Sloane closes her eyes for a second, pulling it from memory. "Three functional. One decoy. The decoy is the one they show the girls. It leads to a service elevator that loops back to the prep level."
Nash exhales. "Classic."
Phoenix meets my eyes. "This takes care of two problems. We expose the structure. And we remove a high-profile anchor holding it together."
Anna's voice cuts through, thin but steady. "I need to hear you say it one more time. In front of everyone in this room." She stands with her hands at her sides, shoulders back, Tobias a solid wall behind her. "The girls choose. That's the line. No matter what else happens in that building."
Phoenix holds her gaze. "That's the line."
Anna nods once. "Good. Because I've been on the other side of a room where no one said that."
Sloane turns toward her. "That wasn't always true."
Anna holds her gaze. "That's why it ends here."
The silence holds.
"And the Society going forward?" Darla asks, voice low.
"Choice," Phoenix says. "Real consent. Anyone who stays chooses it. Anyone who leaves walks clean."
The screen on the far wall flickers to life. Two faces appear. Luca, Phoenix's New York contact, is the man building the Society's expansion on the East Coast. Dark suit, sharp eyes, the kind of calm that comes from knowing where all the money lives. Wendy sits beside him, sure and direct. She's the woman who walked into Phoenix's reformed Society by choice and came out the other side running operations.
"We can control timing," Luca says.
"Optics matter," Wendy adds. "Exposure has to land clean. If this looks like a raid, the story becomes about chaos. If it’sdressed up as ' looks a reckoning, the story becomes about the women."
"Extraction?" Malachi asks.
"On your signal," Luca says. "We've got transport staged. Wendy's coordinating safe placement for anyone who comes out."
Sloane leans forward. "How many girls are we expecting inside?"
Wendy checks her notes off-screen. "Our intel says twelve to fifteen. Varying levels of awareness about what they walked into."
"I can help with medical," Sloane says. "On-site. After."
I look at her. She looks back. Her jaw is set. This isn't a request.
I nod once. "We'll be there."
Malachi looks around the table. At every face. Every pair of eyes.
Luca and Wendy confirm final details, and the screen goes dark.
Malachi retrieves the Blackwell blueprint from where he pinned it last night and spreads it across the table, layering it beside the routes Nash marked on the wall map.
The room breaks into clusters. Nash stands with Phoenix to go over entry points. East drags Darla's chair closer to his. Kyle bends over a tablet with Rider. Frankie and Arden are in the corner, heads together, speaking low.
Sloane stays beside me. Her hand hasn't left my thigh.
Across the table, Anna watches Sloane. Sloane watches her back. Anna mouths something across the table. I catch the shape of it but not the words. Sloane does. Her eyes fill, and she nods.
Tobias adjusts behind Anna, one hand firm at her shoulder. She leans back into it without looking.
My grip cinches on Sloane's thigh. She covers it with hers.
The war room hums with low voices and the scratch of markers on maps. Outside, morning light pushes through the high windows, catching dust in the air.
