The waiter—Leo, a ghost from an underground firefight six months ago whose torn shoulder I had stitched back together without anesthesia—didn’t hesitate when my fingers clamped onto Damian’s sleeve. The silver tray tilted. Sunlight refracting through the crystal champagne flutes splintered into blinding shards across the marble floor.

Marcus stood in front of the main terminal, his posture rigid, barking orders into a headset as three other guards worked the stations.

The heavy steel security doors slid open with a sharp hydraulic hiss.

Marcus looked up, expecting a routine shift report. Instead, his eyes locked onto Damian walking through the threshold—and onto me standing directly at his shoulder, flanked by Miller and four armed enforcers.

Marcus's face drained of color in a fraction of a second. His hand twitched toward the sidearm holstered at his hip.

"Boss," Marcus forced out, his voice tighter than a piano string. "You're up early. Is everything secure from the hotel incident?"

Damian didn't answer immediately. He walked slowly across the polished floor, his heavy boots echoing like funeral bells through the quiet room. He stopped six feet away from the console, his dark eyes fixed entirely on Marcus.

"The hotel was messy, Marcus," Damian said smoothly, his hands resting casually at his sides. "Too many witnesses. Too many variables."

"We're running diagnostics on the security logs now," Marcus stammered, his eyes darting toward the locked exit doors behind us. "We'll find out how Mercer's men breached the perimeter."

"You won't have to look far," Damian replied mildly. "After all, you wrote the access code yourself, didn't you?"

The room went dead silent. The other two guards at the computer stations froze, slowly standing up from their chairs and stepping back, realizing the lethal current charging through the air.

Marcus’s mask slipped. A cold, desperate sneer twisted his mouth.

"You think you're untouchable, Cross," Marcus spat, his hand finally ripping his pistol from its holster. "You built an empire on blood and fear, and you thought nobody would ever cash in the tab!"

Before Marcus could even clear the safety, Damian moved.

It wasn't a gunshot. It was a blur of pure kinetic violence.

Damian closed the six-foot gap in half a heartbeat, slamming his palm upward against the underside of Marcus’s wrist with a sickening crunch. The pistol flew through the air, clattering against a bank of monitors.

Before Marcus could scream, Damian grabbed him by the collar of his tactical shirt, hoisted him completely off his feet, and slammed him chest-first against the heavy glass control console.

Monitors flickered and sparked.

"You were my brother-in-arms for five years, Marcus," Damian whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, suppressed rage. "I gave you loyalty. I gave you power."

"Mercer... Mercer is the future," Marcus choked out, blood pooling at the corner of his mouth as Damian’s grip tightened around his throat. "You're living on borrowed time, Cross. The whole syndicate is turning on you—"

"Let him finish," a calm, chilling voice interrupted from the doorway behind us.

Everyone froze.

Miller’s radio hissed with static. But it wasn't Miller speaking.

A flat, electronic voice echoed through the command center's overhead speakers, patched in from an unknown encrypted frequency.

“Hello, Damian.”

Damian slowly lowered Marcus, keeping him pinned by the throat against the glass, and looked up at the central speaker array.

"Mercer," Damian said, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp growl. "You're a coward hiding behind a speaker."

“Am I?” Mercer’s voice chuckled smoothly through the comms. “Look out your front window, Damian. Or better yet... check the private landing pad on the roof.”

My blood ran cold.

Damian’s eyes snapped toward the secure monitoring feed on screen nine—the live camera feed covering the rooftop helipad.

My breath caught in my throat.

Parked right on the private landing pad was a sleek, black helicopter bearing Mercer’s crest. And stepping out of the cabin, surrounded by half a dozen heavily armed mercenaries holding automatic weapons, was a figure I never expected to see in a million years.

My hands flew to my mouth.