Kael sat in the dim glow of the safe house, the overhead light flickering like a dying star. Shadows stretched long across the walls, swallowing the corners of the room in an eerie half-darkness.His fingers curled into a fist on the tabletop, the weight of Elias’s message pressing on his chest like a steel vice.“You can’t fight me, Kael. You never could.”The words weren’t just a taunt.They were a reminder.A reminder that Elias had always been three steps ahead. Always knew how to push Kael into a corner without even touching him.And now—Now, Elias had Pamela.Kael clenched his jaw, forcing himself to breathe through the frustration coiling in his chest.This wasn’t just a battle for Cresmont anymore.This was personal.The stale air pressed against him, thick with the scent of dust and old leather. Across the room, Selene leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. The tension in her stance was unmistakable.She had been quiet since they left Marcus at the underground

Kael stood at the center of the safe house, unmoving, staring at the flickering screen before him.A string of coordinates glowed in the dim light, a sequence of numbers that might as well have been a death sentence.Elias’s stronghold.The place Kael had spent years trying to uncover. The fortress where Elias had rebuilt himself from the ground up, cloaked in shadows, untouchable. A sanctuary of secrets, a nest of vipers where every man inside was willing to die for him.And now, Kael knew exactly where to find it.He let out a slow breath, the weight of the moment pressing against his chest.Behind him, the safe house was eerily quiet. No hum of traffic, no distant sirens—just the subtle crackle of the monitor and the faint sound of Marcus shifting against the edge of the table.Marcus looked like hell. His shirt was torn, the fabric still stained with blood from the last mission. His face was pale, the edges of his wound just beginning to heal, but his hands remained steady.His vo

Time slowed to a crawl.The sharp scent of gunpowder lingered in the air, mixing with the acrid stench of burning metal and blood. The echoes of battle still rang in Kael’s ears—short bursts of gunfire, the clash of bodies, the desperate shouts—but now, there was only silence. A silence heavier than the battlefield itself.He wasn’t breathing hard. He had trained himself not to.His grip on the gun remained firm, his body still locked in combat stance, every muscle coiled and ready. But something in his mind was already screaming what his body refused to acknowledge.This wasn’t a pause in the battle.The battle was already over.Kael had known, deep down, that it had been too easy. Too clean. There had been no desperate last stand, no brutal firefight, no bodies littering the floor in waves of resistance.From the moment they had stepped into the fortress, from the moment Pamela hadn’t been restrained, from the moment Elias’s men hadn’t been trying to kill them—but control them—It h

The room was heavy with the weight of the choice laid before him.Kael felt the pressure settle in his chest, cold and suffocating, like invisible chains tightening around his ribs. His mind was racing, dissecting every word Elias had spoken, every implication hidden in his cryptic taunts. The worst part?It made sense.Too much sense.But that didn’t mean he would accept it.Elias had spent years weaving this war, twisting reality into something he could control, shaping the battlefield long before Kael had ever set foot on it. And now, he had the audacity to stand here, calm, collected, offering Kael a place at his side like it was some kind of twisted reward.Like Kael should be grateful.Like he should thank him.The thought made his stomach turn.“No.”The word came sharp and final, slicing through the silence like a blade.Selene stiffened beside him. Marcus exhaled sharply. Pamela, always unreadable, merely flicked her gaze toward Elias, watching, waiting.And Elias?He didn’t

Kael’s fingers dug into the warped edges of the city map, his grip iron-tight as he traced the crimson-stained districts. The markers bled across Cresmont like an infection, each one a stark reminder of how much ground they had lost.Every red pin was a neighborhood gutted.A street erased.A life taken.Elias wasn’t just winning—he was purging.Kael had seen power struggles before, seen men carve their names into the underbelly of cities. But this wasn’t strategy. It wasn’t about influence.It was about elimination.Cresmont wasn’t falling under Elias’s control.It was being burned out.The weight in Kael’s chest was suffocating, pressing like a cold vice around his ribs. The realization was stark, unforgiving—this wasn’t about power anymore. Elias wasn’t looking to rule Cresmont.He was looking to erase it.And Kael was the last piece standing.A loose thread in an empire Elias was setting ablaze.One that would be cut sooner rather than later.Marcus let out a slow breath from wher