"He wasn’t lying," Tye said as he flipped through a stack of glossy photographs spread across the mahogany desk. "This is an autopsy of our entire security grid."
We were in Axel’s study; the heavy door was locked and soundproofed against the rest of the penthouse.
The birthday cake downstairs was still half-eaten, the wrapping paper from the boys still on the floor, but the festive mood had been suffocated the mont Daniel dropped that manila envelope and left.
Now, the room felt like a war room.
"Show ," Axel commanded, leaning against the edge of the desk, his arms crossed over his chest.
Tye slid a photograph across the desk.
I reached out and picked it up. My breath hitched in my throat.
It was a photo of me. I was asleep in our bedroom. The angle was high, taken from outside, likely from a drone hovering silently near the terrace. The date stamp was from three days ago.
"He could have taken the shot," Axel said, his jaw tightening until a muscle feathered in his cheek. "He didn’t want a kill. He wanted us to know we live in a glass house."
"There’s more," Tye said, tapping a thick sheaf of blueprints. "Schematics of the panic room. Patrol routes of the night guard. He even has the frequency codes for our encrypted radios. That’s how he knew about the Hamptons. He wasn’t tracking your phone, Layla; he was listening to the radio chatter between my men."
I felt sick. "So everything we did, every precaution, he saw it?"
"He saw it," Axel confird. "He’s been playing with us."
"But he got cocky," Tye said with a predatory grin finally breaking through his grim expression. He reached into the envelope and pulled out a small, silver USB drive. "Because while Charles was busy watching us, he forgot to watch the person holding his books."
Tye held the drive up to the light.
"Daniel says this is the key to the kingdom. Bank routing numbers, shell company ledgers, and the IP address for the ’Ghost Server’ Charles uses to communicate with his contractors. If this is real, we don’t just see Charles, we own him."
Tye turned toward his laptop, reaching to plug the drive into the port.
"Stop," I said sharply.
Tye froze, the tal tip of the USB hovering an inch from the computer. He looked up at , surprised by the harshness in my voice.
"Don’t plug that in," I said, stepping forward.
"Layla, if this contains the server keys..." Tye started.
"How sure are we that Daniel isn’t playing us?" I cut in, looking from Tye to Axel. "How do we know this isn’t a trap?"
"He looked pretty desperate in the hallway," Axel noted, though his eyes were calculating.
"He looked desperate when he ca to months ago, too," I reminded him. "He played the ’sorry ex’ card then, and what did he do? He acted as a delivery boy for Cassandra and handed a gift that turned out to be a Trojan. Who’s to say he isn’t doing it again? Who’s to say Charles didn’t send him here with a USB drive loaded with malware to crash our systems the mont we plug it in?"
The room went silent.
Axel looked at with a flicker of impressed pride in his eyes. He pushed off the desk and nodded.
"She’s right," Axel said. "Daniel is a rat. And rats don’t change their spots; they just change ships. If that drive is infected, it could fry our firewall and open the front door for Charles’s hackers."
Tye pulled his hand back as if the drive were hot. "You’re right. I got excited about the payload. Amateur mistake."
"Isolate it," Axel ordered.
"Way ahead of you," Tye said. "I’m booting up a virtual machine," Tye explained, typing rapidly. "It creates a fake operating system within the computer. If there’s a virus on the drive, it’ll attack the fake system, and we can just delete it without it ever touching our real data."
I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as Tye inserted the silver drive.
The screen flickered. A command prompt opened.
Scanning external storage...
The progress bar crawled across the screen. 10%... 40%... 80%.
"Co on," Tye muttered. "Show me the dirt."
Scan Complete. No Threats Detected.
Tye let out a long breath. "It’s clean. No malware. No trackers. No executable files designed to auto-run."
"Open the folders," Axel said, moving to stand behind Tye’s chair.
Tye clicked the file nad PROJECT ECLIPSE.
Docunts flooded the screen.
"Holy..." Tye trailed off.
"What?" I asked, moving closer.
"It’s not just the Hamptons," Tye said, scrolling down. "Daniel didn’t just give us the security intel. He gave us the payroll. Look at this."
He pointed to a spreadsheet.
"Charles isn’t paying his rcenaries with cash. He’s using a crypto-exchange routed through a server in... New County." Tye cross-referenced it with a map file. "A warehouse district. Unit 4B."
"Is that where he is?" I asked.
"No," Axel said, his eyes scanning the file nas. "Charles is too smart to sleep where he keeps the money. But that server? That’s his brain. That’s how he hires the hitn, how he leaks the data, how he contacts the Board."
"If we have the key," Tye said, typing rapidly again, "we can do more than just look. We can intercept."
"Explain," Axel said.
"We can patch into the comms," Tye said, looking up with a wicked grin. "We can see his orders before his n do. We can redirect his funds. We can cancel his contracts."
I looked at the ss on the desk. The picture of sleeping felt less like a threat now and more like a mistake on Charles’s part. He had focused so much on terrorising us that he hadn’t noticed his own foundation crumbling.
"He thinks he’s the puppet master," I said as a slow realisation dawned on . "But Daniel just handed us the scissors."
"So," Axel said, walking over to the window and looking out at the city skyline. "He wants to play a ga of surveillance? Let’s play."
He turned back to Tye.
"Upload the data to our secondary mainfra now that it’s verified. Patch us into his network. I want to know what he’s eating for lunch. I want to know who he’s emailing. And I want a team ready to move on that New County warehouse."
"On it," Tye said, closing the laptop and grabbing the drive. "Happy birthday, Layla. Looks like you got a present after all."
Tye hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
I stood there, looking at the shredder where I had destroyed the photo of myself.
"Are you okay?" Axel asked, walking over to .
"I don’t know," I admitted. "Daniel, he looked awful."
"Guilt does that to a man," Axel said dismissively. "Or fear. He knows Charles will kill him if he finds out he defected."
"He risked his life to bring this here," I said. "Why? He hates us. He hates you."
"He hates Charles more," Axel corrected. He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "Or maybe he finally realised which side was going to win."
I looked up at him. "And we are going to win, aren’t we?"
Axel looked at the table where the rest of the photos lay.
"With this intel? The war just turned, Layla. We aren’t hiding anymore. We’re hunting."
"Good," I said, the fear in my chest hardening into resolve. "Because I’m tired of being the bait."
Axel smirked, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "Then let’s go down and dig into the rest of your cake."
"Wait," I said, grabbing his hand. "One more thing."
Axel paused. "What?"
"If we intercept his communications, that ans we can send ssages too, right?"
Axel’s smirk widened into a wolfish grin. "Yes. We can."
"Then I think," I said, "it’s ti we sent Charles a little gift of our own."
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