PROLOGUE
I’ve never believed in omens. However, right now, staring out of the grimy windshield, the sky bleeds red over Bucharest, and even I can’t ignore the way it looks like heaven soaked in blood.
I sit alone in the front of a shitty basic rental car, my laptop open, signal bouncing through three proxies. The last message my hacker sent is still on-screen.
Seems like we’re not the only ones looking.
I’ve been parked near the warehouse that isn’t on any map, running recon for hours. On paper, it’s a shipping depot. But we’re betting the real Blood Vault is beneath it, an underground labyrinth holding dark secrets that could make governments crumble…and men like me disappear into dust.
I light a cigarette and keep the engine cold, scanning the side alley for the third time in ten minutes. The front entrance is locked down with armed guards. Motion-triggered drones circle overhead. No one's getting in, or out, without setting offalarms.
Except for the food truck. It showed up half an hour ago, unloaded fast, and rolled out like it was on a schedule.
Which is why it makes no fucking sense when a dark figure slips past all of it, seemingly trained to be a sneaky fucking ghost. I sit up straighter and watch through the haze of smoke around me.
Oh, this will be fun. That fucker won’t get far. I give them two seconds before they’re surrounded, and depending on the threat, they’ll likely get a bullet to the skull.
I’d guess it’s a woman but it's hard to tell under all that gear. However, the slim build, the gait, the braid creeping down her spine over that tactical vest tells me she isn't an innocent who’s lost her way.
My brows snap together when the drones don’t react and the guards don’t turn. She moves through the blind spots like she knows where they all are.
Either she’s ex-military black ops or something far fucking worse.
While she pauses by a steel door and taps something on a handheld device, I zoom in on her face, snap a photo, and run it through facial recognition on my laptop.
The image sharpens just enough to make out her feminine features.
And fuck me, she’s stunning.
Not in a staged, high-maintenance way either. No. This woman is naturally beautiful with high cheekbones, a cute nose, and full pouty lips set in a no-nonsense line. Her pale complexion is smooth and makeup free, lit faintly by the glow of her device.
Part of me wishes I could see the color of her eyes. I tellmyself it's just to read her better. To figure out if she’s calm, focused, assassin cold, or panicking.
But the truth is, I’m a little fucking dumbstruck by how pretty she is.
The facial recognition scan pings back with zero matches.
There’s nothing in any system I have access to. And I have access to all of them.
“Who the fuck are you?” I mutter to myself while taking a sip of cold black coffee.
As soon as she’s out of sight, I shoot my hacker a message, asking him if he knows anything more but his connection has dropped off. Fucking typical.
When she slips inside, the steel door seals behind her and shit starts to happen.
One of the high flight drones changes direction, veering toward the loading bay like it received new orders. On my laptop, the data feed I’ve been watching explodes as encrypted files pour out of the main server. That’s not normal traffic. That’s a fucking breach.
And in the corner of my secondary feed, a maintenance display I hacked hours ago blinks to life with a digital countdown: 03:00… 02:59… 02:58…
Jesus fuck, she’s purging the intel.
My gut turns to stone.
She’s seconds away from wiping everything—or stealing it. And if even one byte of that data ties back to my family, she won’t get the chance to walk away breathing.
I open my mic and speak to the team back in the hotel. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Define problem,” Reign’s voice answers in my ear.
