She shoved me back, her chest heaving, the silver of her dress catching the neon lights like a warning flare. But she didn't look ruined. She looked victorious.
She held up her hand, and my heart stopped. Between her index and middle finger sat the gold signet ring I’d been wearing on my pinky—the one with the encrypted drive for my primary accounts. She’d lifted it while I was busy trying to swallow her soul.
“You’re getting slow, Thal,” she whispered, her voice fractured but lethal as she wiped the back of her hand across her swollen, reddened lips. “Don't mistake a kiss for a surrender. I’ve already mapped your security and your heartbeat. You want an alliance? Try harder.”
She tossed the ring back at me. It hit my chest with a dull thud before I caught it. I watched her walk away, her silver dress shimmering like a disappearing dream.
Zeno thought he owned her. Daphne thought she was choosing loyalty. They were both wrong.
“Run while you can, little bird,” I whispered, my fingers closing tight around the ring she’d stolen and returned. “But the cage door is already shut. You’ve tasted the blood now. You’ll be back.”
Four
CASS’S INTRIGUING PRESENCE
DAPHNE
I settled onto the couch, tucking my feet beneath me and curling my limbs around my body in a subconscious effort to find comfort. Thal’s words echoed in my mind, stubbornly refusing to fade despite my attempts to distract myself. I had just finished binge-watching three episodes of my favorite crime thriller, almost drained an entire bottle of expensive red wine, and cleaned my suite from top to bottom, all in a futile effort to shake off his taunting accusation.
Yet, no relief came.
Eventually, I gave in, realizing I could turn my focus on Thal into something useful. I chose to confront the distraction directly, knowing he wouldn’t yield easily, not without significant pressure. Zeno’s teachings replayed in my head: gather as much information as possible about your opponent.
Was Thal truly my opponent? Not quite. But as of late, it started to feel that way, especially when he was pushing me to dothings I didn’t want to do. I dove into researching everything I could about him.
I didn’t need a search engine to tell me Thal was a self-made king. I opened my custom-built rig—the one Zeno’s security team thought was just for streaming movies—and let the Ghost out of her cage. The blue light reflected in my wine, but my focus was on the command line. I more than bypassed firewalls, I dismantled them.
I ran a ghost-protocol script, layering my IP through six different countries until I was invisible. My fingers hunted. This was the only place I was truly powerful. Every line of code I cracked was a middle finger to the men who thought they owned me. I knew Helena was sharp, but I was a scalpel. If she caught a whiff of this breach, I’d be dead before the upload finished, but the risk only made the data taste sweeter.
I wasn’t interested in his triumphs but in his sins. I needed to know if the man who promised me sanctuary was actually the one holding the match to the city. I dug through layers of shell companies and offshore accounts, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm. I wanted to find a reason to hate him. I wanted to prove that his dark alliance was just another leash, only made of silk instead of iron.
But tonight, I focused on uncovering the unreported information about Thal. Some of it I already knew from listening to Zeno.
Thal’s casino was one of the city’s major money-laundering operations. Somehow, he had managed to stay neutral amid the endless power struggles. Zeno, Aidon, Rhea’s syndicates, and others kept fighting to take control from each other, but Thal avoided direct conflict with any of them. It seemed he preferred to keep his alliances flexible, likely keeping his enemies guessing in the process.
What struck me most was how Thal remained a powerful figure in the game without resorting to brute force or bloodshed, unlike everyone else who was forced to do so.
His story intrigued me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something. How could he have kept his hands clean all this time?
This was Vegas, after all. I knew about the bloody battles, the backstabbing, the betrayals. Nobody in this town got out unscathed.
None of us were innocent.
I was convinced that Thal wasn’t either.
I kept digging late into the evening, examining Thal’s banking records, operational data, and phone logs. The effects of the wine had started to fade, replaced by a creeping fatigue that weighed on me.
Then it appeared. Not a name, but a ghost. I traced a recurring encrypted signal that had pinged Thal’s private line every night for the past month. As the final corporate wall crumbled, I saw the destination.
My breath hitched, but my hands remained steady. The recurring encrypted signal wasn't a fluke. It was a heartbeat. I traced the packet return to a secure line belonging to Rhea’s syndicate—the very monsters Zeno used to justify my protection.
I found a traitor and uncovered the ultimate leverage. Thal was engaged in a triple-cross that could incinerate this city if revealed. A surge of lethal triumph coursed through me. Thal thought he was the one offeringmea lifeline? He had no idea I was currently holding the detonator to his entire reputation.
I was sure that Zeno didn’t know what I knew. He’d asked me to shadow Thal and monitor his movements, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe Zeno secretly hoped I’d uncover something.
Now, standing at this crossroads, I faced a tough decision. What the hell was I supposed to do with this information?
If Thal was secretly working with the syndicate, what did that mean for his relationships with Zeno and Aidon?
