The sky above Zurich was gray, mist curling like the breath of giants between glass towers. And inside the Draxon executive suite, Magritte Astair stood in front of a floor-length mirror. Her eyes were unreadable.
But her hands no longer
Jude stood beside her, holding a file folder wrapped in black.
"You look like her," he said softly.
"Who?" Magritte asked, not looking away from the mirror.
"Elias's mother. The night she took the podium for Draxon's first merger. You even chose the same green."
She finally turned. "Was it really a coincidence I was placed at Duchess Corporation?"
"No," Jude admitted. "You were always part of the second protocol."
"What's the first?"
"Elias."
Magritte opened the folder. Inside was a dossier with grainy photographs of a man with one eye, white-blond hair, and a twisted smile.
"Verin. My handler. My ghost," she said bitterly. "And now my prey."
Meanwhile, Elias sat at the back of a cathedral in Milan, waiting. The priest who emerged wasn't a holy man he was a broker.
They spoke in code.
"The bells have rung."
"And the tower bends."
"You want silence?"
"I want thunder."
The broker slid an envelope across the pew. Inside were four international bank keys, and a list of former Draxon sleepers.
"Activate only three. Keep the fourth close. That one's already been compromised."
"By who?"
"Valerie Dexter."
Elias's jaw tightened.
So she was finally playing her own hand.
Magritte's first mission took her to Budapest, where Verin was last spotted in a fortress-club called *The Red Door*. A hideaway for the world's wealthiest ghosts.
She went alone.
Wearing the green dress.
Inside, smoke drifted like spirits above dancers who didn't know they were targets. Magritte moved like music, drawing eyes but she wasn't there to be seen.
She was there to draw him out.
And then she saw him.
Verin, aged but unmistakable. Laughing beside a diplomat. His eye caught her.
He froze.
Then smiled.
"I knew you'd come."
She sat across from him without asking.
"You built me," she said.
He took a sip of wine. "I perfected you."
"And now I'll end you."
He leaned closer, the crowd fading behind him.
"But what happens, my dear, if ending me means ending everything you think you are?"
They talked for seventeen minutes.
Only seven of those words were truth.
Then Magritte pulled a pin from her wristwatch, tossed it behind his chair, and rose. "That was for my childhood."
The explosion wasn't fatal it was meant to blind.
As chaos erupted, she ran.
Through kitchens. Down alleys. Over rooftops.
But Verin was faster than she remembered. He chased her through the night, wounded and laughing.
"You're still not ready, Astair!"
She spun mid-sprint and fired.
Once. Twice.
He fell, but she knew it wasn't the last time they'd meet.
Back in Zurich, Elias met with Landon Crick over scotch and silence.
"You're unraveling," Landon said.
"No. I'm rebuilding."
"At what cost?"
Elias leaned forward. "Everyone's cost. Including yours."
Crick laughed, but it wasn't real. "You're bluffing."
"I never bluff. I delay."
Outside, thunder cracked.
Inside, the lights flickered.
And below their feet, in the very subfloors of Draxon's glass empire, the first of Elias's controlled blackouts had begun.
Each building. Each file. Each memory.
Erased. Or rewritten.
And Verin's name was top of the new list.
The rain had turned to sleet by the time Elias returned to Zurich.
Across every glowing screen, his face returned not as a villain, not as a ghost, but as a mystery the media couldn't dissect fast enough. Headlines questioned his resurrection. Stock analysts whispered about a silent coup at Draxon. And somewhere in the middle of it all stood one silent, strategic mind pulling strings beneath velvet gloves.
But tonight, Elias wasn't pulling strings.
He was sharpening knives.
In the rooftop garden of Draxon Tower, where glass vines wrapped steel archways, Elias met Magritte in secret. She was bleeding a graze on her arm, a fresh one on her cheek. Her hair was a mess, but her posture, straight.
She dropped a bloodied envelope on the table between them.
"Verin's heart still beats," she said.
"But he bleeds?"
"Like a man."
Elias nodded. "Good."
Then he reached into his coat and pulled out a small green knife serrated edge, emerald inlay, worn grip.
"This was my mother's," he said. "She kept it under her pillow the night she died."
Magritte studied it.
"A gift?" she asked.
"A reminder. Of where soft things end and sharp things begin."
He slid it across the table to her.
"Keep it. Next time you see Verin don't miss."
At an art gala funded by the Zurich High Patrons, Valerie Dexter made her move. Her dress was flame-red. Her smile, molten gold.
The cameras loved her.
So did the board members.
So when she raised a toast to the "modern heirs of vision," and slyly inserted Elias's name among her lovers-turned-threats, it made front page news.
But Valerie wasn't just posturing. She was planting poison.
That same night, two Draxon subsidiaries were hacked.
An offshore account Elias had built under the name Mr. Dime was frozen by international banking alerts.
And in his private penthouse?
A red envelope sat on his pillow.
Inside: a lipstick print and a card that read
"You shouldn't have left me at the altar, Eli. Let's see if Zurich bleeds for you."
Elsewhere, in the subterranean bunker beneath Lake Geneva, Elias convened a secret council. Five men. Two women. One former arms dealer. One ex-royal banker. The others ghosts from the old Draxon network.
They called themselves **The Wolves**.
"We act now," Elias said. "Valerie has drawn first blood."
"You mean the second," muttered one. "Verin still breathes."
Elias's stare silenced him.
"I want Zurich back under my palm. I want the media reset. I want every file Valerie touched buried in a vault that doesn't exist."
"And if she doesn't back off?" asked a woman named Sienne, an oil heiress turned cybercriminal.
"She won't," Elias replied. "Which is why we build the dagger."
They all looked at him.
"We hit her where it hurts. Her secret fund Valkyrie Trust."
Murmurs exploded.
"That's suicide," someone whispered.
Elias smiled coldly. "No. That's justice."
The Wolves scattered into the night. Elias returned to his penthouse where Magritte waited, curled in one of his leather chairs, a tumbler of dark liquor in hand.
"You look like hell," he told her.
She smirked. "You don't look like anything. That's worse."
They talked through midnight. Of Verin. Of Valerie.
Of the night Elias almost married her and why he didn't.
"She poisoned my father," he said flatly. "No proof. But I saw her eyes the day he collapsed."
"And your mother?" Magritte asked.
"Died before she could expose the truth."
The silence grew thick between them.
Then Magritte stood. Walked to him.
And kissed him once hard, slow, real.
When they pulled apart, Elias only whispered:
"If this ends badly, I want it to end with you."
Her answer was the click of a gun.
"I don't do soft endings. But I'll bleed with you, Elias."