The report sat on Silas’s desk like a unexploded shell.

His investigator a former GCHQ analyst code name Halloway who Silas had used for twelve years and trusted because he had never needed to trust him had delivered it at 6:00 AM London time. A thin folder. Twelve pages. Routing traces, server logs, timestamp analyses. The kind of document that made Silas’s heart slow down instead of speed up, because his body knew what his brain was still refusing to process.

Halloway had traced the Luna leak email through three anonymizing relays. São Paulo to Jakarta to a dead node in Romania. Standard obfuscation competent, not exceptional. But the handoff protocols between relays, the signature fragmentation pattern, the error-correction behavior on packet loss... Silas had seen this architecture before.

He had paid for it to be built.

Five years ago, Michael and few other were hired and paid to design a communication relay system for Silas’s European operations. The brief was specific: messages had to move between jurisdictions without leaving fingerprints. Michael and his team had delivered a system so clean that even the Romanian dead node was a mirror of the original design a placeholder server that held encrypted fragments for exactly forty seconds before dissolving them into noise.

Silas opened the folder to page seven. A side-by-side comparison. Left column: Michael’s 2019 relay schematic. Right column: the Luna leak routing trace. The signatures weren’t identical. Someone had modified the code stripped out the redundancy layers, added a Jakarta hop that didn’t exist in the original. But the skeletal structure was unmistakable. Same bone structure. Different clothes. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Silas sat back in his chair and looked at the Thames. It was gray this morning, the color of old concrete. He had not slept well. For three weeks he had been telling himself that Michael was a non-factor. That the leak came from somewhere else. That his twenty-three-year asset the most reliable instrument Silas had ever deployed would not destroy the only leverage they had against Dayo simply because he was angry about being benched.

That story was getting harder to believe after all he believed that Micheal was in a sit that many would literally kill for so he had no reason to betray him on whatsoever.

His phone rang. The secure line. Michael’s direct number. Right on time.

Silas let it ring twice before answering. "Yes."

"Reporting in," Michael said. His voice was flat, professional, exactly the right temperature. Not too eager. Not too distant. "I’ve been monitoring Dayo’s expansion patterns. He’s not stopping at Nigeria. He’s preparing launches in Ghana and South Africa same content strategy, same skit-to-song pipeline, same staggered release architecture. My source inside his Lagos team confirms the contracts are already moving towards signing the deal."

Silas held the phone to his ear and stared at the routing report. "Your source."

"Lower-level staff. Someone who handles travel logistics. They’ve seen the Ghana visa applications, the South African distribution agreements. It’s real, Silas. Dayo is building a continental network just like the one in Asia while we’re still figuring out who leaked a story."

The words were perfectly placed. Real information wrapped in the appearance of exclusive intelligence. Silas had used this technique himself a thousand times feed someone a truth they can verify, and they won’t question the lie you’re selling alongside it.

"Ghana and South Africa," Silas repeated. "That’s useful."

"I thought you’d want to know. He’s moving fast. We lost Nigeria because we were reactive. If we lose the whole continent, we lose the war."

Silas turned a page in the report. Halloway had noted something at the bottom of page nine a timing anomaly. The Luna leak email was composed at 11:47 PM Pacific time. Silas cross-referenced mentally. Michael’s office was in Century City. The email could have been sent from anywhere. But 11:47 PM was late for a man who supposedly had no reason to be awake and working on something unrelated to his instructions.

"Michael," Silas said quietly. "Where were you the night the Luna story broke?"

The silence on the other end of the line lasted exactly 1.4 seconds. Silas counted.

"I was in my office," Michael said. "Alone. I saw the story trending around midnight my time. I watched it unfold like everyone else. I remember thinking that whoever leaked it had just destroyed our best leverage that we had on Dayo since we started aiming for what he uses."

"And you didn’t call me."

"I tried. The line was dead. You’d already cut me off by then."

Silas nodded at the phone, though Michael couldn’t see him. "I see."

"I can provide proof if you need it. Security footage from my building. Phone logs showing no outgoing calls during that window. Credit card receipts I ordered Thai food at 10:30 PM, ate it at my desk while reviewing Dayo’s Nigerian artist profiles. I have nothing to hide, Silas." Micheal answered as if the answer was already planned ahead in a scenario were it was asked.

The cooperation was surgical. Almost too clean. Innocent men offered proof reluctantly. Guilty men offered it proactively, because they had prepared it in advance. But guilty men also sometimes panicked and over-explained, and Michael was doing neither. He was just... available. Cooperative. Exactly what a loyal asset should sound like when his handler suddenly questioned his alibi.

"That won’t be necessary," Silas said. "Keep monitoring the Ghana and South Africa expansion. I want specifics before the week ends."

"Understood."

The line went dead.

Silas set the phone down and looked at it for a long time. Then he opened his desk drawer and pulled out Michael’s personnel file. Not digital. Paper. The original copy, printed in 2001 when Michael was twenty-nine and hungry and Silas had seen something in him worth cultivating.

Zero disciplinary incidents. Zero failed missions until Dayo. Perfect attendance at every briefing. Every report submitted on time. Every debt paid, every favor returned, every instruction followed without deviation. The pattern of a machine that never made mistakes. Or the pattern of a man who was too careful to leave any.

Silas had built his career on reading people. On understanding the fracture points in loyalty, the moments when self-interest overcame discipline. He had watched politicians sell their ideals for cash. He had watched businessmen sell their partners for survival. He had never once, in thirty years, suspected Michael because Michael had never given him a reason.

Now he had a reason. Not proof. But a reason.

The routing architecture. The timing. The convenient desperation. The excuse that was already polished *I tried reaching you. You cut me off.* The words of a man who had rehearsed his defense before he was accused.

Silas walked to his window and pressed his forehead against the cool glass. The Thames moved below him. Gray. Indifferent. A body of water that had carried secrets for two thousand years and would carry them for two thousand more.

He made a decision. He would not call Graham. He would not call Isobel or Leonard. If the leak had come from inside, the investigation had to happen inside too. The other three bosses would panic, would confront Michael directly, would destroy the only asset who might still be useful even if he was compromised. Silas needed time. He needed to watch. He needed to let Michael believe he was still trusted while he searched for the thread that would unravel the lie.

He returned to his desk and opened a new file on his personal laptop. He labeled it *Luna — Internal Review*. He began typing notes. Questions. Timelines. Cross-references between Michael’s known locations and the leak’s digital footprint. He worked for two hours without stopping.

At 11:00 AM, his secure line rang again. Isobel. He let it go to voicemail.

At 11:15 AM, Graham texted: *"Have you seen the Ghana reports? Dayo is moving faster than we projected. We need to respond."*

Silas read the text and didn’t reply. He had spent his life controlling variables. Now he was beginning to understand that the most dangerous variable was the one he had stopped watching because he believed it was chained to his desk.

Michael had been in his office that night. Alone. With Thai food and Dayo’s Nigerian artist profiles and a laptop that could reach any server in the world.

Silas looked at the routing report one more time. Same bone structure. Different clothes.

He closed the folder, locked it in his desk drawer, and made a note to have Halloway run a deeper trace not on the email’s path, but on Michael’s digital movements for the forty-eight hours surrounding the leak. Financial transactions. VPN logs. Any unusual access patterns.

The fracture was small. Hairline. Invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking directly at it.

But Silas was looking. And he had thirty years of practice watching hairline fractures become chasms.

(A/N: Shameless author asking for Golden Ticket 🎟 it doubles during this period so if I get up to ten one extra Chapter )