The glow of the laptop screen flickered softly in the dark, illuminating the deep furrow between my brows. My fingers paused midair over the keyboard as my eyes tracked the pings on the map."Multiple locations...?" I murmured under my breath, dragging the cursor slowly across the highlighted dots, "No, no, no..." My voice cracked, my chest tightening with every passing second.This wasn’t right.Giada never allowed her GPS to multi-ping unless she thought someone was following her. And she would always text me if something was off. My throat dried instantly. My body stiffened, my palms beginning to sweat. A cold shiver danced down my spine, and I leaned back, blinking rapidly as if the action would somehow reconfigure the chaos in front of me.“Damn it, Giada. What happened?” My voice trembled.I forced my focus and searched the network for possible third-party intrusion. Nothing. No signs of external tracking.Which meant...She triggered this herself.And that only confirmed
The smooth hum of the laptop fan filled the quiet of the room, but my focus wasn’t on the ambient noise. I sat still, hunched slightly forward, with the VR set clasped over my eyes, immersing me in the final pre-launch review of the cyber weapon prototype. Every component, every thread of code unfolded before me, alive, responsive. I twisted my wrist and the satellite's internal frame rotated mid-air in the virtual space, the HUD interface pulling open the remote-access module with a flick of my fingers.“Remote ports, encryption layer… full override scripts.” I mumbled to myself.A breath escaped my lips. I slowly lifted the VR set from my face and blinked, adjusting back to the dimmed light of the room. My throat felt tight but steady, and I tapped the screen of my phone that had been on record all along."I'm no engineer, Glory, but with what I see, this is a flawless masterpiece," I said, my voice low but confident.Gloria's voice came through, steady and reassuring, “The sy
Clancy’s POVI drove into the underground parking lot slowly, one hand on the wheel, the other on my thigh, twitching.Through the black tint, I caught her.Red sedan. Matte finish. California plates.Giada.She slipped out of the driver’s seat like smoke, hips cocked in confidence, chin high. Red hoodie, tight jeans, sneakers white as sin. No one that smooth was ever clean.She didn’t even look around before heading for the elevator. Brave. Or stupid.I leaned back with a sigh. All that trailing, all that shadow-play, and all she did was swing by a mall.On the surface, that’s what it looked like.But I’d been watching how she drove, cutting corners, doubling back, slipping into lanes like water through cracks. That wasn’t some spoiled assistant cruising on her boss' money. That was trained instinct. Maneuver and misdirect. The kind of moves that lose tails and scramble patterns.She was good.But I was better.I waited a minute longer. Let her vanish upstairs. Then I moved.
Clancy’s POVI slammed the last of the encrypted burners onto the glass table, hard enough for the surface to quake but not break. Still no answer. No goddamn answer.I’d tried all of them. Five phones, one satellite tablet, two obsolete lines masked through German proxies. Nothing. The entire fvcking grid. And not a single whisper from that bastard in Italy.Mario Karts.My jaw flexed so tight. One more ring. Just one more ring, I told myself. The screen blinked… dead. Line ended.I roared.The second phone shattered against the wall like an eggshell. The third followed. Plastic and glass scattered across the floor.“Answer me, you Italian fvck…” I growled under my breath, pacing like a rabid lion in a cage too small for its rage.We had a deal. A pact sealed without blood but with something far more binding, my word of protecting his Queen from North America.Five years ago, I had spared him. He stood at my mercy, right after Sofia’s left and I couldn’t follow. I could’v
Sofia's POV My breath hitched in ragged bursts as I clutched the edge of the bed, hunched like a crumpled rose. The room spun, not violently, but in a silent, crushing loop, memories rampaging through my skull. Clancy’s face. His voice. The moonlight in his eyes that used to be my calm. Then the crash, Rosita’s voice. His body against hers. That goddamn night.I pressed my palm to my chest, trying to will the pain away. But it clawed deeper, burning through my ribs like acid. The door swung open. Giada's voice followed, high-pitched and breathless, “You will not believe who I almost bumped into outside--” Her excitement halted as soon as her eyes found me.“Sofia?”I couldn’t answer. I groaned instead, a low sound from the pit of my stomach as the loop restarted in my head. Rosita’s moans as he violently thrust into her from behind.My hand trembled violently.“Shit,” Giada whispered, her face shifting into terror. She dropped to her knees beside me, “Are you having anoth
Clancy's POV The damn theory in my head refused to go away.I leaned back against my vehicle for longer than I should’ve, mind burning with pieces that refused to fit.Aurora DE Santa.From start I believed she was just another tech diva with expensive taste and enough PR to make fans gag. But now? She was crawling with shadows. Di Marco funding?I let out a low scoff and shoved through the revolving door, jaw clenched so hard it clicked. If that’s what was backing Aurora’s meteoric rise, then it all made sense, the money, the reach, the silence from the islands. The way she moved like she had the entire world behind her. But why New York?Why thiscity?No one brings business there without my consultation first and permission but she proving damn stubborn. And Aurora Technologies? Hell, it was already halfway through North America already.Two hundred billion in valuation. Governors tripping over themselves just to kiss her feet for contracts. Five hundred billion by year’s