THE RAVEN PROTOCOL

Chapter 1: The Agent in the Shadows

Ayla Trent had never believed in coincidences.The days when she would have—when she trusted the world to be a little more simple—had long since passed. But even with all the training she’d undergone, the people she’d buried, and the lies she’d been fed, nothing had prepared her for the storm that was about to hit.It started with a phone call.Ayla sat alone at her desk in the dimly lit office, the weight of countless files stacked in front of her. There were no windows here in the basement of the FBI headquarters—only the steady hum of the air conditioning and the cold, hard surface of the desk under her fingers. Every case she worked seemed to grow darker by the minute, each investigation twisting into something she couldn’t quite understand.Her fingers hovered over a pile of files on her father’s old cases—the ones that had been buried years ago after his death. She’d spent years trying to find answers, trying to piece together a man she thought she knew. But there was one thing