Chapter 11: The Corsican Envoy

The rain had cleared by dawn, leaving Manhattan scrubbed in a brittle, cold sunlight. From the penthouse balcony, the city below looked like an oversized chessboard—and for the first time in three years, I was playing as the Queen rather than a pawn.

At nine in the m

Chapter 12: Midnight at Newark

Port Newark at midnight was a graveyard of industrial steel, bathed in the sickly, jaundiced glare of towering sodium floodlights. A thick, freezing fog rolled off the dark, oily waters of the bay, wrapping around the massive shipping cranes like shroud linen. The air

Chapter 13: The Montreal Reckoning

Two days after the failed raid at Port Newark, a silent, heavy snowstorm enveloped the city of Montreal.

High above the freezing streets, in a luxury penthouse suite located in the prestigious Golden Square Mile, Jean-Luc Moreau sat behind a massive desk of poli