The sun rose over the Tyrrhenian Sea not as a herald of victory, but as a cold, clinical witness to the wreckage. The extraction boat, a matte-black interceptor, sat a mile off the coast, bobbing in the rhythmic swell of the tide. On the horizon, a single plume of gray smoke climbed into the sky where the cliffside had once held the secrets of the Moretti line.
Seraphina stood at the stern, her hair matted with salt and limestone dust. She wore one of Alessandro’s oversized tactical jackets, the fabric still smelling of gunpowder and the faint, woodsy scent of his cologne. Her hands were steady, but the silence inside her mind was deafening. The digital tether that had bound her to Julian for twenty-six years had been severed, leaving a phantom limb sensation that made the world feel stra
