The city slid past in streaks of silver and rain.
I sat back against the leather seat, the faint tremor in my hand hidden beneath the folds of my coat. Every breath was a drag against torn muscle — sharp, tallic. The stitches at my side had split sowhere between the elevator and the car, and warm blood soaked through the gauze beneath my shirt. I didn’t ntion it. Pain was information; I’d learned to read it, not fear it.
The SUV made a smooth turn, tires hissing on wet asphalt. The pain in my shoulder pulsed with the rhythm of the road. My vision ghosted for half a second — just enough to remind I was running on fus. I pressed a hand to the spot instinctively, fingers coming away faintly red.
Caron noticed. "Adrien," he said, voice low, "you’re bleeding again."
"I’m aware." I reached for the bottle of water beside , twisting the cap open. "Did you call Kassel, for updates?"
"She insists you should be on IV antibiotics and in bed." He shifted his weight; one leg still pulled up against his jean from the wound. The pain hadn’t erased his loose mouth.
I took a drink, cold water cutting through the tallic taste in my mouth. "Then she’s wasting her breath."
"Adrien—"
"I said I’m fine."
The tone silenced him.
Outside, the skyline opened — Tower in the distance, tall and unyielding against the storm. My building. My lab.
Silence stretched between us for a few minutes — the sound of the rain, the hum of the engine, the faint static from the comms. My body ached with every turn of the car, but my mind was too sharp to rest.
The car slowed as we approached the underground garage. I pressed a hand against my ribs and forced myself upright. Each movent felt like dragging knives through flesh, but I didn’t flinch. I wouldn’t give pain that victory.
That reminds — in that article, there was a photo. The one from when I’d forced—no, begged—Isabella into that contract relationship. How was that still even in existence? And who could have found it? This is really stressing out.
"Gray," I said, my voice steady but thin, "I want surveillance reinstated on every employee working at Vantage and Cole who might have ever had access to enter my office apart from Isabella and I. Anyone who touched the door, even once. If they’re clean, good. If not—"
"They disappear," he finished.
The SUV rolled to a stop. Rain hamred the roof. For a long mont, I didn’t move. Just sat there, breathing through the weight pressing against my chest.
Caron turned toward . "Adrien. You need to rest before anything. You’re—"
"Bleeding again?" I cut in, a faint, humorless smile ghosting my lips. "That’s temporary."
I reached for the door handle. The tal was cold against my palm. "Losing control of all of this isn’t sothing I can afford."
The door opened, the storm slapping against like punishnt. I stepped out into it anyway, the rain soaking through the blood, the pain, and everything else I refused to feel.
Because there was only one thing left to do.
Hunt.
*****
The elevator doors hissed open to a floor that looked nothing like the rest of the tower.
This lab, nestled beneath a nondescript skyscraper I owned outright, was a hive of controlled chaos. Rows of analysts, their faces illuminated by the glow of multiple monitors, hunched over keyboards, fingers flying. Holographic displays shimred in the air, projecting data streams, network topologies, and cryptic lines of code. The air humd with the soft whir of servers and the quiet, intense murmur of commands.
I can feel everything: the seam of the gauze digging into my ribs, the dull throb where the bullet grazed my abdon, the raw dragging in my back where shrapnel kissed the skin. I move slower than I used to, but I still move.
"Sir," soone said. The word pulled the room into imdiate lines as dozens of analysts and engineers snapped upright.
"Report," I said, voice quiet but cutting through the hum of servers.
One of them turned from a cluster of screens. "We scrubbed the leak from public mirrors. All posts, all mirrors, all bot accounts ── deleted. We’re tracing the original uploaders — they’re good, but not us good."
"And the trafficking lead?" gray asked, already crossing to the center console.
Caron rolled beside , tablet in hand.
"Interpol sync is up. The explosion route from two nights ago — the convoy, the Southbridge detour, the insurance manifests — it’s linked to the sa encrypted pipeline."
"Okay." I took the antietic Kassel had handed at the hospital before leaving, the pill sliding dry down my throat. The room spun a degree; I settled into a chair at the main console. There was no ti for weakness.
A few minutes later.
"We’ve got sothing, Boss," Gray said, swiping a hand across the screen in front of him, isolating a particular data cluster. "The encryption on the leak source was designed to misdirect, but we finally broke through the tertiary firewall. It led us to a dead drop – a series of unsent draft emails on an untraceable darknet server. But it’s not data. It’s.... like words in different language? On each of the four proxies."
He projected them onto the main screen: 방법 — μόνο — te— קיידן
"See?" Gray gestured, frustration clear in his tone. "Random words from different languages. We’ve run it through every cryptographic algorithm we have, every known cipher. It just looks like random garbled nonsense."
Caron frowned. "Could be a system designation, or—" He paused trying to understand what he was looking at.
I stared at the words, the headache tightening around my skull like a vise. The fluorescent lights of the lab suddenly felt too bright, too loud. My hand instinctively clenched the cold tal armrest of the control chair.
The tech team murmured, trying different permutations, cross-referencing against known patterns. I leaned closer, my gaze tracing the sequence, feeling the subtle current of insight spark.
"Let see," I murmured, reaching out and tapping the screen. My touch isolated the characters of the first word. 방법.
"It’s not random," I murmured.
Gray looked at sharply. "Boss?"
"It’s not a code."
I exhaled, slow, and lethal.
"It’s a sentence."
My reflection in the glass was barely human. Hollow eyes. Cold expression.
"The first is Korean, bang-beop... "I announced. "It ans ’thod’ or ’way.’"
"The second is Greek, móno..." I paused. "It translates to ’Only’."
A second voice, hesitant, followed. "The third... Maori, te, it ans ’the’—but not just ’the’," the voice continued, softer now, like a whisper caught between static and breath. It was Lena, one of the junior linguists, standing at the edge of the cluster with her tablet clutched tight. She hadn’t been there a mont ago.
All eyes turned to her.
She swallowed. "In Maori, te is a definite article, but in poetic or ritual use... it can imply the only, the chosen, or the one that must be. It’s... it’s not just grammar. It’s weight. Intent."
I held her gaze, my pulse a slow drum beneath the fever and the blood loss.
"And the last," I said, voice low, ". Hebrew. Kayden."
"Translated it reads: ’thod — only — the — Kayden.’ Or more naturally: ’Caden. The. Only. Way’"
Caron’s curse broke the silence. "That sick motherfucker."
The air shifted. Everyone in the room froze, their eyes darting between each other, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
"Whose team was assigned to keep eyes on him?" I asked, my voice calm—too calm.
Gray’s throat bobbed. "Team Zero, sir." he says. "Assigned when boss wife nearly.... they’ve been shadowing Caden since then."
"Call them."
He obeyed instantly. The line crackled through the lab’s speakers. A field agent’s voice ca through—slightly distorted, wind howling in the background.
"Team Zero, status report," Gray commanded.
A pause, then:
"Target—Caden Walton—is currently inside the Walton vacation estate in Country X. Periter secure. He’s been here three days. No movent beyond the grounds."
"Pin him," I said. "Visual confirmation, now."
For a handful of seconds there was nothing but the sound of soone breathing too fast. Then the field operator’s voice returned, smaller: "It’s not him."
"What do you an ’not him’?" Caron barked.
"It’s— it’s a decoy. A humanoid model, heat signature is fake. He’s gone!"
Silence snaps around the announcent. I taste copper. "A robot."
"Not just a robot," one of the analysts says, pulling up scopes. "A transmitter. It’s been pushing teletry back through the exact encrypted pipeline we saw in the trafficking manifests."
"That ans he knows we’re watching." Caron’s jaw is hard. "He’s staging a show."
"No," I said. The word was a wire pulled taut. "He’s telling he can be anyone, anywhere. He’s showing how small my assumptions are."
I run through the tiline in my head while Gray queues more scans. We have two hours left until the board eting.
"Team Zero—what’s your ETA on direct confirmation?" Gray asks into the mic.
Another pause, panic threading the voice. "There’s movent near the north enclosure—unidentified package. Wait—" A shout cuts across the feed: "It’s a bomb — run!"
The call died with a wet, hollow cut.
"Locate him."
Gray typed furiously. "Pinging last cross-signal... got it. Secondary location—industrial compound, 40 kiloters east of the capital."
My mouth goes dry. The room moves into rapid choreography: hands on keyboards, eyes on heat maps, and the lab becoming a hive of motion.
"dia scrub?" I ask.
"Complete," Caron says. "All major mirrors purged. We’ll keep it down, but we need to move fast. Damage control is contained for public perception — for now."
"Dirt on the board?"
A junior ops snaps a set of files into the scanner. "Sixteen packets, compiled. Everything from offshore holdings to emails, pressuring mos, past affairs flagged and authenticated. We printed them. Sixteen hard copies — so no one can claim a wipe later."
My breath shortens in my chest. Printed copies: physical proof. I nod. "Good. Cam, take ten n and go to the headquarters, et with the legal team. Bring those sixteen copies. Sit on them and do not open your mouth until I say. The board eting starts in two hours."
Caron ets my eyes. "You sure you don’t want to tag along with you?"
I smiled, halfly. "Don’t be a child. Take the packets and hold them like a loaded gun. Seal the room. If the board makes a move, you execute. If anything cos up — you bury them."
He nods. "We’ll hold them. Be safe."
"Gray."
"Yes, boss."
"You’re with ."
His jaw sets. "Always.
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