Chapter 7 Malek
MALEK
The Zurich lab has always been the most secure of my holdings, locked so deep under corporate facades and shell companies that not even seasoned auditors can follow the trail without choking on paperwork.
It is not a place meant to be seen, much less spoken about, because it holds the kind of projects that governments pretend they know nothing about while quietly sending funding through back doors.
The Syndicate would love to break it open, and my rivals would sell their own blood to find its location. For years it has stayed quiet, a vault in the center of Europe’s cleanest banking city, and tonight that quiet fractures.
Lysa’s voice cuts across the encrypted line, steady and unflinching as always.
“Zurich reports unusual movement. A flagged IP trace from DOJ. Not a full breach yet, but close. They were searching through the biotech holdings, specifically anything linked to our Eastern branches. The trail is masked, but we picked up the endpoint before they realized. I sent you the full brief.”
I sit in the dark office, curtains drawn tight against the lights of Geneva. The city hums beneath me, but up here it is silence except for the sound of her voice. I turn the glass of whiskey in my hand, not drinking, just watching the amber liquid catch what little light spills from the desk.
“Relocate the Zurich projects,” I say at last, voice low. “Everything. Don’t wait for authorization. Move them into secondary safehouses and burn the old files. No evidence left behind.”
“Yes, sir.”
She hesitates, and she never hesitates.
“There’s more,” she adds finally.
“Say it.”
“We pulled the name attached to the trace. Not the hacker, whoever signed the warrant that allowed them to dig in the first place.”
“Who?”
“Jennifer Callahan.”
The whiskey turns bitter in my mouth even though I never taste it.
Her name settles like smoke in the room, thick, alive, refusing to disperse. I don’t move, don’t answer right away, because inside me something else does.
The lion stirs.
Not in warning, not in anger, but with recognition. A deep growl rising from marrow, telling me in no uncertain terms that this woman is not just another threat in a tailored suit. She is something that touches me where nothing has in a century.
I set the glass down, steady, slow.
“Leave the report,” I tell Lysa. “Do not pursue her. Do not countertrace. Pull back every agent with her name on their target list. If she shows up again, I’ll handle it myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line cuts.
For a long moment, I simply sit there, elbows braced on the desk, hands steepled, listening to the silence press in.
I should end this now. She is a prosecutor digging where she does not belong, already too close to truths that would rip the floor out from under her life.
I should put distance between us, shut her down through channels, ruin her credibility, send her back to Washington with her career in ash.
It would be easy. I have ended senators with less.
But instead I rise, cross the office, and press my palms to the glass.
The city looks different tonight. Too bright and restless.
Her face flashes again in my mind, the set of her shoulders when she refused to bend, the sharp line of her mouth when she said she wasn’t afraid of me.
She doesn’t know what it means to make a claim like that in my presence.
She doesn’t know what it means to stand in front of me and hold the ground as if it belonged to her.
The lion knows.
It paces inside me, restless, recognizing something my mind would rather ignore.
I turn away, needing air. I leave the office, taking the private lift down into the belly of the tower where the true work lives.
The corridor stretches long and narrow, lined with steel doors and reinforced concrete.
Guards straighten when they see me, stepping aside, not daring to speak.
I walk past them without acknowledgement, because tonight is not about their loyalty. Tonight is about control.
The training floor waits where I left it, the ruined dummy still leaning in two pieces, the cracked mirror still webbed across the wall. I do not replace these things. I keep them broken so I can remember what it means when I let go.
I shrug off the jacket, toss it aside, and roll my sleeves up as I step onto the mat. My body shifts easily, claws pressing through skin, teeth lengthening just enough to slice air. My senses sharpen until the silence hums like a song.
I move, not with grace but with violence, striking the air, the walls, the shadows themselves. Every blow carries her name in my blood. Every step reminds me of what it meant to spar with Roman under Darius’ command, back when the Pact was still something we believed in.
I remember the snow in those old nights, the fire burning in the pit between us, the sound of blades ringing against stone.
Roman had eyes like foxfire, clever and cold, always laughing even when he bled.
He never stopped moving, never stopped searching for the angle that would catch me off guard.
I was the lion, steady and unyielding, his perfect counter.
We fought for hours, neither willing to bow, until Darius called us to order and reminded us of what the oath meant.
I roar before I know it, the sound ripping from my chest, shaking the air, bouncing off the steel and the glass until the floor hums.
The past is gone. The Pact is dust. Roman is a traitor, Darius a fool, and Cassian lost in his own penance. I chose the human world because it was cleaner, because it offered a different kind of battlefield.
But the lion does not forget.
It knows when it meets its match.
I drag my claws down the cracked mirror, glass splintering under the force, and stare at my own reflection. Gold eyes, bloodied hands, chest rising and falling with a rhythm too steady to be human.
And all I can see is her.
Jennifer Callahan.
The woman who looked me in the eye and didn’t blink. The woman my instincts refuse to let go. The one who has already set this war in motion, whether she understands it or not.
I pull back, force the shift down until my body obeys again, muscles trembling with restraint. I wash the blood from my hands, dress, and leave the training floor in silence.
When the elevator doors close around me, I let out one last breath.
She is not my enemy. Nor is she my ally.
And the worst part is, I want to see her again.