The silence after the call ends is deafening.
Thomas stares at his phone like it might explode. Tony's face has gone completely blank - not angry, not scared, just... empty. The shutdown of someone whose mind is processing an impossible reality.
"They want you to kill me." Tony's voice is eerily calm and detached. Like he's discussing the weather instead of his own execution.
"I won't." Thomas sets the phone down with shaking hands. "I'd die first."
"Then we both die." Tony's green eyes are distant. "Plus Katherine, Elliot, and everyone we care about. That's what M said."
My mind is already racing, analyzing, calculating. This is what I do: take impossible problems and break them into solvable components. Banking trained me to see patterns, find solutions, and work the angles.
"Then we fake it," I say. Both men turn to look at me. "We fake Tony's death. Stage it, photograph it, send proof to M to buy ourselves time."
