Chapter 602
Chapter 602:
She touched the inside of her jacket pocket, feeling the edge of the encrypted drive she had pulled from Parker’s mainframe hours ago—the one that whispered a truth she wasn’t ready to speak aloud: The Syndicate wasn’t just a criminal organization; it was a legacy. And the name Blackwood on that list wasn’t a target—it was the origin.
Miles away, on a service road leading out of Port Valor jurisdiction, the air was thick with exhaust fumes and the hum of insects. A woman huddled near a broken payphone, wearing oversized sunglasses that did nothing to hide the tremors in her hands. She was an associate of Parker’s, left behind in the scramble.
She was waiting for extraction. Parker was her lifeline. He was the only one left who knew she existed.
A black sedan pulled up silently beside her. The window rolled down.
“Get in,” a voice said.
The woman looked. It was Lucian Graves. He looked worse for wear, his expensive suit ruined by seawater, shivering slightly from the hypothermia of his underwater escape. A baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes, and his hand—the one resting on the steering wheel—was chafed raw where the handcuffs had been cut off.
The woman hesitated. She knew who he was. Everyone in the underworld knew who he was now: the fugitive.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she whispered. “Parker left me p>
“I know,” Lucian said. “That is why you are useful p>
She opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. The car smelled of antiseptic, blood, and sea salt. Lucian didn’t look at her. He put the car in gear.
“You know where Parker is heading, don’t you?” he asked.
The woman wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I… I heard him shouting coordinates. He said he was going to The Castle p>
“And where is that p>
“Oakhaven,” she said. “He went to the Hayes estate. He said he has leverage on the old man p>
𝖱𝘦𝖺𝘥 𝘵𝗵𝖾 𝘳еal 𝗌𝗍𝘰𝘳y 𝘰ո 𝖻𝖾𝘭𝗻𝗼v𝖾𝗹ѕ.cо𝗆
Lucian’s hands tightened on the wheel. The leather creaked. “Hayes,” he muttered. “Of course. He is running to the origin point p>
He accelerated toward the highway ramp.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Because,” Lucian said, his eyes fixed on the road leading north, “I am going to burn it all down. And Parker is going to be the kindling p>
Thousands of miles away, the sunlight in Oakhaven was different. It wasn’t harsh or exposing like Port Valor; it was soft, filtering through the ancient oaks that gave the city its name.
Liam Kensington sat in a holding cell that looked deceptively like a guest room, save for the bars on the window and the reinforced steel door. He held a faded photograph he had found in the room—an image of his grandmother, Beatrice, and a man who looked exactly like him, but wasn’t his father.
The door opened. An old man walked in, leaning heavily on a cane. Arthur Hayes looked at the prisoner his nephew had brought him—the man Parker claimed was a spy sent by Thorne.
“You have her eyes,” Arthur Hayes said, staring at Liam, ignoring Parker’s lies for a moment to see the truth in the bone structure. “Beatrice’s eyes p>