Chapter 589
Chapter 589:
“It’s exactly the place for the Oracle,” Skye countered. “You said Parker needs to access the mainframe. That’s a digital lock. You can kick down doors, Alistair, but you can’t kick down a firewall designed by someone who knows our internal architecture as well as Parker does. You need me to navigate the trap he’s set p>
“I can hire hackers p>
“Can you trust them?” Skye asked softly. “Parker fooled us all. He was family—biologically speaking—and we didn’t see it coming. I’m the only one who knows his coding syntax because I’ve been reviewing his monthly reports for the last quarter. I know his style p>
Alistair looked at her. He saw the resolve in her jaw, the set of her shoulders. She wasn’t asking for permission. She was stating a fact.
“If we go,” Alistair said, his voice low, “you don’t leave my sight. Not for a second. You don’t go to the bathroom without a guard. You don’t eat anything I haven’t tasted. Do you understand p>
“Crystal,” Skye said.
High above the clouds, inside the plush cabin of the Gulfstream, the mood was tense.
Parker Hayes sat by the window, his fingers drumming nervously on the armrest. He didn’t look like a conqueror; he looked like a man who had just realized the tiger he was riding might be hungry.
“Stop fidgeting, Parker,” Lucian Graves said from the leather recliner.
His leg was in a brace, and his hand was bandaged where Alistair had shot off his fingers. He looked thinner, paler, but his eyes burned with a renewed, fanatical light.
“We cut it close,” Parker muttered. “Too close. Alistair almost breached the runway p>
“But he didn’t,” Lucian said smoothly. “Because you did your job. And now, you will give me the city p>
Victoria Hayes sat opposite them. She looked disheveled, her prison jumpsuit exchanged for a silk dress, but her eyes were cold as she looked at her brother. There was no warmth there. “You took your time getting us out, Parker p>
“I had to wait for the rotation of the prison guards,” Parker snapped. “And I had to ensure the Port Valor accounts were primed. I didn’t do this for you, Victoria. I did it because Lucian offered me the one thing neither of you could: a kingdom of my own p>
“The Syndicate,” Lucian smiled, raising a glass of champagne with his good hand. “To new management p>
𝘚𝘂𝗽𝗽𝘰r𝗍 t𝘩e au𝗍𝘩о𝗿 𝖻𝘆 r𝗲𝘢d𝘪𝗇𝘨 𝗼ո b𝘦.𝗰o𝗆
Parker didn’t drink. He just looked at the dark ocean below, wondering if he had traded a comfortable executive office for a coffin.
The flight to Port Valor was long and grueling, a fourteen-hour journey across time zones that allowed the dread to settle deep into Skye’s bones. By the time the private jet—a backup from the Thorne fleet—began its descent, the sky was a bruised purple of early twilight.
Port Valor didn’t welcome visitors; it assaulted them.
Skye looked out the window. The city was a sprawling, chaotic organism clinging to the edge of a jagged coastline. Neon lights in garish pinks and greens battled the smog that hung low over the slums. Skyscrapers of glass and steel rose out of a sea of corrugated tin shacks like jagged teeth.
It was beautiful in a diseased sort of way.
“Humidity is ninety percent,” Alistair said, checking his watch as the plane taxied. “Temperature is a hundred. Keep your jacket on. The Kevlar lining breathes, supposedly p>
They stepped onto the tarmac. The air hit Skye like a wet towel. It smelled of rotting fish, burning rubber, and expensive spices—the scent of money trying to cover up decay.