My grip tightened on the champagne glass until I thought the crystal might shatter. Across the crowded ballroom, Emily looked radiant, but her presence was a tactical nightmare.
"Ethan, talk to me," I hissed into the comms, ducking behind a marble pillar to stay out of her line of sight. "Why is Dr. Emily Rose standing in the middle of a den of vipers?"
"I'm digging now," Ethan's fingers clattered like rain against his keyboard. "Got it. Andrew, she's not here as a guest. She's here as a private physician. Park Ji-hoon—the Shin-Hwa representative—has a chronic heart condition. He refuses to trust the local hospital systems because of 'security concerns.' He pays a premium for a private 'on-call' doctor through a high-end medical agency. That agency sent Emily."
I watched as Park Ji-hoon leaned in, whispering something to her. Emily nodded professionally, her face a mask of polite medical concern.
"She doesn't know who he is," I muttered. "To her, he's just a patient with a weak heart and a deep pocket."
"Exactly," Ethan replied. "But to the Obsidian Circle, a private doctor is a liability who knows too much about their physical weaknesses. If Park feels even a flicker of suspicion that she's connected to you, she's dead."
"She's not a liability," I growled. "She's the target. I need to move."
I couldn't approach her as 'Andrew Parker.' I had to remain 'Andrew Pearson,' the financier. I navigated the crowd, moving with a practiced elegance I hadn't used since I was six years old.
I circled the fountain, coming up behind them just as a waiter offered Park a tray of appetizers.
"Mr. Park," I said, my voice smooth and devoid of any Brooklyn grit. "A pleasure to see you again. The Shin-Hwa merger is the talk of the evening."
Park Ji-hoon turned, his eyes narrowing behind thin-rimmed glasses. "Do I know you, young man?"
"Andrew Pearson. Pearson & Associates," I lied, offering a hand. "We handled the logistics for your Thai partners last quarter."
As he took my hand, Emily's eyes met mine.
For a heartbeat, the world stopped. Her pupils dilated in shock. I saw her mouth start to form the letter 'A' for my name, her brain trying to reconcile the 'brooding athlete' with the man in a three-thousand-dollar tuxedo.
I didn't blink. I squeezed Park's hand firmly and gave Emily a look of absolute, icy indifference. Don't speak. Don't acknowledge me.
"And who is this charming lady?" I asked, looking at Emily as if I had never seen her before.
Emily caught the hint. The shock in her eyes turned into a flicker of understanding, then a mask of professional boredom. "I am Mr. Park's personal physician for the evening," she said, her voice steady. "And I'm afraid I have to insist my patient takes his medication and finds a quiet place to sit. The noise in this hall is not good for his blood pressure."
Park laughed, a dry, raspy sound. "She is very strict, Mr. Pearson. But she is the best."
"Health is the ultimate investment, Mr. Park," I said. "I'll leave you to your doctor's care."
As I turned away, Emily's hand brushed my sleeve—a quick, desperate touch. She slipped something into the pocket of my tuxedo. I didn't stop. I kept walking toward the kitchen elevators.
Once I was in the service corridor, I pulled out the scrap of paper Emily had slipped me.
"He has a panic room on the 5th floor. He's meeting a man named Mikhail at 9:30. They're talking about a 'firewall.' Be careful, Andrew. You're not the only ghost here."
She knew. She didn't know the whole story, but she knew I was hunting. And she had just given me the location of the meeting.
"Ethan, did you get that?"
"Loud and clear. The 5th floor isn't on the public blueprints. It's a hidden executive level. I'm bypassing the elevator lockout now... 3... 2... 1. Go."
The elevator doors opened into a hallway that looked more like a bunker than a ballroom. The walls were reinforced steel, and the air was chilled. At the end of the hall stood two men—Russian, by the look of their suits—guarding a heavy oak door.
I didn't wait for them to speak.
I used the 'smiling ice cube' spray—not on myself, but as a distraction. I tossed the canister toward the far end of the hall. As it hit the floor with a clatter, the guards turned their heads.
In that half-second, I was on them.
I didn't use a gun. I used my hands—the hands that had spent a decade learning how to break things. A palm strike to the throat of the first guard. A spinning heel kick—the Sunback Spike technique—to the temple of the second.
They dropped like stones.
I pushed open the oak door.
Inside, the room was dimly lit. Mikhail Volkov sat behind a desk, a cigar in his hand. Park Ji-hoon stood by the window.
Mikhail didn't look up. "Did you bring the encryption keys, Park?"
"I brought something better," I said, stepping into the light.
Mikhail froze. He looked at me, his eyes traveling from my face to the way I stood. He recognized the eyes. He recognized the ghost.
"Oliver?" he whispered, his cigar falling to the floor. "Impossible. You died in Shanghai."
"The fire didn't take," I said, pulling the silenced pistol from my ankle holster. "But tonight, Mikhail... the fire is coming for you."
Mikhail Volkov's eyes bulged as the weight of the past crashed into the room. He reached for the drawer of his desk, his fingers scrambling for a weapon that was too far away.
"You should have stayed a memory, Thompson," Mikhail spat, his voice trembling with a mixture of hatred and shock.
I didn't give him the satisfaction of a conversation. My heart was a block of ice; the rage that had burned for ten years had finally crystallized into a cold, lethal precision. I raised the silenced pistol.
Thud. Thud.
Two rounds. One to the chest, one to the forehead. Mikhail slumped back into his leather chair, the cigar still smoldering on the rug. The man who had set the fire in Shanghai was extinguished in total silence. There was no dramatic music, no final speech—just the quiet ending of a monster.
I turned my gaze toward Park Ji-hoon.
The South Korean representative was paralyzed by the window. His face was ghostly pale, his hand clutching his chest where his weak heart was likely hammering against his ribs.
"Please," Park gasped, his voice a pathetic wheeze. "I am just a businessman. I only managed the data. I didn't touch the matches."
"You managed the data that erased my family's existence," I said, walking toward him. I didn't aim the gun at his head. Instead, I aimed it at his leg.
Thud.
Park shrieked as he collapsed to the floor, clutching his thigh. I moved with the speed of a predator, holstering my weapon and pulling a pre-loaded syringe from my inner pocket—a fast-acting sedative Ethan had provided for 'high-value extractions.'
I jammed the needle into Park's neck. He struggled for a few seconds, his eyes rolling back in his head, before his body went limp.
"Ethan," I whispered into the comms. "Volkov is down. Permanent. I have Park. He's the bridge to Shin-Hwa and the Thai group. I'm taking him out through the service hatch."
"Copy that," Ethan's voice crackled. "The kitchen staff is in a shift change. You have four minutes before the guards on the 5th floor are discovered. Move!"
I grabbed Park by the collar of his expensive suit and began dragging his dead weight toward the back exit. He was the ledger I needed. He was the witness who would lead me to Thailand, to South Korea, and finally, back to Benjamin.
As I reached the service elevator, I looked back at the room. Mikhail was still in his chair, a shadow in a dark room. The first pillar of the Obsidian Circle had fallen.
I stepped into the lift, dragging Park inside. The doors closed, the gold-plated interior reflecting a man who no longer looked like an athlete or a doctor's friend. I looked like the ghost I was meant to be.
I dragged Park Ji-hoon's unconscious body into the backseat of a stolen sedan I'd parked in the shadow of the Navy Yard's shipyard. My breath was heavy, the scent of gunpowder still clinging to the wool of my tuxedo. I slammed the door and sped away just as the first wail of a siren echoed from the Building 77 entrance.
My phone, tucked in the center console, began to vibrate.
The screen lit up: EMILY.
I ignored it, my eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. I took three sharp turns, weaving through the industrial side-streets of Brooklyn until I reached a nondescript warehouse near the Gowanus Canal. Ethan was already there, the roll-up door opening just enough for me to slide the car inside.
"You got him," Ethan said, stepping into the light. He looked at the bleeding wound on Park's leg. "He's alive, but he's terrified."
"He's the only one who can unlock the Shin-Hwa files," I said, hauling Park out and dumping him onto a metal chair. "Tie him down. Don't let him wake up until I'm back."
My phone vibrated again. EMILY (4 missed calls).
"Where are you going?" Ethan asked, noticing me peeling off my tuxedo jacket.
"The doctor," I muttered. "If I don't show up, she'll call the police or go back into that building looking for me. I need to get her away from the scene."
I stripped out of the midnight-blue suit, throwing it into a trash bin. I pulled a plain black hoodie and jeans from the trunk of my car—the armor of Andrew Parker. I splashed cold water on my face, scrubbing away the 'Oliver Thompson' mask, though I couldn't wash away the coldness in my eyes.
I drove back toward the hospital district. My phone rang for the tenth time. I finally swiped to answer.
"Andrew! Where are you?" Emily's voice was frantic, breathless. "The Navy Yard... there were shots. The police are everywhere. My patient—Mr. Park—he's gone. Someone took him."
"I'm around the corner from the ER entrance," I said, my voice forced into a calm I didn't feel. "Stay where you are. Don't talk to the cops. I'm coming to get you."
Five minutes later, I pulled up to the curb. Emily was standing under the bright white lights of the hospital sign, her emerald dress covered by a trench coat, looking pale and shaken. The moment I stopped, she wrenched the door open and climbed in.
"Andrew, your hand..." she gasped, noticing a small cut on my knuckle. "What happened? I saw you with him, and then the lights went out, and—"
She stopped, looking at me—really looking at me. I wasn't the man in the tuxedo anymore, but I wasn't the athlete either.
"Mr. Park is safe," I lied, my voice low and steady. I reached out and took her hand—the one with the crescent moon—and held it firmly. "I told you I was security. My job was to get the high-value targets out if things went south. I did my job."
Emily stared at me, her chest heaving. "You're lying. I can smell the smoke on you."
"Emily," I said, leaning closer until she had no choice but to focus on me. "Do you trust me?"
She hesitated, her eyes searching mine for the boy she remembered, or the man she was starting to know. Finally, she nodded slowly.
"Then don't ask about tonight," I said. "I'm taking you home. You need to sleep."
As I drove her away from the chaos, I felt the weight of the secret growing heavier. I had one man dead in a penthouse and another tied to a chair in a warehouse. And beside me sat the only person who could make me forget I was a killer.