Chapter 288: "Come to Room 124"

"Know where Vincent buries his

real

dirty secrets too. Three little black sites the government’s intel lapdogs haven’t sniffed yet. Training camps that’d make Abu Ghraib look like a fucking

summer camp

arts-and-crafts session." I leaned in, letting the weight settle.

"Dmitri’s

real

business model? But I assume you already know... It’s not just moving people. It’s

parts

, sweetie. Organ rings, weapons for any psycho with a hashtag, underage girls delivered like pizza to the corridors of

power

. Names, dates, video _proof_. Senators who like ’em young. Judges who like ’em quiet. CEOs who like ’em

both

. Compromised."

I stopped short of handing over my entire ARIA Rolodex, of course. Enough to ignite the fuse; not enough to make

me

the next exhibit.

"Proof?" Her voice was tight.

"Timestamped, watermarked, wrapped in a bow made of prosecutorial dreams. Everything your D.A. needs to send these cockroaches to the darkest hole we can find." I let the implication hang there like the stench of rot in a sealed room.

"And you’re just...

giving

this to me?" Her grey eyes narrowed to slits. Suspicion waltzed with naked greed in her pupils.

"In exchange for one tiny, insignificant detail." I spoke the name like it was a benediction and a threat. "

Charlotte Thompson

."

"The Quantum Tech wunderkind?"

"Those three

vultures

– Vincent, Dmitri, Antonio’s corpse-to-be – bought a fat twenty percent slice of

her

company with their

illegal money

." My lip curled. "Graft money. Blood money.

Trafficking

money. Tainted cash means tainted ownership. Expose the taint? Void the buy. Those shares become radioactive waste. No board stacked by vultures. Just her, her mother’s five percent, and a company uncompromised by criminals. Just her!"

Ava’s jaw worked, crunching legal angles. "You want the buy-in nullified. Wiped."

"I want Charlotte

whole

. Her board, her company. Not some nest of vultures picked by the very scum trying to gut her. Just her. Her mother’s five percent. And a Quantum Tech not built on bones and bribes." Simple. Almost pure. A diamond in this sewer.

She turned the drive over in her hand, the plastic catching the bar light like a small, obscene sun. "This eighteen billion... that’s evidence too?" She wasn’t asking. She was confirming the jackpot.

"Every stolen dollar. Expose it? The state seizes it like the proceeds of crime it is. Vincent’s PMC gets dismantled and folded into some boring alphabet agency. Dmitri’s network gets starved and shattered. Antonio’s little intelligence bazaar gets papered over with top-secret stamps and forgotten. Your case stops being ’a good shot’ and becomes an

inevitable fucking tidal wave."

"And if I tell you to shove this detonator where the sun don’t shine?" Her vodka glass was suddenly very interesting.

"Then the government finds out

eventually

. Slower. Messier. More bodies. More embarrassing headlines. Maybe Marcus Webb throws a live grenade into an election cycle. Maybe some PMC goon decides freelance is more fun. I’m offering you

clean

: Evidence pre-packaged, transfers forensically tracked, political flak jackets issued. Your timeline. My conditions. Charlotte. Whole."

She drained her vodka in one efficient movement, pure defiance and calculation. Set the glass down with a sharp

clink

like a verdict. "You’re playing the government, Eros."

"Only insofar as the government has been playing

itself

into a fucking corner for decades," I countered, leaning back. "I’m just...

accelerating the inevitable

." Like kicking a wobbly

house of cards

before the breeze does.

Paranoid?

Please

. It wasn’t paranoia when the entire global economy and a handful of psychotic billionaires were the punchline to a joke you hadn’t even told yet. And I? I was holding the goddamn microphone.

"And if it eases you mind... I’m playing everyone," I admitted, like a magician revealing the trapdoor. "But in this specific circus tent?

Everyone

wins. You get Vincent and Dmitri—the two most rabid vultures in the flock. The government gets their assets, billions they’ll probably piss away on drones or hookers. Charlotte gets her life back. And I?" I leaned back, letting the grin steal across my face.

"I get to watch the house burn while sipping top-shelf vodka. Satisfaction’s my currency, sweetheart."

"What about Antonio Rivera?" she pressed, because lawyers

always

poke the bear after you’ve just handed it the picnic basket.

I met her stare, letting the temperature drop ten degrees. "Antonio? Oh, he’s my little

pet project

. More... intimate plans." I made it sound like a date with a bone saw. "Think less

seizure

, more

meat locker

. Less

paperwork

, more

regret

."

She stood scooping up the thumb drive like it was a live grenade with a loose pin. "I need to

verify

this fairy tale."

"Room 1247," I recited, deadpan. "Knock three times when you’re ready to stop pretending the world runs on subpoenas and start breaking it properly."

Her eyes narrowed. "And if this is a trap?"

I pushed myself up, looming because height’s a cheap proxy for power, and we both knew my tech was the real weapon here. But damn, the woman had a stance forged from titanium and spite.

Still, if it came to blows? My glitches would fry her nervous system before her hand touched her weapon. Not like that part is necessary. "If I wanted you in a cage, Agent," I purred, "I wouldn’t bother with bait. I’d just walk through the wall you call a spine."

A real smile fractured her composure then—not warmth, but predatory acknowledgment, sharp enough to draw diamond dust from the air. "No," she countered, voice low and full of gravel. "You’d just use whatever bio-software glitch makes every woman in this bar look at you like

you’re dessert.

"

"Except you." I tilted my head. "You look at me like I’m a glitching toaster that might electrocute the whole kitchen."

"I didn’t say I

didn’t

want to fuck you," she replied, honesty brutal honed steel. "I said it wouldn’t stop me from putting a bullet in your brain if you cross me. Enjoy your evening, ghost."

She walked away, and I cataloged the movement: fluid, lethal (

Helena’s signature

), but

sharper

. Cleaner. More knife, less blunt instrument. The little sister who’d dug the elder’s grave with superior grace.

ARIA’s whisper slithered into my earbud, "Data integrity: 100%. Her handlers are definitely gonna experience what passes for giddy in Langley—they’ll be drafting the asset seizure orders not too from now. Probability of operational success: 82.7%. Rising."

I left cash on the table—more than enough for her barely touched vodka—and strolled out. I felt her gaze on me, solid and cold as a sniper’s crosshair, from whatever shadow she’d chosen.

Two apex species had just sniffed each other, circled, and decided the real prey was elsewhere.

The three vultures—Vincent, Dmitri, Antonio—were still picking at carrion, oblivious that the house of cards they called an empire just got bought by a pair of wolves playing dress-up in human skin. They had no goddamn idea the extinction-level event was already knocking at Room 1247.

Three times.

I couldn’t wait for what else was going to happen in that room apart from our discussion, when she comes.