Chapter 2

I clenched the snapped mop handle and shook violently under the screaming mic feedback. The room’s laughter swallowed me like a tsunami.

Then, inside that suffocating dead corner, a low, discordant piano line cut through the noise.

Three half-steps, descending.

My pupils tightened in the dark.

That was the contact melody—assigned to a single top-secret informant three years ago.

I immediately smashed the mic against my own foot and let out a pig-like howl, rolling off the stage.

“S-sorry! My stomach hurts!” I stuttered, performing the perfect clown.

In the corner of my eye, Russell—the washed-up actor at the piano—closed the lid calmly and slipped through the side door into darkness.

The party’s frenzy ended as filthy water in my cleaning bucket. I wrung out the mop one last time and pushed open the rusted iron door of the basement storage room.

The exhaust fan turned with a dull hum. In the dark, a faint cigar smell crept into my nose.

“Alpha-7-Bravo-Niner-4-4…”

A hoarse male voice floated from the shadow between shelves, reciting a string of numbers with perfect accuracy.

My hand froze mid-motion as I stripped off the janitor uniform. Muscles tightened instinctively, a predator ready to spring.

That was the twelve-digit friend-or-foe ID from a classified Marine infiltration op seven years ago.

“You tapped that broken mop handle on the floor forty-one times tonight.” Russell stepped out of the shadow.

His cloudy eyes locked onto me. “Three long, two short. The Fallujah fire-support call sign. You were looking for me, sir.”

I turned slowly. The cowardly haze on my face was gone.

But just as I was about to speak, heavy tactical footsteps pounded down the hall outside.

Threat closing.

Bang—

The storage door blew open. White flashlight beams cut the darkness like blades, aimed straight at us.

“What are you doing? Door unlocked this late?” One of company elder Harold’s bodyguards barged in with men behind him, face hard with hostility.

In that split second, Russell’s sharp eyes went unfocused, his cheeks flushing with drunken red.

“You damn cripple!” Russell grabbed my collar and blasted me with alcohol breath.

He shoved me into a rack and cursed at full volume. “I puked in the hall and you still haven’t cleaned it. You trying to make me slip?”

I instantly put the pathetic mask back on, cowering and wailing. “M-Mr. Russell… s-sorry… I’ll clean it…”

“So it’s Mr. Russell.” The bodyguard’s suspicion collapsed into contempt. “Don’t waste time on this lame dog. Let him work.”

“Spit. Disgusting.” Russell spat at me and stumbled out.

The bodyguard stepped aside with disgust, slammed the door shut, and the footsteps faded.

The moment the latch clicked home—

Russell’s drunkenness vanished.

Spine straight. Eyes like a cold hawk.

Without turning around, he flicked his wrist.

A micro-bug no bigger than a fingernail slid from his cuff and dropped perfectly into my palm.

“Lifted it off him while I acted drunk and grabbed his collar,” Russell whispered. “Harold’s people aren’t normal tonight. They’re running military-grade surveillance.”

My fingers tightened. I crushed the bug into powder and let it fall through my knuckles.

The useless disguise I’d worn for three years tore open in that instant.

Cold. Predatory. Absolute control—the aura of a man above the room—filled the cramped storage space.

“Dig.” I stared at the pipes on the wall, voice flat as ice.

“Run down everyone who ever heard that melody three years ago. Put Harold’s overseas cashflow under a microscope.”

“Understood, sir.”

Russell turned his back to me and pulled his cap low.

We never once met each other’s eyes. But the dead-man’s-field kind of operative sync between us made the air itself lethal.

“And one more thing.” I zipped the janitor uniform to the top, gaze sharp as a blade. “Tell Raven to get ready. We’re closing the net.”

Three years of hunting from the shadows.

Tonight, the game officially begins.