“You called it,” I mutter.
“Called what?”
“The C4.” I jam a finger against the red Xs on the blueprint. “That brick I saw on the table. You’re right. It’s a fucking battery.”
She leans over the paper, her eyes tracking the spread of the marks. The realization hits her.
“He wasn’t blowing the place up,” she whispers.
“No.” I trace the vent line on the paper. “He was bugging it. Planting long-range mics.”
My eyes stay fixed on her as the bigger picture takes shape.
“He was trying to catch someone on tape,” I say. “The Senator. Or your father.”
The silence in the dining room is broken only by the distant crash of waves against the cliff. She stares at me, her face going pale.
“Catch them?” she whispers. “Catch them doing what?”
“Taking a bribe,” I say. “Or giving an order.”
I stand, the chair scraping against the floor as I walk to the window, my mind ripping through every lie the Judge fed me since he handed me the dossier.
Elias was a whistleblower. He had blueprints to plant bugs. He had bank records to prove corruption—the ledger Varro just found. He was trying to expose something. Something big enough that he risked his life to break into the museum.
And the Judge knew. The Judge knew exactly what Elias was doing.
He didn’t send me to stop a massacre. He sent me to execute the only man who could expose him.
He used my debt, my loyalty, and my code against me. He turned me loose on Elias to protect himself.
And he almost made me kill his daughter in the process.
I feel rage flare in my chest. It burns cleaner than the guilt. It burns cleaner than the lust.
I turn back to the table. Iris is watching me, still trying to process my words.
“My father...” she starts. “You think he was being recorded? Like... someone was spying on him?”
I look at her, shocked.
She doesn’t know.
She thinks her father is the victim. She thinks Elias was the bad guy—a spy, an invader—and that her father was the target of an illegal surveillance operation.
She doesn’t know that her father likely sent that death squad to our gates to erase his tracks. She doesn’t know that the “Spy” was probably trying to save the city from her father’s corruption.
If I tell her the truth now—that her father is a murderer, that he ordered the hit on Elias, that he probably sent the Syndicate to wipe us out last night—it will break her. She’s already fractured. If I shatter her worldview completely, she might not survive it. She needs something to hold onto. She needs to believe there is still some order in the universe.
I need her focused. I need her angry at the Syndicate, not paralyzed by the betrayal of the man she loves.
“He was a blackmailer,” I lie.
I see her eyes widening, the break coming. I change the story before the truth can shatter her. It’s a strategic lie. One that aligns our targets. One I want to believe myself.
“A blackmailer?” she asks.
“The blueprints,” I say, gesturing to the table. “He was mapping the security to pull material from the safe to use against the VIPs. That’s why he marked the vent. He was building a leverage file.”
