“The data center?” Adrian prompted.
“Secured. Sebastian uploaded everything to Noah during extraction. Should all be there.”
“All twelve terabytes,” Sebastian confirmed. “Took the whole fight to upload. But we got it.”
Noah pressed gauze against my shoulder. The pressure hurt. I didn't react. “This needs stitches.”
“Later. Work first.”
“Viktor—”
“Work first,” I repeated. Met his eyes. “Please.”
Noah studied me for a long moment. Then nodded. Started wrapping the wound tight enough to stop bleeding but loose enough I could still move. “Fine. But after we're done, you're getting stitched whether you like it or not.”
“Da. Whatever you want.”
He finished the wrapping. Handed me a clean shirt fromsomewhere. I pulled it on, feeling the tightness across my shoulder protest. Didn't matter. We had work to do.
“The files?” I asked.
Noah moved to his laptop. Fingers flying across keys. “Give me a minute. Running the final decryption sequence now.”
“Wait.” Sebastian's voice cut through the room. Sharp. Focused. “How are you cracking military-grade encryption this fast? Even outdated algorithms take time.”
The room went quiet. Noah's fingers stilled on the keyboard.
“Sebastian's right,” Ash said. Eyes narrowed. “I've watched Noah work. Good encryption takes hours. Days sometimes.”
Noah glanced at Adrian. Some silent communication passed between them.
“Tell them,” Adrian said.
Noah leaned back in his chair. “I've been working on this for three weeks. Since the second assassination attempt.”
“Working on what?” I asked.
“Palace financial networks.” Noah pulled up screens showing weeks of data collection. “After the motorcade attack, Adrian asked me to dig. Someone inside those walls was leaking information. Routes. Schedules. Security details. Someone with access to things that should've been locked down tight.”
He pulled up more files. Layers of surveillance data. Communication logs. Access patterns mapped over weeks.
“So I built a back door into their systems. Started monitoring. Collecting. Building profiles.” Noah's voice was careful. Clinical. “I've been watching money move through palace accounts for three weeks. Tracking communication patterns. Identifying who accesses what and when.”
Sebastian's body went rigid beside me. “You've been spying on palace systems. On my father's government. For three weeks.”
“On the people trying to kill you,” Noah corrected. “There's a difference.”
“Is there?” Sebastian's voice dropped to something dangerous. “Because from where I'm standing, you violated every securityprotocol we have. Broke into systems that are supposed to be sacred. All without bothering to mention it to the person whose life you were supposedly protecting.”
“Would you have authorized it?” Adrian asked. Calm. Clinical.
“That's not the point?—”
“It's exactly the point.” Adrian stood. “Someone inside those walls wants you dead. Someone who knew exactly when and where to strike. Every single time.” He gestured to Noah's screens. “We needed to know who. And we needed to do it without tipping them off that we were looking.”
“So you made me bait,” Sebastian said. Each word sharp enough to cut. “Kept me in the dark while you ran surveillance on my own government. Used me as a fucking decoy while you played spy.”
“We kept you alive,” Noah said quietly. “Those back doors let me track when information left the palace and where it went. Let me see patterns. Build timelines. What you uploaded tonight? It wasn't starting from scratch. It was confirmation of three weeks of surveillance. Proof of what I'd already found.”
