"Go, go, GO!" Alpha yelled, grabbing two of his guys and sprinting back the way they came.

Maksim was already running, blood from his earlier injury seeping through his bandages, but adrenaline kept him moving. "East exit! Move!"

They crashed through doorways, jumped over furniture, bullets pinging off the walls behind them. Two of Maksim’s guys went down, one clutching his leg and screaming.

Three more of Alpha’s men went down in the hallway.

Reyes’s voice came through Zayden’s earpiece. "They’re making a run for the east exit. Should we lock it down?"

"Nah," Zayden replied coolly. "Let them go. But make sure they remember tonight."

The rest of the mercenaries charged through the east entrance and into the dark, bleeding and panicked, their confidence wrecked.

Vans pulled up fast, and the doors flew open. They all jumped in, engines roaring as the tires squealed.

Reyes’s backup teams let them slip away, but not before blasting a few shots that shattered the back windows of the escaping vans.

Inside the tower, Zayden stood at the broken entrance, watching the taillights vanish into the night.

Reyes joined him, lowering his rifle. "Five of theirs are out—three wounded and captured. None of ours."

A cold, satisfied grin spread across Zayden’s face beneath his mask. "Awesome. Question the prisoners. I want to know everything: every safe house, every contact, every plan."

"Got it, boss."

Leo jogged over, grinning despite the chaos. "That was almost too easy. Think they’ll catch on that Selina played them?"

"Eventually," Zayden replied. "But by then, it won’t matter. Clean this mess up. Check for bugs and triple the security on William."

"Already on it."

As his team got to work, Zayden turned and walked back into the tower, passing the staged wreckage and the guards already resetting the "chaos."

*****

Aylin finally looked up from her screen as the gunfire faded away overhead. Jax and Jane had tensed up, weapons ready, but the all-clear signal buzzed in their earpieces.

"It’s over," Jane said, relaxing a bit. "We did it."

Aylin nodded absentmindedly, her mind still on the data flashing across her screen. "I found something."

"About Liam?" Jax asked.

"Yeah." Aylin’s expression turned serious. "He’s military, Danish special forces. But he got discharged twelve years ago after his dad died. After that, it’s like he vanished. No records, no trail, nothing until he popped up in Istanbul three years back."

"Ghost protocol," Jane observed. "Someone wiped his existence clean."

"Or maybe he pulled it off himself," Aylin said quietly. "But the big question is why. And who showed him how to disappear so well?"

Her screen flickered again as another file opened up.

Then she spotted it.

A photo, blurry and old, but unmistakable.

A young Liam, probably around fourteen, was standing next to four guys in military gear. One of them looked really familiar. Way too familiar.

Aylin zoomed in, her heart racing.

"No way," she murmured.

"What’s going on?" Jax leaned in closer.

Aylin pointed at one of the guys in the photo. "That’s... Marcus Alston. My dad."

The room went silent.

"Your dad knew Liam?" Jane asked slowly.

"Not just knew him," Aylin said, her voice trembling. "He trained with him. They were on the same team."

She pulled up more files, her fingers shaking.

"Charles, Liam’s dad, was a government agent. He was part of a five-man team. My dad was on that team, too. So was a guy named Alexander Kane. And Mehmet Demir. And..." She paused, her breath catching. Her eyes widened as another file opened, showing classified personnel records.

"No," Aylin said, shaking her head in disbelief. "This can’t be right."

"What is it?" Jax moved closer.

Aylin’s voice came out strained. "It says here that Sibel Alston was also part of the team. Sibel Alston, that’s my mom."

She turned to Jax and Jane, her golden-brown eyes wide with shock. "This doesn’t make sense. My mom was a poet. My dad was a journalist. "They weren’t. They couldn’t have been—"

"Operatives," Jane finished softly.

"No!" Aylin shot up from her chair, the legs scraping against the floor. "You guys don’t get it. My mom wrote poems. Beautiful, published poems. My dad worked at newspapers, digging up stories and exposing corruption. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t..."

Jax put a gentle hand on Aylin’s shoulder. "Aylin, check out the files, the photos, the mission records."

"They can’t be real," Aylin insisted, but her voice was shaky. "They’ve got to be fake. Someone is messing with the data."

"You know that’s not true," Jax replied softly. "You pulled these files from military-grade encrypted servers. No one’s tampered with this."

Aylin slumped back in her chair, staring at the screen as more files loaded, mission reports with her parents’ names, tactical assessments, and awards for bravery in battle.

"It just means they kept their true identities from you," Jax said gently. "From you and your sister. They kept their real jobs on the down-low to keep you both safe."

Aylin’s hands started to shake. "All those times Dad got home late, saying he was working on a story... All those ’poetry conferences’ Mom went to..." Her voice cracked. "They were out on missions. They were putting their lives on the line, and we had no clue."

Jane knelt down next to her. "They were just trying to protect you. If their enemies found out they had kids—"

"Those enemies would’ve used us," Aylin finished, her voice hollow.

She wiped her tears away and looked up, realizing for the first time, "Ayla and I... we were targets our whole lives and never even knew." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

She roughly wiped her eyes, feeling a mix of anger and grief. "My mom died fourteen years ago; they said it was a ’car accident.’ My dad five years ago; they called it a ’heart attack.’ Just natural causes."

"But they weren’t natural," Jax said grimly.

"No," Aylin’s voice turned hard. "They were murdered. Someone on their team turned on them. Someone got them killed and made it look like accidents to avoid any investigation."

She pulled up more files, her hacker instincts kicking in even with all the emotional chaos. "Charles, Liam’s dad, got framed and accused of being a traitor. But according to these records..." She scrolled fast, then froze.

Her face went pale.

"What’s wrong?" Jane asked urgently.

Aylin’s voice was barely above a whisper. "The evidence... all of it that framed Charles... came from my dad."

"What?" Jax leaned in closer.