Chapter 27
IRIS
I wake with my right cheek pressed against Cassian’s bare chest.
My thighs ache with a deep, lingering soreness. My lips feel bruised. My throat is raw, scraped bloody from screaming my grief into the carpet of his office yesterday.
But the heaviest pain is gone. The paralyzing, suffocating weight that lived in my chest for twenty-four years has evaporated. The desperate need to be perfect. The terror of disappointing him. The fragile, pathetic illusion of a father’s love.
It’s all gone.
William Hale is dead to me.
I think about Leo, the college boy I loved who packed up his apartment in the middle of the night and blocked my number.
For years, I agonized over losing him, believing I was fundamentally unlovable.
Now, the clarity of my father’s sociopathy snaps that memory into focus.
Leo didn’t leave because of me; he left because my father systematically terrified him.
Leo was a normal, safe guy, and he ran the second the water got rough.
I look at Cassian sleeping beside me—a man the rest of the world considers a monster—who took a bullet for me and didn’t even blink. Leo couldn’t stand up to a judge’s signature. Cassian stood up to an army.
I lift my head, realizing Cassian is already awake. He lies perfectly still, his left arm resting carefully at his side to protect the torn muscle in his shoulder. His right hand is tangled deep in my hair. His dark eyes trace the lines of my face.
“You’re quiet,” he murmurs.
“I’m thinking,” I say.
He studies my eyes. If he’s searching for the fractured, sobbing girl he carried out of his office, he doesn’t find her. I’m the woman forged in the wreckage.
“What do you want to do about him, Iris?” he asks quietly.
“He’s a target now,” I say, pushing myself up.
The duvet slips down to my waist, exposing the dark, blooming bruises his hands left on my hips. Cassian’s gaze drops to the marks. His jaw tightens.
“We need to get up,” I say.
I slide off the edge of the mattress, my bare feet hitting the cold hardwood.
Ignoring the stiffness in my legs, I walk to the pile of clothes on the floor.
I step over the dark jeans from yesterday, grabbing his spare cargo pants and an oversized T-shirt instead.
I pull them on, securing the canvas belt tightly around my waist. Sitting on the edge of a velvet chair, I lace up my thick boots, pulling the strings until they bite into my ankles.
I twist my hair into a tight knot at the nape of my neck.
I’m dressing for war.
When I turn around, Cassian is up. He pulls on his dark cargo pants and a fresh T-shirt, moving his left arm strictly from the elbow down, keeping the shoulder rigid.
He grabs his leather shoulder holster from the dresser, sliding it over his good arm, and racks the slide of his gun one-handed against the edge of the dresser with a sharp, metallic clack before holstering the weapon.
He looks at me, taking in the scraped-back hair and the dead-eyed focus in my posture.
“Varro is waiting in the basement,” he says.
“Let’s go.”
We take the private elevator down in total silence.
The command center is freezing, illuminated by the harsh blue glare of the server racks. Varro stands by the glowing topographic map table, a suppressed assault rifle slung tightly across his ceramic plate carrier.
His eyes flick to Cassian, then to me. A flicker of surprise crosses his face before his expression flattens back out.
I hold his gaze. He gives a single, slow nod.
“Status,” Cassian demands, walking to the map table.
“Still pinned,” Varro says, tapping a key to pull up a tactical overlay.
“Drones have three spotters in the tree line. If Hale wired them the rest of the money, they aren’t leaving.
They’re waiting for ordnance to breach the walls.
We can hold them, but it’s a siege against a guy with endless cash. ”
“He can buy a private army,” I say, stepping up to the table.
“We can’t hide,” I state, leaning my hands flat on the cold glass of the map table.
“If we stay here, we’re waiting to be slaughtered.
We have the Black Ledger, but if we anonymously leak it to the press, my father will spin it.
He’ll say it’s a deepfake. He’ll say Elias was a Russian asset trying to frame a Federal Judge.
He has the entire media in his pocket. He has the FBI director on speed dial. ”
Cassian watches me. “She’s right. You don’t kill a snake with a spreadsheet. I’ll mobilize Team 6. We load up the SUVs, drive into the city, and hit his penthouse tonight. We blow the doors off the hinges, execute his security detail, and I put a hollow-point bullet right between his eyes.”
“No,” I say sharply.
Cassian’s head snaps toward me. “Iris. I’m not letting him live.”
“I’m not saying let him live,” I say, my voice deadpan.
“I’m saying a bullet to the head in his sleep is too clean.
If he dies a mysterious, violent death, he dies a martyr.
They’ll name federal courthouses after him.
They’ll fast-track his legacy. I want his reputation burned to the ground.
I want him caught in the act. I want to look him directly in the eye when he loses everything. ”
Varro lets out a low, impressed whistle.
“How?” Cassian asks, stepping around the table, crowding into my space. “He’s sitting in a fortified high-rise surrounded by private security and federal agents who think he’s America’s grandfather. We can’t get to him without starting a bloodbath in the middle of downtown.”
“We don’t go to him,” I say, tilting my head up to meet his dark stare. “We make him come to us.”
“He isn’t going to walk into a trap, Iris.”
“He will if the bait is right.” I point to the dark screen of the encrypted tablet sitting on the console. “He thinks I’m dead. Or he thinks the Syndicate failed and you’re holding me hostage for leverage. We need to give him a third option. A miracle.”
Cassian’s posture instantly stiffens. He sees where my logic is going before I even finish the sentence, and his immediate reaction is absolute rejection.
“No,” he growls, shaking his head.
“Listen to me—”
“No,” he repeats, his voice echoing loudly off the concrete walls. He reaches out, his right hand gripping my upper arm. “I’m not using you as bait. Do you understand me? I didn’t pull you out of a burning car to dangle you in front of a psychopath.”
“You aren’t using me,” I snap, stepping into his space until our chests almost touch. “I’m offering. I’m the only bait he’ll actually take. Not because he cares about me, but because I’m a loose end.”
“It’s a suicide mission,” he snarls, his grip tightening on my arm. “He already proved you’re expendable. Once he gets that drive back, the fact that you’re his daughter won’t save you. He won’t care what happens to you.”
“He will come alone,” I argue, my mind moving fast. “If I tell him I have the Ledger, he can’t risk anyone else seeing the files. It’s the only way to draw him out of his fortress.”
“If he pulls a weapon on you before—”
“He won’t,” I interrupt. “Because you’ll be there.”
I reach up and cover his large hand with mine, my fingers pressing into his calloused knuckles. His jaw unclenches a fraction of an inch.
“You’re the Ghost,” I whisper, leaning in until my lips are inches from his. “So hide in the dark. Let me draw him out. And when he confesses... Drop him.”
Cassian stares at me. His chest heaves with a ragged breath. The muscles in his neck stand out like steel cords.
But he also knows I’m right.
He breaks eye contact and looks at Varro over my shoulder.
“Can we spoof a cell signal?” he asks, his voice tight with reluctance.
“I can bounce a VoIP call through six different proxy servers across the city,” Varro says, already spinning his chair around to face the keyboard. “It’ll look like a burner phone pinging off a commercial cell tower in Midtown. Untraceable back to the estate.”
Cassian looks at me. He slides his hand from my arm to the back of my neck, his fingers curling possessively into the tight knot of my hair.
“If this goes wrong,” he says, his voice a low, hard threat, “I will kill every single person in the room. I don’t care if they wear a badge. I will burn the building down.”
“It won’t go wrong,” I say.
“Where?” he asks. “Where do we do it?”
I think about the exact place where it all started.
“The Waldorf,” I say. “The VIP Study.”
He considers it, his eyes narrowing. “At midnight, the public grid shuts down. If he uses his Chairman override at the loading dock, it bypasses the night watchmen. Varro can hack the server and loop the security cameras to cover our tracks. He walks right in.”
“The scene of the crime,” Varro notes, his fingers flying across the keys.
“Set it up,” Cassian orders.
Varro works rapidly for ten minutes, his eyes tracking lines of code on the monitor, setting up the complex proxy relays and isolating a secure audio channel. He reaches onto the desk and hands me a sleek, black headset with a boom mic.
“We do a voicemail,” Varro instructs. “If you call live, he might try to keep you talking to run a trace, or ask a question you aren’t prepared to answer.”
“I’ll leave it on his private emergency line,” I say. “He checks it every hour.”
I take the headset. The plastic is cold against my fingers, but my hands are perfectly steady.
I slip it over my ears and adjust the mic.
I close my eyes, reaching deep down into the visceral trauma of the last week. I pull up the blinding terror of the museum. I let my breathing turn intentionally shallow and force my vocal cords to tighten. I physically shrink my posture, dropping my shoulders.
Cassian watches me.
“Ready,” I whisper.
Varro hits a key. “Recording... now.”
I let out a ragged, trembling breath directly into the microphone.
“Daddy?”
My voice breaks perfectly on cue.
“Daddy, please... It’s Iris. I don’t know if this number still works, but I didn’t know who else to call.”