And yet, the very perfection of it made her uneasy. In her experience, no man worked so hard to polish a reputation unless there was something stinking buried beneath it.
Elise’s fingers hovered over the trackpad, the laptop screen still glowing with the name that tied it all together. Her throat had gone dry, her pulse hammering in her ears.
Marek Zajac.
Her mentor had circled him, followed his trail through charities that looked clean on the surface. Now, Elise had dug into the underbelly and found the other half of the picture—the ships, the code, the company. Everything she’d uncovered bent toward one conclusion: Marek Zajac was involved. Somehow. What if he wasn’t just a benefactor? What if he were orchestrating something vast, involving the charities, and it was hidden in plain sight?
She closed her eyes for a moment, forcing a steadying breath. The library around her went on in its quiet rhythm. Students rustling papers, the librarian’s steps clipping past, a low cough from the far corner, but Elise felt as though she were the only one in the building. She felt as if she were sitting at the edge of a precipice no one else could see.
Her hand went to her notebook, flipping back through her cramped notes. She had pages of financial records, lists of charity shipments, and vessel registries. Enough to draw a web, and at the center sat Zajac. The question that chilled her wasn’twhy her mentor had been looking into him.It was whether he’d been killed because of it.
Elise’s chest tightened. The thought of her mentor—cut down after following this trail and his death officially dismissed as an accident—filled her with a wave of grief and fury that burned hot enough to bring tears to her eyes. She blinked them away, clenching her jaw.
Pushing the laptop back slightly, she leaned into the chair until the wood pressed against her spine. For hours, she had been hunched forward, chasing breadcrumbs across screens and pages, and now, the exhaustion hit her all at once. She pressedher palms against her face, then dragged them down, grounding herself in the here and now.
What she had was all circumstantial. Nothing dangerous. Nothing deadly. But she couldn’t turn away now. Something told her she was close to finding the truth about why her friend had died. She’d keep going. She had to. There was no alternative.
Her eyes flicked to the tall windows. The light had dimmed, autumn dusk settling over Budapest. Outside, she could see the first glimmer of streetlamps flickering to life along the boulevard. The day had slipped away without her noticing.
Elise closed the laptop with deliberate care. The click of the hinge sounded too loud in the stillness. She gathered her papers, sliding them into her bag after placing the computer in it. Her every movement was sharp with purpose. When she rose, her chair scraped across the polished floor, drawing a glance from one of the students nearby. She ignored it.
Her mentor had left her this trail, and she’d followed it to the same name. Zajac. The charities. The ship. Both were owned by the same man.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Elise slipped her bag over her shoulder, the weight of her laptop and papers grounding her. The hush of the library fell behind her as she stepped into the crisp October dusk. The air had sharpened since morning, carrying the faint scent of woodsmoke from a vendor stationed near the tram stop. Lights glowed along the boulevard, golden against the deepening blue sky, and the bustle of the city had risen—students laughing in pairs, businessmen striding with collars upturned, bicycles weaving past the tram rails.
She pulled her coat tighter and turned east, away from the library’s looming façade. The evening pressed close, and with it came that prickling sensation along her spine. Elise slowed for half a step, then resumed her pace. No one brushed tooclose, no footsteps overlapped hers exactly, but still, there was that sensation … that something, someone was watching her. The subtle shift in the air when another presence matched your rhythm.
A glance into the glass of a shop window showed nothing unusual—just her own reflection, pale and tired. Still, her instincts whispered. She adjusted her bag and kept walking, deliberately blending with the pedestrians crossing at the light.
CHAPTER 6
Blake slid out of the shadow of the library entrance and fell into the rhythm of the street. The air was sharp with October chill, carrying the smell of roasted chestnuts from a vendor near the tram stop. Budapest at dusk was a city of movement—students spilling out of cafés, trams clanging along their tracks, businessmen striding home with their collars turned up. Amid the flow, Elise moved quickly, head down, her bag slung tight against her side.
His Aunt Jewell’s message still echoed in Blake’s ear. Elise Serra had been digging. She’d followed the breadcrumbs straight into Marek Zajac’s orbit and spent the better part of a day cross-referencing his charities and shipping companies. She was getting too close.
Jewell had been able to cloak her searches and spent the better part of the day shielding Elise from the prying eyes of anyone who might have been monitoring the hits on those websites. From the outside, it looked like nothing more than noise. But Blake knew how thin the protection was. Sooner or later, someone would notice.
“Keep her away from her computer for about six hours, B., I need some sleep.” The yawn his aunt gave at the end of that comment reminded him of the time difference.
“Can’t someone else help you, Aunt Jewell?”
“I’ll call Con if I need to.”
“Fuck no,” Blake spat. Con was a dick with a capital D. He’d rather work with one arm chopped off and hungry wolves on his blood trail. “I’ll keep her from her computer.”
“Ha, thought that might motivate you. Zane will be on comms and can wake me. If you need me, don’t hesitate.”
“Copy. Get some sleep.”
So, his job was simple. Make contact, warn her, and shut her down before she drew fire.
“Target acquired.” Blake kept his pace even as he followed. He stayed two bodies behind her, blending with the stream of pedestrians. He never let his eyes linger long enough to attract notice, shifting his gaze to shopfront reflections, tram doors, the faint glow of neon signs flickering above a bar entrance. Still, every sense was tuned to her movements. He could tell the length of her stride, the way she slowed when the crowd thinned, the tension she carried in her shoulders.
“Dude, she is so not a target.” Zane’s deep voice came over the comms. “You’re supposed to warn her, get her to stop digging.”
“I think she knows someone is following her.”
