Chapter 4
BEACON
The rain had been falling since midnight, and I’d spent the past five hours wide awake, running through the list of what I had to do once I got out of bed.
Last night, I made a commitment. Minerva failed, but I’d vowed that whatever replaced it wouldn’t. I owed it to my family, to everyone who’d died in the bombing and in all the years that came before it. I couldn’t stop now.
But how? I didn’t have any idea what it took to build an organization, and even if I did, was there anyone other than me who’d be willing to commit to help me? And what about funding? That was a subject I could discuss with Lyra.
The question of authority was harder. I had no title, no charter, no institutional backing, and no legal standing to ask anyone to do anything. What I had was a board full of photographs, a broken arm, a knee I hoped wouldn’t need surgery, and thirteen dead colleagues.
By zero four hundred, I’d stopped trying to predict how the morning would go. I knew I was about to ask too much, but I was going to do it anyway.
I was the first one in the ballroom at zero six hundred. Blackjack arrived next. He set a cup of coffee on the table beside me without asking if I wanted one, then pinned his site photographs to the board. When he finished, he sat across from me and opened his laptop.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“That depends on what it is.”
“How are your grandmother and Anna connected? I’ve been trying to work it out since I got here, and I can’t.”
I almost laughed. Of all the questions he could have asked at zero six hundred, that was not the one I’d expected. I was about to ask a room full of people to follow me into a war.
“Anna’s husband, Horatio Hyde, was my grandmother’s brother.”
“So Anna’s your aunt?”
“Yes, after my parents died, she and my grandmother raised me.”
He nodded slowly. “And your grandfather. Mikhail.”
“What about him?”
“How did he end up with your grandmother? She’s English. He was Russian.”
I hadn’t told this story to anyone outside the family in years. I wasn’t sure why I was about to now, except that he’d asked.
“They met at a concert while she was at university and he was working as a cultural attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London. Not long after that, Horatio helped him defect. Then a year later, he and my grandmother were married.”
“Your grandmother brought them together.”
“She did, and now, years later, the same enemy came for the rest of us.”
When Amaryllis and Reaper walked in, Blackjack got up and went to talk to them. I was happy for a few more minutes alone to get my thoughts together.
Devin Zak, code name Hornet, and Kima Sakari-Zak, aka Delfino, arrived next. Dagger and Magnolia walked in next, only not together. The only person who’d survived the blasts who wasn’t here was Givre, who was still in hospital.
Lyra came in last with Henry. The two took seats near the front. Henry had a leather portfolio and a pen, and he was already writing before anyone spoke.
I looked at those gathered in the room. These were the people who were left. Not all of them shared blood with me, but every one of them had bled for the same mission.
I stood and propped the crutch against the table.
“I don’t need to remind any of you of the tragedy of two days ago.
I probably don’t need to tell you who’s responsible.
Our enemies will not end their decades of vengeance until every last one of us is gone.
” I let that sit for a second. “Or until we end them. I refuse to give up or spend the rest of my life in hiding. I’m going to fight in the same way my grandfather, my parents, and the rest of my family have fought.
It’s not only against an enemy. It’s for truth and justice and freedom. ”
Amaryllis stood. “I’ll fight right beside you.”
Delfino stood next. “I will too.”
Reaper and Hornet followed, and Dagger gave a single nod.
Magnolia met my eyes from across the table. “I was in that building, and I survived for a reason. I’m with you, Beacon. I will never quit.”
Blackjack was the last to speak. He raised his head, and the expression on his face was one I hadn’t seen from him before.
It wasn’t his typical professional composure or his embarrassment from yesterday.
I couldn’t explain why I thought it or how I knew, but, in my gut, it was as though every word I spoke belonged to him too.
“I’m with you,” he said.
Lyra stood and joined me. “Thirteen years ago, my sister Eleanor, my brother, Edgar, and I found the first piece of what our father and Katarina’s grandfather were investigating when they were killed.
It’s what got our oldest sister, Amelia, and her husband killed.
What got Katarina’s parents killed. We founded Minerva Protocol to finish their work.
Eleanor and Edgar gave their lives for it.
I have buried more people for this mission than I can stand to count. ”
She turned to me. “Katarina lost her parents. So did Amaryllis. Every person in this room has paid a price. The danger isn’t gone, Katarina. Our enemies will not stop.”
I nodded once. “Even if I stand alone, I will not surrender.”
Lyra looked around the room at those who’d already committed to stand with me. “What Beacon is proposing is not a reconstruction of what we lost. It is the completion of what my father intended. If you are all committed to do this, I will stand behind it with everything I have left.”
“As will I,” said Henry, looking up from his page of notes.
I leaned against the table. My knee had been throbbing since I stood up, and my arm ached from my shoulder to my wrist. But none of it mattered, because every person in the room had committed to go to war with me.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked.
Henry set his pen down and joined Lyra and me.
“If you’re standing up a private intelligence organization from scratch, there are capabilities you need on day one and capabilities you build over time.
I’ve spent the last two days putting together a framework.
” He opened his portfolio. “Leadership and strategy. Intelligence collection. Analysis and assessment. Field operations and tactical capability. Counterintelligence. And specialized divisions for the specific threats you’ll be targeting are where we start. ”
He went through each category and described what it required. Not in bureaucratic language—in operational terms that every person here understood. When he finished, he surveyed the room.
Magnolia spoke up. “Forgive me for being direct, but how is all of this being funded? We’re talking about standing up an intelligence organization from scratch. That’s not free.”
Lyra answered. “It’s a good question, Rovena.
The Hyde family has generational wealth that predates Minerva’s existence.
My father established a trust decades ago specifically to fund the organization’s operations.
That trust is intact. The bombing destroyed a building, not a bank account.
” She paused. “Beyond the trust, Minerva has always taken on contracted work for governments and intelligence services that needed discreet, deniable capability. That revenue funded our operations and kept us independent. Whatever we build next will operate the same way. We’re not dependent on any single government, agency, or donor. We fund ourselves.”
Magnolia nodded, and Henry looked around the room. “Where were we?”
“I’ve no doubt I’m speaking on behalf of all of us when I say there are no two people better at intelligence analysis than Beacon and Amaryllis,” said Reaper.
As he spoke, I realized how much he looked like Blackjack. I’d never noticed the brothers’ resemblance until now.
Hornet raised a hand. “Counterintelligence and signals interception are mine.”
“Behavioral analysis and profiling,” Delfino said. “That’s what I’ve always done, and it’s what I do best.”
“I’ll run tactical,” said Reaper.
Dagger spoke from his seat by the door. “Deep cover and corruption investigation. That’s my lane.
I can also build out a division for human trafficking and exploitation—that’s where the war overlaps with what I’ve been doing for years.
And when Givre is out of hospital, she brings crisis negotiation and human source recruitment. ”
“Imagery and geospatial analysis,” Magnolia said. “That was my work in Albanian intelligence before Minerva, and it’s what I did inside the organization.”
Henry pointed to gaps on his list. “You need cyber intelligence and digital forensics. Someone who can work inside criminal networks. Cross-border capability with coverage in Asia-Pacific. Field operatives with European reach. A covert operations planner. And someone coordinating field operations and international liaison.”
Blackjack pulled two chairs to the side of the table, and we both sat.
The hour that followed was a solid intelligence session. Names of possible recruits were offered, examined, confirmed, or set aside.
Blackjack sat beside me and listened more than he spoke, which told me something about how he operated—he gathered information before he deployed.
Cohen Shephard, code name Preacher, had served with the US Defense Intelligence Agency. He was a weapons and technology specialist with cyber expertise and someone Henry had known for years.
Reaper spoke on behalf of Zion Mills, code name Sundance. He was former FBI, who specialized in organized crime networks.
“His sister too,” Reaper added. “Parker Mills. Former CIA. Code name Cassidy. She plans and runs covert operations—threat assessment, mission design, the intelligence preparation that makes an operation possible.”
“Sundance and Cassidy,” I said. “Are you serious?”
Reaper grinned. “Dead serious.”
Blackjack had run ops with Calloway North, code name Nomad. He’d served with Interpol, specialized in cross-border investigations and environmental crimes, and he covered Asia-Pacific—a region nobody else on the roster touched.
Delfino confirmed it. “I’ve also worked with Nomad,” she said. “He’s good.”
“Devereaux Carlisle,” I said. “Code name Agatha. She’s former MI6 with field ops and international liaison experience. She has relationships across every European intelligence service I’ve worked with. She’s the one who gets us in the door with MI6, DGSE, and BND.”
I paused on another name. “There’s also Mallory Felice. Code name Flick. She’s one of the best operatives I’ve ever worked with, but she’s deep undercover right now. We can’t reach her without compromising her cover.”
“When she’s out?” Blackjack asked.
“When she’s out, she’s ours.”
Five names. A sixth for the day her cover ended.
Blackjack stood and walked to the board where his site photographs were pinned. He pulled them down, turned the board over to the clean side, and picked up a marker.
He started writing. Names on the left, capabilities across the top, and lines connecting them.
He mapped the divisions to the people, identified where the coverage overlapped, and marked the dependencies—where one division needed another to function.
Tactical needed intelligence. Intelligence needed cyber.
Cyber needed counterintelligence. Field operations needed both tactical and intelligence.
He built the organizational architecture on that board in ten minutes, and when he finished, every person in the room could see how their lane connected to every other lane.
As I watched him do it, I realized that everything I’d assumed about Bishop Black since the day I first met him was wrong.
The quiet younger brother who did his job and went unnoticed had never been the full picture.
He’d been paying attention the entire time, and now, I could see what he’d built in his head while everyone else assumed he was following orders.
He’d been absorbing everything around him for years—every operation, every organizational structure, every chain of command he’d worked inside—and he’d been building the blueprint in his head long before anyone handed him a marker.
He faced the room. “That’s the machine. Every piece needs every other piece. If one division goes down, the rest compensate. If we add capacity later, it plugs in here, here, and here.” He pointed to three nodes on the board.
“Well done, Blackjack,” said Henry.
“Thanks. There’s one more thing,” Blackjack continued. “I made a call last night, asking for reinforcements. Kade Butler, Gunner Godet, and Tabon Sharp are on their way as we speak.” He glanced at his mobile. “In fact, they’ve arrived.”