“This isn’t over,” Kol said.“For you.”
Whitaker smiled again, slow and certain.“Oh, it is.Just not the way you think.”
The house shuddered violently, a deeper groan rippling through the structure as something fundamental shifted.
Kol’s comms crackled again.Eliza’s voice cut through the noise, tight now, fast.“Kol, listen to me.He’s tied himself into it.Biometric locks, layered authentication—he may be the trigger point.If he goes down before I break the cascade—”
“—governments fall,” Kol finished grimly.
“Yes.”
The word landed like a weight.
Kol glanced at Rafael.Saw the same calculation reflected there.The same restraint burning behind his eyes.
They couldn’t kill him.
Not yet.
Whitaker spread his hands slightly, smug.“You see?You need me alive.”
Fire rolled through the hallway outside the office, heat pulsing in waves.The ceiling above them cracked, debris raining down.The house was dying around them, but the moment stretched—knife-edged, suspended.
Elias’s voice came over comms, controlled but urgent.“Hold position if you can.Eliza’s working it.”
Kol tightened his grip on the weapon, every instinct screaming to end the man in front of him.His pulse thudded loud in his ears, a drumbeat matched to the alarms and the fire.Killing would be easy.Satisfying.Clean.
Waiting was harder.
Waiting meant trusting Eliza.
He forced his breathing to slow, let the rage burn down into something colder, sharper.Control.Precision.This was what separated execution from justice, vengeance from strategy.
Instead, he waited.
They waited.
Smoke thickened.Alarms screamed.Somewhere deeper in the house, another explosion went off, closer than the last.
Then Rafael’s shoulder jerked as the floor beneath them buckled.He swore under his breath, blood darkening his sleeve further.
“We don’t have much time,” Rafael said.
“No,” Kol agreed.
Another violent tremor ripped through the structure, and this one didn’t stop.