Mérit—¿Cómo se combate a un fantasma, Mérito? —preguntó Michael con voz ronca y vacía.Cerré las pesadas puertas de roble de nuestro despacho y las cerré con llave—. Encontramos a las personas que el fantasma contrató. Rastreamos el dinero que gastaron.—Rafael pasó treinta años rastreando su dinero —respondió Michael. Se quedó junto al gran ventanal, mirando hacia los oscuros jardines—. Tenía a toda la agencia de inteligencia respaldándolo. No encontraron nada. Ni nombres. Ni rostros. Solo empresas fantasma y callejones sin salida.—Rafael no tenía nuestros recursos —argumenté. Me acerqué al escritorio de caoba y dejé caer el expediente de cuero negro sobre la superficie de cristal—. Operaba en secreto. Tenemos la junta directiva. Tenemos el capital.—¡El capital no importa si el enemigo no existe en el papel! —Michael se giró bruscamente. Tenía los ojos muy abiertos. El director ejecutivo tranquilo e intocable que yo conocía había desaparecido por completo—. El suelo se mueve bajo

Dimitri—Repítelo, Dimitri —dijo Michael con una voz terriblemente baja—. Dime que te entendí mal.—Ojalá lo hubieras hecho, Michael —respondí, paralizado en medio del estudio cerrado con llave—. Julian Vance no murió en ese accidente.—¿Cómo es posible? —exigió Michael, acercándose hasta quedar frente a mí—. ¡Mi hermano estaba en ese coche! ¡Mi cuñada estaba en ese coche! ¡Me trajiste sus pertenencias personales después de que se cerró la investigación!—Te traje lo que me entregaron los agentes federales —dije, esforzándome por mantener la voz firme a pesar del nudo que se me formaba en la garganta—. No me permitieron acercarme al vehículo una vez que los bomberos apagaron las llamas. El agente Miller acordonó todo el perímetro en veinte minutos. Me dijo que el calor lo había destruido todo, incluidos los documentos de identificación.—¿Y nunca lo comprobaste? —replicó Michael, con los ojos llenos de frustración. «Fuiste el director de seguridad de confianza de mi padre. ¡Pasaste t

Chapter 27Gwendolyn’s POVThe darkness was total. It wasn't the absence of light; it was the presence of something heavy, ancient, and suffocating. The sound of the hydraulic pistons had stopped, replaced by a wet, rhythmic dripping that echoed off the curved stone walls."Donald? Adrien?" My voice sounded small, swallowed by the damp air.A flashlight clicked on, the beam cutting through the dust. Adrien was standing five feet away, his gun held low, his face a mask of cold professionalism. "I'm here. Stay down, Gwen. The floor is unstable.""Where’s Donald?"The light swung to the left. Donald was slumped against a moss-covered pillar, his leg twisted at a sickening angle. He was gasping, his face the color of the limestone. "I'm... fine. Just a reminder that the Sinclairs were never meant for the trenches."I scrambled toward him, my hands shaking. The McQueen silk gown was ruined, shredded by the fall, but I didn't care. I checked his pulse—it was thready, but there."We have to

Gwendolyn’s POVThorne Manor did not look like a house. It looked like a museum of the soul’s end.The silver Jaguar glided through the iron gates of the estate, nestled deep in the Surrey countryside. High walls topped with electrified glass separated the manicured lawns from the ancient, gnarled woods that surrounded the property. Alistair drove with a numb, practiced efficiency, bypassing the main driveway and veering toward an ivy-covered stone annex that looked like a gardener's shed.“The biometric sensors on the main house are keyed to heat signatures and heart rates,” Alistair whispered, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “If Beatrice detects a spike in the house’s metabolic rhythm, she’ll lock down the lab in thirty seconds. We have to enter through the cold-storage vents.”“How poetic,” I muttered, clutching the McQueen silk wrap around my shoulders. The wet fabric was freezing, but the adrenaline pulsing through my veins was a furnace. “Entering through the back door

35Gwendolyn’s POVMacau rose from the South China Sea like a gilded fever dream. Even at 4:00 AM, the Cotai Strip was a neon scar against the horizon, a monument to the world’s insatiable desire to lose everything on a single turn of the wheel."The Great Vault is situated 60 meters beneath the floor of the Palazzo Sinclair," I said, my voice cutting through the hum of The Jade Dragon’s engines. "Atmospheric pressure is constant. Security is a kinetic-dampening grid. Any sudden movement above 1.5 meters per second triggers a vacuum seal.""Is that all?" Adrien asked, his voice dripping with a sarcasm I categorized as defensive posturing. He was standing near the stern, his eyes fixed on Nathaniel.Nathaniel was sitting in a corner of the bridge, staring at the hexagonal crystal Lord Victor had provided. He looked small, his skin sallow under the yacht’s LED strips. He was no longer crying. He had reached the stage of emotional exhaustion that leads to catatonia. A 92% probability of