The rain didn’t fall—it slashed.
By the time Alina reached the burned-out district where her orphan informants once ran messages for the Deloné empire, her heels were soaked in soot, and her fury was lightning sharp.
Lorenzo stayed close, his trench coat billowing as his hand slid under her elbow like a silent oath.
“You know this is a trap,” he murmured.
“I know,” she replied. “But they’re going to learn that I spring tighter than they do.”
Nicholas’s voice crackled through her comm. “Thermal shows three figures in the warehouse. One moving. Two bound.”
She didn’t flinch.
Bound meant alive.
Still savable.
Still time.
She kicked in the rusted door. It flew open with a scream of metal.
What they saw wasn’t a scene—it was a warning.
Two of her men, stripped, gagged, hanging from
