Sera.
There’s a five-second window where the guards glance at each other instead of me right when they change rotation. I use it to slip my personal device beneath the desk. The secure channel I’ve built helps her line connect with mine.
“Harper?” Her voice is low, tight. Like she already knows the call isn’t social.
“I found something.” I keep my tone level, but the words carry weight. “The Malta relay wasn’t just a breach. Anton’s rebuilding Velvet Blade.”
The silence on the other end feels like the air between lightning and thunder.
“Send me what you have,” she says finally.
I compress the files, encrypt them with two layers, and transmit. Each second stretches thinly. Sera exhales slowly when she receives them.
“This is… not small.”
“No,” I whisper. “It isn’t.”
“And Damian doesn’t know.”
“He will. But if I tell him alone, he’ll scorch everything within reach.”
A quiet laugh escapes her.
“That’s accurate.”
“I thought maybe Mikhail should see it first.”
“Maybe,” she echoes. “Or maybe he’ll see it exactly as Anton intends: an opportunity to tighten control.”
I swallow.
“I need you to gauge him. Before anyone reacts.”
She pauses for longer this time. Sera’s voice softens in a way that feels like warning wrapped in affection.
“Harper,” she says, “you cannot underestimate the Ignatovs’ capacity for redemption or destruction. We are built from both,” she adds. “Be careful.”
The line clicks dead. Her words settle deep, threading into the spaces where fear and clarity overlap.
The room feels colder without her voice.
I lean back, staring at the evidence glowing on the screen, dangerous enough to shift the balance of power in a dynasty that doesn’t tolerate imbalance. I’m sitting at a desk in a fortress where I’m both protected and imprisoned, staring at the proof that the past Damian destroyed is crawling its way back to life.
He has to know.
Sera’s words disappear from my mind the longer I stare at the data on the screen. Hehasto know.
My knuckles rap against the wooden door of his office, the guards dispersing behind me once the door opens.
Damian stands by the long table in his office, the screens dimmed, the city’s winter glow ghosting along the clean edges of the glass. His shoulders are rigid, every line of him carved from tension. The ledger lies unopened in my hands, heavier than any physical object has a right to be.
“Damian.”
He turns.
As his green eyes land on me, then to the drive in my hand, his expression is unreadable.
I cross the space between us. My pulse beats too loudly, a frantic drum under my ribs, but my steps are steady. I place the ledger on the table and slide it toward him.
