Lucien didn’t go home that night.
He stayed in his office, the lights dimmed, the city stretched below him like a restless animal. The building was quiet in the way only powerful places became after midnight—no noise, no witnesses, just consequences waiting to be claimed.
He replayed Jonathan’s words in his mind, not the ones spoken in the boardroom, but the ones unsaid. The calm confidence. The certainty. Jonathan hadn’t been guessing. He’d been measuring.
Lucien hated that.
At three in the morning, Elias knocked once and entered. “We traced the burner phone,” he said, placing a folder on the desk. “It’s clean. Too clean. Whoever handled it knew how to erase footprints.”
Lucien leaned back in his chair. “But?”
“But the signal bounced through a shell server connected to one of our su
