Chapter 17

The first file dropped at midnight.

Encrypted. Untraceable. Brutally clear.

Footage of covert assassinations, names of agents embedded in foreign governments, financial links between multinational corporations and Echo's shadow operations. It flooded the dark web, then leaked to mainstream forums. Journalists scrambled. Politicians denied. But the truth spread like wildfire.

And every single name was tagged with the same insignia burned into Aria's memory.

E

They watched it all unfold from a safe house carved into the icy bones of Reykjavik. Concrete walls. Military-grade firewalls. Silence, except for the soft hum of servers and the occasional clink of coffee cups left untouched.

Aria stood at the window, breath fogging the glass. "We started a war."

Julian, behind her, didn't look away from the terminal screen. "No. We just made it public."

She turned slowly, shadows under her eyes. "What happens now?"

He finally looked up. "Now they start hunting."

He was right.

Within hours, the Syndicate struck back.

Three journalists disappeared. Two more were found dead in a river in Prague. The New York Times offices suffered a suspicious fire. And someone had posted Aria's face online.

Target: Aria Laurent. Alive. Authorization: Tier One Asset.

Julian slammed his fist into the desk.

"They're putting a bounty on you."

She didn't flinch. "Good. Let them come."

"You don't get to be brave about this," he snapped, voice low and furious. "They won't just kill you, Aria. They'll make an example."

"And if we run, they win."

He rose slowly, crossing the room.

His hands cupped her jaw, tilting her face toward him.

"I don't want to lose you."

"You won't," she whispered. "But I need to finish this."

A long pause passed between them, filled with breath and unsaid things.

He dropped his forehead to hers. "Then we finish it together."

—

The plan wasn't complicated. Just impossible.

They had one last name. One last link in the chain. A former Echo handler—Lucien Vale. Once Julian's commanding officer. Presumed dead.

But Severin's intel was clear.

Lucien wasn't dead.

He was running the Syndicate now.

"I buried him," Julian muttered as the plane lifted into the sky. "I put a bullet through his skull in Marrakesh."

Aria leaned against the seat. "Apparently you missed."

He shook his head. "No. I didn't."

She studied his profile. Hard angles. Haunted eyes. "Then how?"

"I don't know."

The jet banked toward Lisbon—Lucien's last known location.

They weren't going to arrest him.

They were going to end him.

—

The safehouse in Lisbon was a crumbling villa disguised as a winery. Men with rifles patrolled the perimeter. Inside, the air reeked of power and rot.

Lucien Vale stood at the head of a long, wooden table, dressed in a tailored suit that didn't belong in a war zone. Salt-and-pepper hair. A cruel mouth. And eyes that gleamed when Julian and Aria were brought in.

"Well, well," Lucien said. "The prodigal traitor returns."

Julian's fingers twitched, but the guards kept their weapons raised.

Aria didn't wait.

"You're running the Syndicate now."

Lucien smiled. "Running it? No. I am it."

"You were dead," Julian growled.

"I was reborn. Echo died with your father, Aria. But the Syndicate lives because of you."

She stiffened. "What?"

"You unlocked the final key. You gave us the map. All of this—the chaos, the files, the exposure—it was part of the culling. We're rebuilding cleaner, faster, deadlier."

Julian lunged.

Gunfire erupted.

Aria dropped to the floor, pulling her own weapon free, rolling under the table. Julian had already taken out two guards, his body a blur of brutal motion.

Lucien ducked behind a pillar, laughing.

"You can't kill an idea, Julian!"

Julian fired again.

Aria crawled across the tiles, flipped the table for cover, and emptied a full clip into the nearest guard's chest.

Then the room went still.

Lucien's voice echoed.

"You think this ends here? I've already uploaded the failsafe. The world will burn whether I live or not."

Aria pressed a button on the detonator Severin had left them—Lucien's own servers rigged with C4.

"I know," she said. "So we'll burn it with you."

She tossed the detonator onto the floor and fired once—dead center.

Lucien's body dropped.

And then the villa exploded.

—

They made it out through the wine cellar, coughing, bleeding, broken—but alive.

The blast took the compound and every last trace of Lucien's network with it.

The failsafe?

Julian had rewritten it.

Instead of releasing more violence, it triggered a data purge. Every Syndicate server across Europe went dark.

By the time the news hit, Aria and Julian were ghosts again.

—

Weeks passed.

They moved. Disguises. New names. They burned old contacts and built new ones. No headlines mentioned their names, but every whisper in the underworld carried the echo of what they'd done.

They had shattered Echo.

They had dismantled the Syndicate.

But the cost clung to Aria like smoke.

She stood by the ocean one morning, wind tangling her hair.

Julian approached, two coffees in hand.

"You still think about him?" he asked.

"Lucien? Or my father?"

"Both."

"Yes," she said softly.

He handed her the coffee.

"You think we won?"

"I think we survived."

He tilted his head. "Not the same."

"No." She looked at him. "But maybe it's enough."

He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close.

They stood there a long time, letting the waves speak for them.

When he kissed her, it wasn't desperate.

It was real.

Something they had bled for.

Something that might finally be theirs.

Even if only for now.