wrestling half-h
Chapter 238
The box sat on the shelf, wrapped in a torn military scarf, untouched for years. Amir had not opened it since the last night he had needed to be a weapon.Inside: a Glock 17, two extra magazines, a suppressor wrapped in cloth, and a folded note in Kabri’s handwriting:“This is not for you. This is for the man you swore never to become.”Amir stared at it now, not as a warrior or a fugitive, but as a man inching toward the edge of something more sacred — peace. A peace he had not earned. But one he might finally allow himself to keep.The years since Kabri and Jamil’s deaths had been spent in cautious rebuilding. No wars. No shadows. Just Noor’s laughter and the scent of bread rising in a sunlit kitchen. A wife who loved without questions. A home without locked rooms.Still, the ghosts remained. Not with knives or voices — but as temptations.Every week he passed a locked drawer.Every month he checked security footage of the perimeter, “just in case.”But today, something in him shift
Chapter 237
The wind whispered through the olive trees behind their home in southern Spain. Amir had built the cottage with his own hands — not as a fortress, not as a hideout, but as a place where nothing needed to be watched. A place where knives weren’t hidden in books, and smiles didn’t have layers.The girl was just five, a shadow of her mother’s jawline and Amir’s wide eyes. She played alone in the sunlit garden, a mess of curls falling over her forehead, fingers stained with juice and dirt and youth. Her name was Noor.And she was humming.The melody was faint, broken, innocent.But Amir froze the moment he heard it.The air left his lungs.It wasn’t a song Noor had ever been taught.It was Evelyn’s lullaby.He stepped outside quietly, watching his daughter draw circles in the dirt with a twig. Her hums rose and fell like a breeze through reeds, her head tilting as if listening to music only she could hear.It was impossible.Amir hadn’t heard the tune since that night in the cabin. Since
Chapter 236
It was the third night after the wedding when Amir finally dreamed again.Not a nightmare. Not the kind with fire, blood, or the endless sound of gunfire. This dream was colder. Quieter. Too still.And the table was long.A grand oak table, polished to a shine, set in the middle of a candlelit hall he didn't recognize—something between a monastery and a memory. Shadows danced on stone walls. Frost crept at the edges of the stained-glass windows. And thirteen chairs lined each side, untouched.Until they came.The first to appear was Kabri.He took the seat at the far end of the table, dressed in black like he always was in Amir’s memories—but not the militant version. Not the fighter. Just a man. A man with tired eyes and fingers still stained with ash. He didn’t speak. Just looked at Amir with a gentle sorrow, and that ever-present weight behind his gaze.Then Evelyn entered.Wearing red.The real Evelyn, or the illusion? He didn’t know anymore. Her face was as he remembered it the
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