Find out what comes next as the story continues in the following chapter.

I watched him from the library window until he disappeared down the street, his silhouette swallowed by the fog that rolled in off the bay like a recurring bad dream. I didn't panic. I didn't run. I closed the reference desk, flipped the "Closed" sign, and locked the library door with a calm that bordered on the surreal.

I went home, the walk to the cottage feeling like a walk across a tightrope I had built for myself. Every shadow felt like a threat, every gust of wind like a warning. But when I stepped into the cottage, the smell of dinner—the same roasted garlic and rosemary—greeted me, and I felt the hard, sharp edges of my resolve return.

I went to the secret compartment and pulled out the ledger.

The man in the library hadn't been an assassin. He’d been a messenger. He was telling me that they knew where I was. They weren't coming for me—they were inviting me to finish it.

I turned the pages of the ledger. There was a section I’d ignored for months—the list of “UNRESOLVED ASSETS.”

They weren't just moving people; they were moving technology, weapons, and intellectual property. The Syndicate was more than a trafficking ring. It was an infrastructure. And the man in the library was its newest architect.

I realized then that I couldn't hide. I couldn't run. If I stayed in the dark, they would eventually find a way to reach me, to reach Chloe.

I had to be the one to strike first.

I grabbed my bag, the thumb drives, and the ledger. I left a note for Chloe—a note she wouldn't read until the morning, a note that told her how much I loved her and that I was going to work.

I left the cottage, the ocean singing a mournful, steady song as I drove toward the nearest train station.

I was heading to the place where the Syndicate’s core was based—a location I’d only dared to dream of, a location the man in the library had given me in the subtext of his visit.

I wasn't afraid. I was focused.

The train ride was long, the rhythmic clatter of the wheels against the track acting as a metronome for the plan I was building in my mind.

I reached the city, the skyscrapers rising like jagged teeth against the twilight sky. It was a place of ghosts, of forgotten lives, and of secrets buried deep in the concrete.

I walked the streets, feeling the pulse of the city, the rhythm of the life I had once lived. I saw the brownstone, standing silent and cold in the gathering dark. It looked so small, so insignificant, a monument to a life I had once thought was mine.

I looked at the front door. I could see the ghost of myself in the reflection of the glass—the woman who had been a placeholder, the woman who had been a nanny.

She was gone.