[Ethan’s POV]

Bucharest didn’t welcome us; it swallowed us.

The Gulfstream touched down at a private airstrip on the outskirts of the city just as the sun was beginning to set, casting long, bruised shadows across the cracked tarmac. The air outside the cabin was thick with the smell of diesel exhaust and impending rain.

I stepped off the airstairs first, my hand resting casually near the small of my back where the Glock was holstered. Claire followed close behind, carrying a sleek, reinforced briefcase that held her laptop and a stack of untraceable euros.

A rusted black Mercedes sedan was waiting for us near the edge of the runway. The driver, a thick-necked man smoking a cheap cigarette, didn’t get out to open the doors. He just stared at us through the rearview mirror.

"Aegis Solutions local contact?" Claire asked quietly, her eyes scanning the perimeter.

"No," I said, keeping my voice low. "Aegis is compromised in Europe. Isabella Vane has been buying out our private military contractors for the last six months. If we used Vanguard’s official security network, Isabella would know we were here before we even cleared customs."

"So who is he?"

"A smuggler I found on the dark web," I said, walking toward the car. "He doesn’t know who we are, and he doesn’t care. He just knows we pay in cash."

We climbed into the back of the Mercedes. The interior smelled like stale tobacco and cheap cologne.

"Sector 4," I told the driver in English. "The coordinates I sent you."

The driver grunted, flicked his cigarette out the window, and put the car in gear.

The drive into the city was a stark reminder of why Jake had chosen this place to hide. The glittering, modern financial districts of Western Europe were a world away. Here, the architecture was a brutalist mix of decaying Soviet-era apartment blocks and narrow, winding streets choked with traffic and neon signs. There were no high-end security cameras on the street corners. There were no digital payment kiosks. It was a cash-only, analog world.

It was the perfect place for a man with no digital footprint to disappear.

"The signal originated from a block of abandoned tenements near the river," Claire said, opening her laptop and dimming the screen so the driver couldn’t see the reflection. "It’s a bad neighborhood, Ethan. Local police don’t even patrol there. It’s run by a syndicate called the Lupii—the Wolves. They deal in extortion, smuggling, and underground gambling."

"If Jake has been living here for two years, he’s either paying them off, or he’s hiding from them," I said, watching the decaying buildings roll past the window.

"Or he’s working for them," Claire suggested quietly.

I looked at her, my jaw tightening. "Jake Hart doesn’t work for street thugs."

"The Jake Hart we knew didn’t," Claire corrected gently. "But you said it yourself, Ethan. We don’t know what Isabella Vane did to his mind. If he lost his edge... if he lost his memory... he might just be trying to survive."

The thought made my stomach churn. Jake had been a king. He had bent billionaires to his will and orchestrated the downfall of entire corporate empires. The idea of him running errands for a low-level Romanian crime syndicate was sickening.

The Mercedes lurched to a halt, the brakes squealing in protest.

"End of the line," the driver grunted, tapping the steering wheel. "I don’t go further into Sector 4 after dark. You walk from here."

I handed him a thick stack of euros. He counted it quickly, nodded, and unlocked the doors.

We stepped out into the freezing rain. The street was narrow and poorly lit, flanked by towering, concrete apartment blocks that looked like they were slowly crumbling into the pavement. The air smelled of wet garbage and cheap liquor. A group of men standing near a burning trash can down the alley stopped talking and turned to look at us.

We stood out. Even in our tactical gear, we looked like money. And in Sector 4, money was a target.

"Keep your head down and walk with purpose," I told Claire, pulling the collar of my coat up. "Don’t make eye contact."

We moved down the street, the rain slicking the cobblestones. I kept my hand close to my weapon, my eyes constantly scanning the shadows. Darius’s training echoed in my mind. Watch their hips. Watch their hands. Look for the ambush.

"The coordinates are about two blocks east," Claire whispered, checking a handheld GPS device. "It’s an old industrial laundry facility. Supposedly abandoned."

As we turned the corner, the group of men from the trash can stepped out of the shadows, blocking our path. There were four of them. They wore heavy leather jackets and carried themselves with the loose, aggressive confidence of men who owned the street. One of them, a tall man with a jagged scar across his cheek, stepped forward.

"You are lost, Americans," the scarred man said in heavily accented English. He smiled, revealing a row of gold-capped teeth. "This is Lupii territory. You need to pay a toll to walk here."

I didn’t stop walking. I didn’t slow down. I just kept moving toward him.

"We’re not lost," I said, my voice flat and devoid of fear. "And we’re not paying a toll. Move."

The scarred man laughed, a harsh, barking sound. He reached into his jacket, his hand wrapping around the handle of a knife. "You do not understand. You pay, or you bleed."

...

Flashback - Twelve Months Ago

"You’re hesitating!" Darius roared, slapping my hands away as I tried to block his jab. He stepped inside my guard and delivered a brutal, open-handed strike to my solar plexus.

I hit the mat, gasping for air, my vision swimming.

"You’re thinking like a businessman, Ethan!" Darius yelled, pacing around me like a caged tiger. "You’re trying to negotiate the fight! You’re waiting for the other guy to make his offer so you can counter it! In the real world, the first guy to make an offer usually does it with a knife!"

I rolled onto my side, coughing violently. "I’m... I’m trying to read his movements..."

"By the time you read his movements, you’re already bleeding!" Darius snapped, reaching down and hauling me to my feet by the collar of my shirt. "When you are outnumbered, when you are in hostile territory, you do not wait. You strike first. You strike the biggest threat, and you strike to break them. You show the rest of the pack that you are not prey. Do you understand me?"

I looked at the massive man, my chest heaving. "Strike first."

"Break the leader," Darius corrected. "The rest will scatter."

...

Present Time

The scarred man hadn’t even fully drawn his knife when I moved.

I didn’t reach for my gun. A gunshot would bring the entire neighborhood down on us. Instead, I stepped inside his guard, exactly the way Darius had taught me.

I grabbed the scarred man’s wrist with my left hand, twisting it sharply outward to lock the joint, preventing him from pulling the blade. Simultaneously, I drove the heel of my right palm upward, smashing it directly into the bridge of his nose.

There was a sickening crunch of breaking cartilage.

The man’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he dropped like a stone, hitting the wet cobblestones with a heavy thud.

The other three men froze, their aggressive posturing instantly evaporating. They looked at their leader bleeding on the ground, then looked up at me. I didn’t say a word. I just let my coat fall open slightly, revealing the black grip of the Glock holstered at my waist.

"We’re walking," I said softly.

The three men slowly backed away, melting back into the shadows of the alley.

I turned to Claire. She hadn’t flinched. She hadn’t screamed. She was just watching me, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and a strange, quiet respect.

"Darius?" she asked softly.

"Darius," I confirmed, rolling my shoulders to release the tension. "Come on. The laundry facility is just ahead."

We reached the coordinates ten minutes later. The building was a massive, decaying brick structure with shattered windows and a rusted iron gate. It looked completely abandoned, but as we approached the side entrance, I noticed the subtle signs of habitation. The rust on the hinges of the heavy steel door had been recently scraped away. There were faint, fresh scuff marks on the concrete steps.

Someone was living here.

I drew my weapon, holding it down by my side, and pushed the heavy steel door open. It swung inward with a low groan.

The interior of the facility was pitch black, smelling of damp concrete and old chemicals. I pulled a tactical flashlight from my pocket and clicked it on, sweeping the beam across the cavernous room.

It was a graveyard of rusted industrial washing machines and collapsed shelving. But in the center of the room, surrounded by a makeshift barricade of metal crates, was a small, illuminated clearing.

"Ethan," Claire whispered, pointing toward the light.

We moved slowly, our footsteps echoing in the massive space. As we rounded the barricade, the beam of my flashlight illuminated a scene that made my heart stop.

It was a makeshift workstation. A single, battered laptop sat on a wooden crate, connected to a tangle of wires that ran up to a jury-rigged antenna near a broken window. The screen was glowing faintly, displaying the degraded, fragmented code of the ghost protocol.

But the chair in front of the laptop was empty.

"He was here," Claire said, rushing forward and dropping her briefcase onto the crate. She ran her fingers over the keyboard. "The laptop is still warm. He triggered the beacon manually."

I swept my flashlight around the perimeter of the clearing. There was a sleeping bag in the corner, a few empty cans of cheap food, and a stack of notebooks filled with frantic, erratic handwriting.

I walked over to the notebooks and picked one up. The pages were covered in complex financial equations, market predictions, and corporate structures. But they weren’t organized. They were chaotic, written in a desperate, almost manic scrawl. It looked like the work of a genius whose mind was slowly tearing itself apart.

"Ethan," Claire said, her voice suddenly tight with fear.

I turned around. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Claire was staring at the floor near the laptop.

In the pale light of the screen, I saw it. A fresh, dark pool of blood staining the concrete. And leading away from the workstation, dragging toward the back exit of the facility, was a thick, smeared trail of crimson.

Jake hadn’t just triggered the beacon to call us.

He had triggered it because he was bleeding out.

"He’s hurt," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. I raised my gun, following the trail of blood with my flashlight. "And whoever did this to him might still be here."