[Ethan’s POV]

"A market crash?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at Claire. "What are you going to do, short-sell the champagne?"

"Just get ready to move," Claire said, her eyes locked on the towering, five-tier crystal fountain in the center of the room. "When the guards break formation, you have about ten seconds to slip through those service doors."

She didn’t wait for my response. She let go of my arm, smoothed the front of her emerald gown, and glided into the crowd. She moved with the effortless grace of a woman who belonged in this room, weaving between the billionaires and cartel bosses until she reached the edge of the fountain.

I positioned myself near a massive marble pillar, about twenty feet from the service doors, and watched her.

Claire picked up a fresh flute of champagne from the bottom tier. She took a sip, her eyes scanning the room until she locked onto Alexei Rostova, the massive Balkan weapons smuggler. He was standing a few feet away, arguing loudly in Russian with a smaller, nervous-looking man.

Claire took a step backward, deliberately placing her high heel directly onto the trailing hem of Madame Chen’s extravagant red silk dress.

As Madame Chen turned sharply, her dress pulling taut, Claire feigned a stumble. She threw her arms out, her champagne flute flying through the air. The glass shattered directly against the lapel of Alexei Rostova’s custom tuxedo, soaking him in expensive alcohol.

But Claire didn’t stop there. As she "fell," she threw her weight sideways, crashing hard into the small, nervous man Rostova had been arguing with.

The man lost his balance and fell backward, slamming violently into the table holding the champagne fountain.

It happened in slow motion.

The table tipped. The bottom tier of crystal glasses slid off the edge, shattering against the marble floor with a deafening crash. The sudden loss of structural integrity caused the entire five-tier fountain to collapse. Hundreds of crystal flutes and gallons of vintage champagne rained down on the crowd in a spectacular, glittering avalanche of destruction.

The ballroom erupted into chaos.

Women screamed, men shouted, and the string quartet abruptly stopped playing. Rostova, furious and dripping with champagne, grabbed the nervous man by the collar, roaring in Russian. Madame Chen’s bodyguards immediately stepped forward, hands reaching inside their jackets.

It was a masterpiece of engineered panic.

The two PMCs guarding the service doors instantly broke formation, rushing toward the center of the room to separate the billionaires before a gunfight broke out on the dance floor.

Ten seconds.

I didn’t run. Running draws the eye. I walked briskly, keeping my head down, and slipped through the heavy wooden service doors just as the PMCs reached the shattered fountain. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The noise of the ballroom vanished, replaced by the sterile hum of industrial refrigerators and the clatter of pots and pans. I was in the main kitchen. A dozen chefs and waiters were rushing around, completely oblivious to the chaos outside.

I kept my head down, moving through the kitchen with purpose, acting like I belonged there. I found a narrow, concrete stairwell at the back of the pantry, marked with a faded sign reading Anlagenraum—Plant Room.

I drew the ceramic push-dagger from my cummerbund, the cool, dense material comforting in my palm, and began my descent.

The sub-basement of the Hofburg Palace was a stark contrast to the gilded ballroom above. It was a labyrinth of exposed brick, massive iron pipes, and humming electrical conduits. The air was thick and smelled of ozone and old dust.

I moved silently, my rubber-soled dress shoes making no sound on the concrete floor.

I found the main HVAC control room at the end of a long, dimly lit corridor. The heavy steel door was slightly ajar.

I pressed my back against the wall, gripping the dagger tightly, and peered through the crack.

The room was dominated by a massive, industrial air-handling unit. The digital control panels had been smashed, the screens shattered and sparking.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside, sweeping the corners.

Empty.

Jake was already gone. But he had left his payload behind.

Standing in front of the main intake valve was a heavy, pressurized steel canister. A thick rubber hose ran from the nozzle directly into the ventilation system. Wired to the release valve was a crude, analog timer made from a stolen digital watch and a car battery.

The red numbers on the watch face were counting down.

00:45.

I rushed forward, reaching for the hose to rip it out of the intake. But I stopped, my hand hovering inches from the rubber.

Never follow the blood blindly, Darius’s voice echoed in my memory. If a predator leaves you a neon sign, it’s a trap.

I looked closer at the canister. It wasn’t a standard medical or industrial cylinder. It had been heavily modified, welded shut at the seams. And scratched into the side of the metal, barely visible in the dim light, was a chemical hazard symbol. Not the symbol for a bio-hazard or a knockout agent.

It was the symbol for a corrosive incendiary.

My blood ran cold. I leaned in, sniffing the air around the nozzle. It didn’t smell like halothane. It smelled faintly of sulfur and garlic.

White phosphorus.

The realization hit me with the force of a freight train. Jake hadn’t made a mistake leaving his notebook behind in Odesa. He wanted Varga to find it. He wanted Varga to run the math on the knockout gas.

Varga had equipped his men with rebreathers, thinking they would just hold their breath, wait for the room to go to sleep, and ambush Jake when he walked in.

But rebreathers don’t protect your skin. They don’t protect your eyes.

Jake wasn’t pumping a knockout agent into the ballroom. He was pumping an aerosolized, highly concentrated form of white phosphorus dust and synthetic capsaicin. The moment it hit the air, it would ignite on contact with moisture—sweat, eyes, lungs. It would burn Isabella’s entire syndicate alive, and Varga’s men right along with them.

He wasn’t a king anymore. He was a machine, calculating the most ruthless, efficient way to clear the board.

I looked at the timer.

00:30.

I reached for the wires connecting the watch to the valve, desperate to disarm it. But as I traced the wires, I saw the secondary trigger. A thin, nearly invisible copper wire was wrapped around the main hose, connected to a block of C4 wedged under the canister.

An anti-tamper switch. If I pulled the hose, or cut the wrong wire, the C4 would detonate, taking out the foundational pillars of the palace and bringing the entire wing down on top of me.

I couldn’t stop it.

00:22.

I spun around and sprinted out of the HVAC room, taking the concrete stairs three at a time. My lungs burned, my stitched shoulder screaming in agony with every violent movement.

I burst through the service doors and back into the kitchen, shoving past a line of startled waiters.

I had twenty seconds to get to the ballroom. Twenty seconds to find Claire in a sea of panicked billionaires. Twenty seconds before the Feral King burned the Hofburg Palace to the ground.