A cascade of green text scrolled rapidly across the laptop screen, followed by a series of high-resolution spreadsheets, banking documents, and PDF scans bursting into view.

"We're in," Victor breathed, leaning forward and resting his hands on the table on either side of the laptop.

Clara let ou

The drive to the Navy Yards was suffocatingly quiet, wrapped in the kind of heavy, electric tension that precedes a lightning strike.

Clara sat in the back of Victor’s armored SUV, watching the blurred city lights reflect in the rain-slicked window. The skyline of Manhattan—the very empire her gra

Julian stopped dead in his tracks. His smug smile faltered for a fraction of a second, his eyes darting from Clara’s cold, unblinking gaze down to the matte-black muzzle of the gun pointed at his sternum.

Then, incredibly, he laughed.

It was that same patronizing, breathy chuckle he always used