[Ethan’s POV]

Flashback - Six Months Ago

The server room beneath Apex Tower was usually freezing, kept at a strict sixty degrees to prevent the massive Vanguard mainframes from overheating. But inside Nia’s private, soundproofed office at the back of the facility, the air was warm and heavy.

I was lying on my back on the small, makeshift cot Nia kept in the corner for the nights she worked late. My tactical shirt was discarded on the floor.

Nia was curled against my side, her dark hair spilling across my chest, her signature wire-rimmed glasses resting on the nightstand next to an empty can of Red Bull. She was tracing lazy, absentminded circles on my collarbone with her index finger.

I tilted her chin up and kissed her. It was slow, quiet, and deeply intimate—a stark contrast to the chaotic, high-stakes corporate war we were fighting every day above ground.

"We should tell them," Nia whispered, pulling back slightly to rest her chin on my chest. She looked up at me, her dark eyes soft in the glow of the server monitors. "We should tell Darius and Claire."

I sighed, my hand coming up to stroke her hair. "Not yet."

"Why?" Nia challenged softly, a small smile playing on her lips. "We’ve been sneaking around for almost a year, Ethan. Darius isn’t stupid. I’m pretty sure he already suspects something every time you ’volunteer’ to bring me coffee at 3:00 AM."

"I know," I said, my voice dropping to a rough whisper. I looked up at the concrete ceiling. "But the family is broken right now, Nia. Jake is out there somewhere, lost in the dark. Isabella Vane is tearing at the gates. It just... it doesn’t feel right to celebrate this. Not out in the open. Not while the guy who brought us all together is missing."

Nia was quiet for a long moment. The playful spark in her eyes dimmed, replaced by the heavy, shared grief we all carried. She pressed her face against my chest, listening to my heartbeat.

"Okay," she whispered. "We wait."

"Let me find him," I said, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her close. "Let me bring Jake home. We put the crown back on his head, we secure the board, and then we tell everyone."

Nia nodded against my chest. "Just promise me you’ll come back in one piece, Ethan. I can’t lose both of you."

Present Time

The snow was falling harder now, sticking to the shoulders of my canvas jacket as Claire and I approached the perimeter of the Odessa Shipyards.

The facility was massive, a sprawling industrial complex of dry docks, towering cranes, and massive steel warehouses sitting right on the edge of the freezing Black Sea. The smell of welding torches and saltwater hung heavy in the air.

"There," Claire whispered, pointing through the chain-link fence.

Sitting in Dry Dock 4, surrounded by scaffolding and floodlights, was a massive, rust-colored cargo freighter. The name Leviathan was painted on the bow.

"That’s Isabella’s flagship," I said, pulling my binoculars from my duffel bag and scanning the area. "And Viktor Volkov isn’t taking any chances."

The dry dock was swarming with armed men. But they weren’t the sleek, professional PMCs we had seen at the bank. These men were rougher. They wore heavy winter coats, carried AK-47s, and moved with the aggressive swagger of local cartel enforcers.

"Volkov’s personal army," Claire noted, shivering in the cold. "He must have called in every thug on his payroll to guard the ship."

"Jake can’t fight his way through fifty armed men," I said, lowering the binoculars. "Not even with the Oracle."

"He doesn’t have to," Claire said, her eyes scanning the layout of the shipyard. She pointed toward a massive, concrete pump house sitting at the edge of the dry dock. "Look at the infrastructure. To sink the ship, he doesn’t need to get on board. He just needs to open the primary floodgates."

I looked at the pump house. It was a heavily fortified bunker, guarded by four men with rifles. Thick steel pipes ran from the bunker directly into the basin of the dry dock.

"If he breaches the pump house and manually overrides the floodgates, the Black Sea will rush into the basin," Claire explained, her voice tight. "The sudden influx of millions of gallons of water will destabilize the scaffolding. The ship will roll off its blocks and crush the hull against the concrete walls."

"And anyone standing in the basin will drown," I finished, looking at the dozens of workers and guards swarming around the bottom of the dry dock.

"We have to stop him, Ethan," Claire said, grabbing my arm. "He’s not just destroying Isabella’s property anymore. If he opens those gates, he’s going to commit a massacre."

I looked at the pump house, then back at the ship.

"He’s already inside," I said, a cold certainty settling in my gut. "The guards outside the pump house are looking outward. They’re watching the perimeter. They don’t realize the threat came from the catacombs beneath them."

"How do we get in?" Claire asked.

"We don’t," I said, drawing my Glock and checking the chamber. "We draw them out."

I stepped out from behind the cover of the alleyway, walking deliberately toward the main gate of the shipyard.

"Ethan, what are you doing?" Claire hissed, staying in the shadows.

"I’m making noise," I said, not looking back. "When the guards move to intercept me, you slip past them and get to the pump house. Find Jake. Talk him down. Show him the sketch. Do whatever you have to do to make him remember."

"And what about you?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"I’m going to buy you time," I said.

I reached the chain-link fence, raised my Glock, and fired three rapid shots into the air.

The sharp cracks echoed across the shipyard like thunder.

Instantly, the floodlights shifted, sweeping across the perimeter until they pinned me in a blinding circle of white light. Shouts erupted from the dry dock as Volkov’s men raised their rifles and began sprinting toward the gate.

"American!" a voice roared over a bullhorn. "Drop the weapon and put your hands on your head!"

I didn’t drop the weapon. I ducked behind a concrete barrier just as the first volley of automatic gunfire chewed into the chain-link fence, showering me in sparks and shredded metal.

The distraction was working. The guards at the pump house had abandoned their posts, jogging toward the gate to join the firefight.

I risked a glance over the barrier. In the shadows, moving with the quiet, desperate speed of a ghost, Claire slipped past the perimeter and darted toward the heavy steel door of the pump house.

Find him, Claire, I prayed, ducking back down as another burst of gunfire chipped away at my concrete cover. Find him before he drowns them all.