They forgot one thing.
I don’t play for territory.
I play for the piece that tells the truth.
And I will burn every route on this planet before I let them silence him.
CHAPTER 27
JORDAN
The safehouse smells like cold concrete, stale coffee, and the kind of fear that doesn’t bother pretending it’s polite.
We’re underground—of course we are. Gur loves hiding its sins in basements. The air is a little too dry, filtered hard enough that it tastes like dust that got sterilized and then resentfully put back. A single strip light hums overhead, making everything look sickly and blue.
Morazin sits in the middle of the room, cuffed to a reinforced chair like a bad sculpture nobody asked for. His collar is torn. His hair is slightly out of place. His eyes are still sharp.
Annoyingly sharp.
He looks like the kind of man who’d smirk during his own autopsy.
Lonari’s people have him secure—ankle locks, wrist cuffs, a throat band that monitors vitals and injects a paralytic if he spikes too hard. There’s no blood on him. No bruises. Not because we’re kind.
Because there’s no value in breaking him physically when we can break him strategically.
I pull a chair in front of him and sit. Not close enough to smell him too deeply, but close enough that he understands I’m not afraid to be in the room.
The chair legs scrape the concrete, a sound that makes Morazin’s mouth twitch like he’s enjoying the tension.
He’s wearing the faintest hint of cologne under the fear-sweat. Something expensive and old-fashioned. Like he wants to smell like authority even while he’s chained to a chair.
I make sure my compad is visible when I set it on the table between us.
A quiet little threat.
“Jordan James,” Morazin says, voice smooth. “The martyr with a holonet.”
“Morazin Valeer,” I reply sweetly. “The dead man who won’t shut up.”
His smirk deepens. “Still alive.”
“Only because you haven’t given me what I need yet,” I say.
He laughs softly, like I’ve made a clever joke.
Lonari stands behind me, a dark heat in the room. I can’t see him without turning, but I feel him like pressure against my back, like a shield that has teeth.
He doesn’t speak.
He’s letting me work.
And it makes my chest tighten in a way I don’t have time to examine.
I flick my compad and project a holo-window into the air. Audio files. Visual clips. Header tags. Financial chains. The truth arranged neatly like a knife set.
Morazin’s eyes flick to it, unimpressed. “You enjoy theatrics.”
“I enjoy receipts,” I say.
