Damian Wolfe
Trust was a currency I didn't spend lightly.
And now I knew why.
I stood in the room in my penthouse, lights dimmed, the city sprawled out beneath me like a kingdom waiting to fall. Screens flickered with surveillance feeds. Financials. Patterns. And in the center of it all—Jasper's face.
My right hand.
My traitor.
The Bishop's voice still echoed in my head.
"He gave the drive to Sector 3. Monarch operatives. Not just any of them—the ones who want your blood as much as hers."
So that was the play.
Jasper thought he was dancing in shadows, but I'd been watching him all along. Letting him spin his little web, waiting to see who else crawled into it.
He didn't know about the Bishop.
Didn't know I had ears behind every wall, whispers hidden in static.
Good.
Because I wasn't done yet.
I didn't move as the glass door slid open behind me.
The Bishop entered, silent as smoke, a burner phone in one gloved hand. "They're moving. Files you flagged were duplicated and sent to a courier heading south. I've already rerouted him. Quietly."
"And Jasper?" I asked without turning.
"He's still in play. Aria's testing him. Kira's watching."
I finally looked over my shoulder. "Let her test. I want to see what he does under pressure."
"And if he passes?"
My jaw clenched. "Then we know she's the one slipping."
Silence stretched between us like a blade.
The Bishop spoke again, low and precise. "Do you want him eliminated?"
Not yet.
Jasper was useful still—if not for loyalty, then for leverage.
"No," I said. "Let him think he's still trusted. Let him breathe, lie, plot. He's showing us the blueprint."
The Bishop nodded. "Understood."
I turned back to the screens. Aria's face was on one of them now—caught mid-step in some surveillance still I shouldn't have had access to.
She was so much like her father it hurt.
Smart. Ruthless. Unforgiving.
But this wasn't about legacy anymore.
This was personal.
And if she thought she was the only one playing a long game, she hadn't learned the rules yet.
---
Aria Vale
We worked in silence.
The safehouse was dim and cold, the hum of old fluorescent lights the only sound as Kira typed with surgical precision. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, assembling the monster we were about to set loose.
A fake file.
A virus laced in truth.
It was the perfect blend—real enough to lure, dangerous enough to burn.
"Pull the shell companies tied to Wolfe Enterprises," I murmured, pacing behind her. "Then add offshore accounts. Use the old ones. The ones my father flagged before—before everything."
Kira glanced up. "You want breadcrumbs or blood trails?"
"Both."
She smirked and kept typing. "You're getting better at this."
I ignored the compliment. There was no satisfaction in becoming someone I never wanted to be.
"Add falsified transfer logs—big numbers, but not impossible. Tie them to names Jasper would recognize. Names he's afraid of."
"Got it." She cracked her knuckles. "And the icing?"
I handed her a drive. Not the real one. A replica laced with a custom encryption worm I built myself. One wrong move, and it would infect any system it touched—cataloging every keystroke, every trace of who accessed it, where it went.
I wasn't just baiting Jasper. I was tagging him.
"Once he plugs it in, we'll know exactly who he delivers it to."
Kira gave a low whistle. "And if he doesn't fall for it?"
"He will." I didn't hesitate. "Because I'll let him believe it's the real file. And he wants to prove something—to me, to Monarch, to whoever the hell he's really working for."
Kira leaned back, studying me like she could see the fire burning beneath my skin. "This is risky, Aria. You give the wrong people the right kind of truth…"
"I'm counting on it," I said softly. "If they think they've caught me slipping, they'll come closer. And when they do—"
"We set the trap," she finished.
Exactly.
The hardest part wasn't planting the file.
It was pretending to be naive.
Letting Jasper believe he still had the upper hand, while every step he took dragged him deeper into the noose.
I looked down at the glowing screen.
A string of lies dressed up like gospel.
"Package it," I said. "We deliver tomorrow."
Kira clicked the final key, and the file disappeared into the drive like a loaded bullet in a chamber.
"Locked and loaded."
I exhaled, slow and steady.
"Then let's see which ghost he takes it to."
---
Kira brewed coffee strong enough to melt steel while I mapped out contingencies across the cracked whiteboard in the back of the safehouse.
"What if Jasper doesn't deliver?" Kira asked quietly, perched on the edge of the metal desk, gun dismantled and gleaming in pieces beside her.
I didn't look up. "Then he's more careful than I thought. But not careful enough."
"Or he's loyal to Wolfe."
I finally met her eyes. "He's loyal to survival. That kind of loyalty always fractures under pressure."
She nodded, conceding. "Still, I'll put a tail on him after the drop. We need to know where he takes it. Who he meets."
"And if he sniffs us out?"
"Then we switch to Plan B," she said coolly. "The Bishop."
The name hung heavy between us. Kira didn't know who he was—just whispers from our limited intel. But I did. Not his face, not his rank, but his presence. The silent hand that swept up behind Damian, always watching, always one move ahead.
He was the reason I had to act fast.
I pushed a folder across the desk toward her—old files my father had hidden in the Vale estate before it burned. Smudged names, half-buried bank ledgers. Enough to weaponize.
"This," I said, "is the real file. If something happens to me—"
"Don't," Kira cut in. "You don't get to talk like that."
"I have to," I said, voice low. "Because this isn't just about revenge anymore. If the Monarch Syndicate is making a play against Wolfe, it means we're not the only ones hunting monsters."
Kira was silent for a long time. Then, finally: "You're really going to let Jasper walk out with that drive tomorrow?"
"I am."
"And when he does?"
I turned back to the board, circling a name I hadn't dared utter aloud before.
"When he does," I said, "we follow the lie to its master. And then we kill the king."