The Directorate.He didn’t say it aloud.Couldn’t.But he knew.He’d been chasing their money trail for two years—so close to something that mattered.
“Where were you tonight?”one of them demanded.The voice was deep, filtered through a balaclava.“You vanished from your building.Cameras show nothing.How?”
Drew gave a weak laugh, head rolling back.“Trade secret.I’d tell you, but then you’d have to pay me consulting fees to tell you how I did it.”
A fist cracked across his face.His vision went white.
“Tell us the truth!”The handsy one who liked to throw a punch or three yelled.
Drew flinched.“You gave me truth serum!What kind of hokey shit is that?”
“We want to know about the Bratya,” another said.“A group of men hit them tonight and moved like they knew what they were doing.Took out the leader, killed a shitload of boys on their payroll, and liberated one of their shipments.”He swallowed, voice flat.“There were kids in the crates—product, they called them.You were there, weren’t you?Who were they and where are they now?”
He tasted blood, spat some of it on the van floor.“I don’t even know those Bratya guys.Let alone the ones that took them out.I sell pharmaceuticals, not secrets.”
“You think we’re stupid?”
He grinned crookedly.“Do I have to answer that?I mean the answer seems more than a little obvious to me, but then again, I did think perhaps you had a few brain cells to rub together.Guess I overshot.”
Another hit.Harder this time.He felt something loosen in his jaw.
He needed to stay in character—keep the mask.Just a small-time operator chasing a payday, the hustler trying to make a name.Nothing more.
“Check his background, again,” the leader snapped.“Call Vinnie.He vouched for him.”
This could work.Drew still had a shit load of evidence on Vinnie that showed him as the narc he was.He’d threatened him with it, and Vinnie had folded, and claimed to the underworld that he’d worked with and known Drew for years.Vinnie was his only way out of this.
A pause, then a muttered curse from the front of the van.“Vinnie’s dead.They found him yesterday.Dismembered, fingers removed, tongue cut out.He died hard.His crew figured out he was a narc.”
Fuck.
Drew’s lips twitched, the ghost of a smirk tugging through the blood.The move was pure defiance.“Well, shit.Poor bastard.Guess that makes me more of a lone wolf now, huh?”
“You’re funny,” the man sneered.“You won’t be pulling the laughs for long.”
They went quiet after that.The van’s engine thrummed low beneath them.Drew’s head pounded in time with the bumps in the road.But something wasn’t right.There were holes in the story they’d just read back to him—his own background.Holes he sure as hell knew hadn’t been there thirty-six hours ago when he ran his own security sweep.Whatever the fuck was going on here, it was obvious that someone did not want him to make it out of it.
“Wait,” one of the men muttered from the passenger seat, scrolling on a tablet.“That can’t be right.His file’s got gaps now—employer history missing six months here, credit record clean when it should’ve been dirty.”
Another leaned over his shoulder.“And that arrest in Miami two years ago—vanished.No court documents, no intake photo.Looks like someone’s scrubbed parts of his digital footprint.”
The leader turned toward Drew, eyes narrowing.“You must have built yourself a hell of a ghost file.Problem you’re facing now is, it’s falling apart.Somebody’s poking holes in your background.”
Drew forced a smirk through the blood on his lip, voice rough but steady.“Guess someone doesn’t want me on your radar.Maybe they’re smarter than you.”
The man sneered.“Definitely smarter than you, genius.This was deliberate.Someone on the inside’s editing you.Why would they do that, huh?”
Drew’s pulse kicked hard.He didn’t answer.He couldn’t.Whoever had messed with his cover wanted him exposed—and he didn’t know why.He’d built that identity from the ground up.It was solid.Locked.So how the hell had someone tampered with it?
He forced himself to focus.But who—and why?
“You know,” one of them said after a minute, “we almost missed you just now.Only reason we got you in hand was because we happened to be leaving your apartment building when you pulled up.Lucky timing on our side.”
Drew huffed a laugh, his voice slow and slurred.“Yeah, luck’s a bitch that way.”
Another punch.This one split his lip.
He spat blood again, glaring up at the faceless silhouettes.“You guys really need to invest in some creativity.All this violence—very passé.Maybe try a little creativity next time—something flashy, at least.A ritual, a curse, hell, even interpretive dance would be a step up.I’d rate that at least an eight for effort and possibly a nine for originality.”
