CASSIAN

The treatment room Cyan led me into smelled of fresh paint, expensive floor wax, and the sterile promise of a space not yet born.

It was in-between... the chairs still wore their plastic shrouds, and the large, silver-backed mirrors were uncovered but reflected only an empty room. It was the right kind of place for a conversation that didn’t officially exist.

Cyan pulled a cigarette case from his pocket.

It was a slim, gold thing, imported from somewhere that charged for the heritage of the metal as much as the tobacco inside.

He didn’t do half-measures; he never had. He lit one, the flame dancing in the reflection of the dark window, and offered it to me.

I took it. The first draw was smooth and heavy.

Outside this door, the salon was a quiet masterpiece. Somewhere in the office, Noah was likely staring at a catalog that was making him question every life choice that had led him to this afternoon.

But in here, the air was different.

Cyan exhaled a long, thin stream of smoke.

"So," he said, his eyes tracking the gray cloud as it rose toward the new ceiling.

"What’s the update? You didn’t come here just to admire my taste in upholstery."

I pulled out my phone and swiped through to Reid’s encrypted report.

I laid it out on the flat surface of a nearby equipment trolley.

"Emilio has been a ghost since we raided the warehouse," I said. "Three weeks of dead air. No movement on his known accounts. No chatter through the usual channels. He’s been sitting in the dark, deciding how to respond to the message I sent him."

I scrolled down to the latest data entry.

"Three days ago, he moved. It wasn’t a mistake; it was a transaction. A significant one. He’s dealing with a Serbian arms contact. This isn’t a routine exchange for street-level hardware. This is volume. The kind of shipment that changes the landscape of a territory."

Cyan leaned in, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the coordinates. "Oooh? That’s a private port facility," he noted. "Outside the city limits. It’s not a Vincenti property."

"No," I said. "It’s a third party. Which means Emilio has built new infrastructure since the warehouse fell. He’s using channels that weren’t in any of the ledgers we took from his lieutenant. He built this fast. That requires two things: deep resources and either a massive amount of confidence or a massive amount of desperation."

I pointed to the timestamp. "The transfer window opens forty-eight hours from now. It’s narrow... two hours maximum. Once the shipment moves, it hits a network that becomes exponentially harder to trace. If we don’t hit it there, we lose it."

Cyan took a slow drag of his cigarette, his head tilting to the side. He was processing. Most people look busy when they think; Cyan looks like he’s staring into a void, but I knew better. He was dismantling the information, piece by piece.

"The location is too findable," I said, setting the phone down. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Cyan looked up. "Too findable?"

"Reid mapped the whole thing in forty-eight hours," I explained. "Emilio knows we watch his channels. He’s been careful for weeks, scrubbing his trail, and then suddenly he leaves a breadcrumb this large? It’s visible. It’s practically glowing."

Cyan’s eyes sparked with a sudden, dark understanding. "Because he wants it to be visible," he murmured. "He isn’t stage-managing an arms deal. He’s stage-managing you. The real point isn’t the shipment. The real point is you showing up to stop it."

"Yes."

"So it’s a trap."

"Yes."

Cyan let out a short, sharp huff of smoke. "And you’re going anyway."

I didn’t answer immediately. I just let the almost-smile touch my mouth. "Yes."

"Of course you are," Cyan sighed, though there was a flicker of excitement in his voice he couldn’t quite hide. "Tell me why it’s still worth it. Why walk into a room when you know the door is rigged to lock behind you?"

"Because Emilio built the trap," I said, my voice dropping an octave. "And a trap requires the trapper to be present if he wants to see the catch. He’s been hiding behind proxies for months. The warehouse was a proxy. The lieutenant was a proxy. But Emilio is arrogant. He wants to watch me walk into the cage he built. For the first time since this started, he will be in a location I know in advance."

Cyan nodded slowly, the logic clicking into place. "So the trap isn’t the obstacle. It’s the opening."

"Exactly," I said. "It’s smoke. It forces him out of the cave. I don’t need to be faster than the trap itself. I just need to be faster than what comes after it."

"What does he have there?" Cyan asked, his tone shifting into something more tactical. "Besides the crates?"

"Reid’s thermal scans suggest twelve to fifteen security personnel on-site," I said. "Plus whoever is handling the transaction on the Serbian side. The facility has three entry points. Two are monitored. One isn’t."

Cyan smirked. "Let me guess. The unmonitored one is the secret."

"It’s underwater access," I said. "It hasn’t been used in years, according to the port’s public records. But we used it three months ago for a different operation. The layout is identical. I already have the internal maps."

Cyan moved to the small window that looked out over the side street. He stood there for a moment, silhouetted against the afternoon light. "Twelve to fifteen security for a deal this size?" he mused. "That’s light. Especially for someone who thinks he’s luring you in."

He turned back to me, his expression sharp. "If I were Emilio, and I was building a cage for Cassian Wolfe, I wouldn’t put the strength at the door. I’d put the visible security there as a performance. The actual threat is the Serbian side. They aren’t just ’contacts.’ They’re the backup."

I took a final drag of the cigarette and crushed it out in a glass tray. Cyan was right. He always had a flair for seeing the drama in a setup.

"He’ll put the real weight between the location and the exit," Cyan continued. "You walk in. The transaction happens. You find Emilio. And then the exit disappears."

"The underwater access," I said, thinking through the geometry of the port.

"Has to be the exit," Cyan said. "Which means it can’t be the entrance. If he’s anticipated you’ll use what you know about the facility, he’ll have that tunnel rigged to blow or flooded with men the moment you step into it."

"Then we change the script," I said. "We go in through the monitored entrance. The front door."

Cyan’s eyebrows shot up. "The front door? No one goes in the front door."

"Exactly. He won’t expect it because it’s loud. It’s obvious. It’s exactly what someone who has a ’secret’ entrance wouldn’t do. We want to be seen walking in. We let him think the trap is working perfectly right up until the moment I’m standing in front of him."

Cyan’s smile was slow and dangerous. "And the transaction?"

"We don’t intercept it before it completes," I said. "We let the money move. We let the crates be signed for. Then we destroy everything. The shipment. The infrastructure. The entire financial pipeline behind it. Reid has already identified the ghost accounts used for the transfer. When I give the signal, he doesn’t just block them. He drains them. Every cent Emilio put into this goes into the void."

The cost would be staggering. It wouldn’t just be a physical loss; it would be a systemic collapse of Emilio’s new network. The kind of loss that makes people angry. And angry people make mistakes.

"When Emilio is bleeding," I said, "and his trap has failed, he won’t send a proxy. He’ll come for me directly. That’s what I need. I want him out of the cave, running toward me instead of hiding."

"Tomorrow night," I said. "The transfer window opens at two AM. We move at one-thirty."

Cyan blinked. "Tomorrow? That’s fast."

"The window is only forty-eight hours. Every hour we wait is an hour he has to adjust the pieces on the board. Tomorrow is better than the day after. Speed is the only thing he hasn’t accounted for."

"How many people?" Cyan asked.

"Small. You. Me. Two of my primary security. Reid stays on comms and handles the digital side. That’s it."

Cyan’s expression shifted. The theatricality fell away, replaced by a real, jagged kind of joy. "You’re taking me." It wasn’t a question; it was the realization of a promise.

"I said I would," I reminded him.

Cyan’s smile was the real one this time... not the one he used for rooms full of clients, but the one that arrived when he was about to get exactly what he wanted. "It’s been a while," he said quietly. "Since I’ve gotten to hit someone who actually deserved it."

"You hit Noah’s brother recently," I pointed out.

"He deserved it," Cyan agreed, "but that was reactive. It was a reflex. This..." he gestured to the maps on the trolley, "this is going to be intentional."

I stood up, the movement fluid. "Don’t get shot."

"I never get shot," Cyan said, following me toward the door. "I get grazed occasionally. It’s different. It adds character to the scars."

We walked back through the quiet, elegant corridors of the salon. As we approached the office door, my mind drifted back to Noah.

I could still see the pale, tight expression he’d worn in the boardroom. Nick had said something significant.

Something that Noah was currently guarding behind a wall of "I’m fine." I wouldn’t push him tonight. Tonight was for the salon. Tomorrow was for the operation. Whatever poison Nick had dropped into Noah’s ear would have to wait until Noah was ready to give it up... or until I was forced to take it.

I pushed the office door open.

Noah was sitting exactly where we’d left him. The catalog on the desk was closed, but it had that specific, slightly-too-perfect alignment of something that had been slammed shut in a hurry.

Cyan didn’t miss a beat. "Did you look at the catalog, darling?"

Noah didn’t even look up at the wall art. He looked straight at Cyan, his face a very interesting shade of red. "I didn’t touch the catalog."

"The catalog is educational, Noah," Cyan teased, leaning over the desk. "It’s practically a textbook."

"I’m educated enough, thank you," Noah muttered.

I looked at Noah’s face. The color was better, the sickly pallor of the boardroom was gone, replaced by the warm flush of embarrassment. The salon had done its work. The mask was back in place, but it was lighter now.

I noted the way he pointedly avoided looking at the anatomical posters, and the way he looked at me with a mix of relief and suspicion.

Still readable, I thought. Still terrible at pretending. Still here.

"Ready?" I asked him.

Noah stood up, clearing his throat and smoothing his jacket. "More than ready. Please. Let’s leave before he shows me the ’back office’ too."

I smirked, feeling that strange, inconvenient pull in my chest again. I gestured toward the door, letting him pass first. I could handle Emilio Vincenti. I could handle a Serbian arms deal. But Noah Bennett was becoming a variable I hadn’t yet learned how to solve.