Read Chapter 13: Last-Minute Switch

The safehouse was a whisper of its former self—stripped wires dangling from the wall where the monitors had been ripped out, a chair overturned, the smell of burnt coffee still hanging in the air. Alex moved through the chaos with a duffel in one hand, ticking off the room like a pilot running pre-flight checks. His crew stood by the van, engine idling, headlights cutting through the pre-dawn drizzle.

Zoe was the first to break the silence. “We lost everything tonight. The plans, the site access, the—everything. And you want to talk about what? A ledger you already told us is worthless?”

“Not worthless,” Alex said, slamming the van door shut. “Leverage.”

“It’s a piece of paper in a vault we can’t even reach anymore.”

“Viktor moved it,” Alex corrected, stepping close enough that the rain speckled his jacket. “Which means it’s now somewhere he *protects*. Somewhere he guards. And that gives us an address.”

Jules leaned off the van’s bumper, arms crossed. “You’re saying we hit the ledger’s new location, not the cage.”

“We hit both.”

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut glass. Zoe’s jaw tightened. She stepped into the van’s headlights, face pale beneath the glow.

“Both?” she repeated, voice low. “We have one night. One window before Laurent locks down the system for forty-eight hours. And you want to run two operations?”

“Not two operations,” Alex said. “One. One chain. We take the ledger first—fast, surgical, in and out. It pulls the heat. Laurent ID’s the hit, deploys his counter team to respond, which drags security out of the central cage’s perimeter. Then we move on the cage while their eyes are elsewhere.”

Zoe shook her head slowly, disbelief curdling into anger. “You heard Laurent’s recall. He’s got every guard on the property tripled. We walk in there to grab a book Viktor uses as a paperweight, and we might as well put a target on our backs.”

“He’s not using it as a paperweight,” Alex said. “He’s using it as bait—for us, for the third party, for anyone who thinks they have leverage over him. That means it’s visible. Findable. And if it’s findable, it’s stealable.”

Zoe stepped forward, stopping inches from Alex. “You’re not listening. The cage plan was already half-mad. You said it yourself—you’re tunneling solo through a maintenance pit beneath the central cage while Jules and I cover the exits. Now you want to add a second objective on the other side of the building, with Laurent actively hunting us?”

“I’m not adding,” Alex said quietly. “I’m sequencing.”

“That’s the same thing dressed up for a pitch. And you know it.”

Jules uncrossed his arms. “He’s not wrong though.”

Zoe turned. “Excuse me?”

“Think about it,” Jules said, pulling a half-crushed cigarette from behind his ear and rolling it between his fingers. “We don’t just need money. We need to survive. And the only card we have against Viktor is knowing what he doesn’t want known. That ledger? It’s not leverage because it’s full of names. It’s leverage because Viktor *thinks* it’s full of names. He moved it to keep it safe. Which means he’ll overreact when it goes missing. Overreaction means movement. Movement means openings.”

Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t have time to theorize about Viktor’s psychology. We have one shot.”

“Which is why we take both shots in the same breath,” Alex said. “Ledger first—we hit his private lockup, the one he just moved it to. His people there are quiet, off-book, no heat. They won’t be ready for a professional hit. We’re in and out in eight minutes. Then we cross the esplanade, drop into the maintenance pit, and hit the cage while Laurent’s entire response grid is scrambling toward the wrong building.”

Zoe stared at him. The rain picked up, drumming against the van roof.

“You’ve already decided,” she said.

“I’ve made a calculation.”

“You’ve decided you can survive losing me, if it comes to that.”

The words hung there, raw and unpolished. Alex’s face didn’t move, but something behind his eyes flickered—too quick to read, too honest to fake.

“That’s not what this is,” he said.

“Then tell me what it is,” Zoe demanded. “Because you dragged me into this with promises of a clean score. A single hit. One night. That was the deal. Now it’s a chain, a trap, a counter-move, a second vault, a ledger nobody’s even read. And each time you add a layer, you add a point of failure. Which one is going to break, Alex? Because I’d like to know which of us you’re planning to leave behind.”

The van’s engine rumbled in the silence. Jules looked between them, lips pressed thin.

Finally, Alex spoke. “I’m going to walk through that pit alone while you two handle the ledger’s location. If the cage goes sideways, I’m the one who goes down with it. You both stage the getaway. You don’t wait for me. You drive to the holding point. That’s the deal.”

Zoe blinked. Her shoulders loosened a fraction.

“You’re offering yourself as the fail point,” she said slowly.

“I’m the best player on this table,” Alex said. “If I’m in the cage, the odds shift in our favor. If I get caught, you two still have the ledger. And the ledger is still leverage. Even without me. Especially without me.”

Jules exhaled. “I’ll handle the ledger. Zoe covers the exits. You take the cage. We move at dawn. Whatever happens, we meet back at the fuel depot by nightfall. Agreed?”

Zoe didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze stayed fixed on Alex, searching for the lie. Then she nodded once, tight and quick, and climbed into the van’s passenger seat without another word.

Alex watched her go. The rain traced his jaw.

Jules leaned in, voice low. “She’ll come around.”

“She already has,” Alex said. “That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

Alex turned to face him. “She said she’d cover exits. But I’ve seen her look at a plan she hates before. She doesn’t go quiet. She fights. She’s still fighting—she just hasn’t found the words yet.”

He let that settle, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

The van pulled away, tires hissing through the wet street. Behind it, the empty safehouse stood dark, already forgotten.