Chapter 26 Jennifer
JENNIFER
The marble steps of the Capitol feel slick beneath my heels, polished too smooth by decades of men with more money than conscience walking them.
The plaza hums with cameras, the low thrum of a dozen generators powering lights that cut through the gray afternoon.
I can feel the air change as I take the podium.
It’s not nerve, —it’s the current of attention, the collective breath of a crowd that wants to be told what to believe.
“Senator Alcott has failed this country,” I say into the microphone, my voice steady, sharp as glass.
“He has funneled money through shell corporations tied directly to foreign arms deals, black market laboratories, and paramilitary groups that answer not to the American people but to a syndicate of criminals who have built their empire on blood.”
The reporters murmur, cameras flash, and I see Alcott standing at the edges of the crowd, his expression a mask of politeness stretched too tight across a skull built for cruelty. He’s older than the photographs let on, jowls heavy, his eyes pale and sharp.
“This isn’t speculation,” I continue, pulling the packet of documents from the leather folder tucked under my arm. “These are the paper trails. The wire transfers. The offshore accounts. All of it ties back to him. And through him, to the Syndicate.”
I pause, letting the words hang. “And through the Syndicate—to Roman.”
The name means nothing to the public yet, but it will. It has to. I want it carved into their minds the way it’s carved into mine, a warning and a curse.
Alcott tries to push through the reporters, his voice booming. “This is slander. Baseless slander from a woman who has made a career out of twisting facts.”
I lean forward, my tone calm, measured, surgical. “If it’s slander, Senator, then sue me. Take me to court. But know that I will bring every shred of evidence with me, and the world will see it.”
The cameras swing to him. His face flushes, his hands clench, but he doesn’t answer. He can’t.
I step back from the podium, the sound of questions rising like a tide—reporters shouting, cameras whirring, the crowd buzzing with energy I can’t control. But it doesn’t matter. The words are out now. There’s no taking them back.
Malek is waiting when I leave the plaza, his black car parked at the curb, his body leaning against it like he owns the street.
He doesn’t look at me at first. His eyes are on the crowd, scanning, sharp, predatory.
Only when I stop in front of him does he turn, and the weight of his gaze nearly steals my breath.
“You just put yourself on the map,” he says, his voice low, rough. “And not just in the way you think.”
“Good,” I reply, chin lifting. “It’s about time.”
His jaw tightens, a muscle ticking. He opens the car door, not as a gentleman’s courtesy, but as a command. I slide in, and the air between us crackles with everything unsaid.
The strike comes that night.
We’re back at his Geneva estate, the lake black and restless under the moon, when the news alerts flash across the screens in his war room.
Grainy footage of smoke rising from the ruins of a shifter refuge in Berlin.
Bodies carried out. Blood streaking the cobblestones.
Sirens wailing, chaos alive in every corner of the screen.
The anchor’s voice trembles. “We can now confirm multiple coordinated explosions at a known shelter for displaced shifters. Casualty numbers remain unverified, but estimates suggest dozens killed, with many more injured. The Syndicate has not claimed responsibility, but sources say—”
I don’t hear the rest. I’m already moving, already grabbing my jacket.
“I have to be there,” I say.
“You’re not going alone.” Malek’s voice cuts through the room like steel.
Within minutes, the jet is ready. Within hours, we’re in Berlin.
The scene is worse than the footage.
The refuge was tucked into an old warehouse near the river, its windows boarded, its doors reinforced.
Now it’s nothing but rubble. Smoke still rises from twisted beams, the air thick with ash and iron.
The stench of burned flesh clings to every breath.
Sirens wail, lights flash red and blue, but the chaos is bigger than the uniforms trying to contain it.
Survivors stagger through the wreckage, bloodied and dazed, children crying in the arms of parents who don’t know if they’ll survive the night.
I move into the crowd without thinking, without hesitation.
My heels sink into ash, my hands reaching for whoever is closest. A woman clutching her arm, bone jutting white through skin.
I strip my jacket and bind it tight, pressing down until the bleeding slows.
A boy no older than ten, his face black with soot.
I scoop him up, murmuring comfort I don’t even hear myself say, carrying him to a medic’s tent that looks ready to collapse under the weight of need.
Everywhere I turn, there’s another face, another wound, another pair of eyes wide with fear.
And Malek is a shadow moving beside me, his presence a wall of strength.
He doesn’t speak often, but when he does, people listen.
He pulls steel beams aside with bare hands, lifts rubble off trapped bodies, steadies panicked men who would have bolted and left others to die.
His shirt is torn, his hands bloodied, but he doesn’t stop.
“Over here,” I call, waving him toward a section where the roof has caved in. Together we drag out three survivors, coughing and gasping, their bodies trembling. He pulls them to their feet, his voice low, steady, commanding. “You’re safe now. Move.”
It goes on for hours.
By the time the last fire dies and the last body is pulled from the rubble, the sky is pale with dawn. My body aches, my clothes are ruined, my hands are raw, but I don’t care.
What I care about is the cameras.
They’ve been rolling since the moment we arrived, and now the world has seen it all—me, the prosecutor who stood at the podium, knee-deep in ash and blood, my hands tied with strangers’ wounds.
Malek, the man whispered about in backrooms and reports, his power undeniable, his face set like stone as he carried survivors from the fire.
The world is watching now.
And nothing will ever be the same.
We stand at the edge of the ruins as the sun breaks the horizon, painting the river gold. Malek is beside me, his shoulders broad, his body still and dangerous even in stillness. I turn to him, my throat raw, my chest tight.
“They’ll come harder now,” I say softly.
His gaze stays on the rising sun, his voice low. “Let them.”
I look at him, really look, and I know the truth: the line has been crossed. There’s no going back. The Syndicate wanted to send a message, but so did we.
And ours was louder.