20. Epilogue What We Remember #3
Steve slowly withdraws, his arms clasping around my waist to pull me back against his bare chest. He rests his chin on my shoulder, a slow, familiar wink flashing in the mirror across from us.
“I knew it was a good idea to have this room built,” he murmurs, his mouth brushing my ear.
A soft laugh bubbles up from my throat, the lingering tension finally draining out of me. “You’re right as always, Mr. Hollands.”
He turns me in his arms, his blue eyes softening as he kisses the tip of my nose. “I love you, darls.”
“I love you too, Steve.”
We gather our discarded clothes and boots from the floor and step out of the heavy vault, leaving the darkness behind us as the steel door glides shut once again.
Steve’s phone chooses that exact moment to vibrate.
He glances at the screen and groans. “Victor. Briefing.”
I laugh softly. “Of course it is.”
“Honestly, the man’s timing’s a war crime.”
We clean up, dress, and head downstairs to the basement ops center, where the screens are already waking one by one. The compass rose spins on the central display before Victor’s face appears beside it.
He doesn’t waste time.
“This one is different,” he says. “She came to us.”
A woman’s photograph fills the screen. Dark skin, bright eyes, natural black curls framing a face made for cameras and trouble, a press badge clipped to a fitted jacket.
She’s smiling in the image, but there’s steel beneath it, the kind of look that says she’s been asking questions people don’t survive asking.
“Verity Banks,” Victor says. “Twenty-nine. Investigative journalist.”
Mercy’s face appears in the corner of the call, and she goes still. “I know her.”
Victor nods. “She’s been investigating Meridian independently for two years. She has evidence. Names, documents, financial trails. Someone tried to kill her last night.”
Steve’s posture changes beside me. “Where is she?”
“On the run,” Victor says. “She contacted HAVEN through encrypted channels first, then sent a distress flag through the DANGER app under a journalist-protection category Hope added last week.”
The message appears on screen.
I know who they are. Every name. Every family. Every crime. They know I know. Find me before they do, and I’ll give you everything you need to burn them all.
The message lands hard.
Victor changes the screen again.
Instead of another photograph, a diagram appears. Felicity’s work.
At the center sits the Meridian compass rose. Around it, concentric rings spread outward, each one labelled.
Tier One. Front Operations.
Tier Two. Legacy Families.
Tier Three. The Council.
Colored lines connect every Meridian front we’ve dismantled so far to the Legacy families funding them. Beyond that, the innermost circle remains almost empty, marked only with a single heading.
Council Twelve.
“The way Felicity sees it,” Victor says, “we’ve spent nine missions dismantling Tier One. The operational fronts. Recruitment, transport, conditioning, financial laundering. Every charity, institute, corporation and shell company we’ve exposed sits here.”
He taps the second ring.
“Tier Two is who owns them.”
Then the center.
“And Tier Three is who’s giving the orders.”
Victor looks straight into the camera. “If she has what she says she has, this is the endgame of Tier One.”
Steve doesn’t hesitate. “Get her. Before they do.”
The compass rose stops spinning.
Every operation we’ve dismantled has led us one step closer to the people giving the orders.
Verity Banks may be carrying the first evidence capable of exposing them all.
If HAVEN doesn’t reach her first, Meridian won’t just silence a journalist.
They’ll bury the truth with her.
THE END
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