The morning air was thick with tension.
Adriana stood by the wide windows of the safehouse, watching as Marcus and a few trusted men loaded crates into the back of an unmarked van. Each crate was labeled with false shipping manifests—Marco’s version of camouflage. Inside were hard drives, financial files, burner phones, and weapons. Tools for war.
The Ledger sat open on the kitchen table, its pages tagged and underlined. Every name in that book was a threat—or a possible weapon. Adriana had memorized most of them by now. Patterns were beginning to emerge, threads she could follow, exploit.
She wasn’t the same woman who had signed that contract with trembling hands.
“Your instincts are good,” Marco said from behind her, his voice low and rough. “You see things others miss.”
Adriana tur
