Ethan's POV
I had asked for the car. The command left my mouth and the house responded with the mechanical precision I paid for: a key sequence, a lock override, a driver on standby.
The McLaren would be ready in minutes. Speed mattered now — timing was an edge I could not afford to lose.
I sat back down at the console, the glow of the monitors washing my face in pale blue. The farmhouse's quiet pressed against the glass. Raina's silhouette on the bedroom feed was small, curled, exhausted, still sleeping. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, jagged pulls. She looked fragile enough to break and stubborn enough to survive. Both things made my hands clench.
"Trace the leak," I said aloud, too casual for what I meant. Mike moved like a shadow beside me, efficient, calm, the kind of man who understood the difference between panic and action.
We began peeling the timeline apart the same way you dissect an animal: slow and methodical. Entry node. Relay hops. Exit node. Each hop peeled back another layer of deception, another false road. The routing looked elegant at first, complex, layered, professional, the kind of architecture designed to be invisible.
I watched the map populate and die, populate and die. Someone had built a maze around the origin and then set fire to it.
"Balkan-style rerouting," Mike said quietly.
"Multiple proxies through shell servers, then multiplexed through encrypted nodes in Eastern Europe and Latin America.
I already knew that. Nina's husband had ties to those patterns, money with names that didn't exist, businesses that were fronts. The ex-husband's old associates had the same playbook. My mind put two and two together before my mouth could form it.
"Run a correlation against known assets," I said. "Look for patterns that match Nina's network, casinos, shipping shells, accounts with no real owners."
Mike's fingers moved. The screens read like X-rays. Strings blinked. The clock in the corner of the study crawled forward: 5:12 AM. Less than two hours.
Someone wanted to burn everything fast. Leak early. Hurt loud.
We traced a few weak seams, a VPN that terminated in a Moscow node, a routing handoff that stopped at a virtual exchange in Belgrade, then broke. Each node had a hundred faces, a hundred fake passports, a hundred alibis. Whoever did this had money or anger, probably both. And they were patient enough to make the attack look artisanal.
I didn't like patience. I respected speed.
"Try a voice probe," I said. "Check chat logs, IRC backchannels, any open C2 chatter in the last twenty-four hours, throw a wide net. I want any whisper, any ping, any bleed."
Mike's jaw tightened. He ran the queries. The ocean of data frothed. For a moment the room felt like a cathedral where prayers were made to code. Then, nothing decisive. Just static and the faint smell of other people's ambitions.
At 5:28 AM the burner rang.
The number displayed a string of meaningless digits, randomized, layered, designed to exist only for this moment. I felt the phone like a live animal in my hand. I expected threats. I expected posturing. I did not expect the voice that answered to be soft and amused.
"Well met, Mr. Hale," the man said. He spoke English with the practiced cadence of someone who had learned charm and cruelty together. "You're very busy today."
The voice slid like oil across glass. I recognized the structure, not the name: a man comfortable with money, with hired brutality, with leaving damage that could be polished later. The smile in his tone scraped.
"You've got one chance to stop wasting time," I said. I kept it minimal. Code over feelings. Logic above panic.
"Oh, Ethan," he purred, "you doing defensive maneuvers like a child with a new toy is almost cute." His amusement cut like a blade. "But this isn't about you. It's about the things you care for. About your father's little pride and his daughter's nice life."
I didn't flinch. The smile on that line was a promise. "You're playing with fire."
"Fire makes good light," the man replied. "We just want the world to look at her for a while. Let her look at December again. Let her remember. That will make her father flinch. That will make you flinch."
Nina's network had motive; the ex-husband's allies had both motive and method. I had removed so many men like this from his orbit, buried their tracks under my own. But this operator didn't rely only on knives. He used the public as a blade.
"Who are you?" I asked. I already knew I'd be told nothing.
A small, satisfied sigh crossed the line, as if the man enjoyed the sound of his own voice. "You know enough. Tell your precious Raina to enjoy the morning. We'll make sure she remembers."
Mike's hand hovered near his holster. My thumb tightened on the phone.
"You won't get away with this," I said.
"Get away with what?" The man's tone turned playful. "We'll be there when the papers hit. Watch closely, Hale. Watch everything burn around you and choose whether you can save anyone by being cold and precise… or whether you will lose the things you say you care about."
The line clicked out.
I stared at the dead digits on the screen. The study felt suddenly smaller, like someone had walked behind the walls and pulled the air thin.
My chest tightened, not in panic. In calculation. In a hollow iron certainty.
They wanted Raina to break. They wanted leverage. They wanted to extend the wound of December into her present.
I thought of the smallness of her sleeping form on the monitor. The smudged ink on the signature. The black rose on the dresser. All of it fragile and human and maddeningly exposed.
"Patch every node," I ordered. "Call in favors. Get me the countermeasures. Put the estate on full lockdown. Call Vikram, now and tell him the leak origin has been accelerated."
Mike moved like trained kinetic energy. He reached for the secure line to Vikram, then paused, a hesitation I felt like an electric shock. "Mr. Singhania, the caller indicated he'll be on-site when the leak hits. He said, and I quote, 'See you at seven.'"
Seven.
Three hours from now had become two.
Something inside me shifted into a dangerous focus. The car I'd ordered would get there in minutes; it would move faster than most things. But speed without information was only momentum.
"Ready, McLaren," I said. "Prepare every secure channel I own. Send diversions through the feeds. Let them think they control the narrative; I'll own the frame."
Mike's face was set. He worked.
I picked up another line, one that should belong to the operator. I fed false routing, baited with a pretend lead in a remote node so crude it would draw attention. The plan was to smoke him out, to force him to reveal something real. But even as I set the trap, a cold part of me knew: this man had layered exits like labyrinth walls. He could vanish three times and still be smiling.
The house hummed with primed machinery. The leak could come early; the world could ignite at any moment. I felt time compress down to an instrument I could bend or snap.
On the screen, Raina shifted in sleep. Her fingers clutched the sheet. Her mouth opened to a sound I half-wished I could erase.
The burner phone buzzed again, another unknown number. A fresh, ragged whisper of someone who wanted to keep me awake and angry.
My hand closed around it.
I answered before Mike could stop me.
"Mr. Hale," the man said warmly, like an old friend delivering a diagnosis. "See you at seven."
The line went dead.
I set the phone down carefully, as if it were radioactive.
Outside, the first distant rumble of thunder rolled across the hills.
Three hours had become two.
Two had become less.
I stood, palms flat on the console, and tasted the metal of urgency.