The silence after Vincent's dismissal wasn't quiet. It was a roaring vacuum filled with the drip of blood and the suffocating weight of his command. I walked back to the East Wing, every step measured, back unnaturally straight, chin held high – the picture of composed obedience. Inside, a silent scream clawed at my throat, threatening to shatter the fragile mask.
I locked the suite door, the soft click echoing like a gunshot in the sudden stillness. Leaning against the cool wood, I slid down, not to the floor this time, but onto the plush rug, drawing my knees to my chest. The trembling was uncontrollable now, a full-body earthquake born of terror and… something else. Something colder. Harder.
He killed him. In cold blood. Efficient. Clinical. The images flashed behind my eyelids: the mangled hand, the terrible finality of the blow, Vincent's face – a mask of detached focus. The coppery scent seemed embedded in my sinuses. Rule Four wasn't just about privacy, it was a shield for monstrous acts. And I'd torn it aside.
A soft, distinct tap-tap-tap echoed from the direction of the French doors leading to the balcony. Not a bird. Not the wind. A specific, rhythmic pattern.
My head snapped up, every nerve instantly taut, the paralyzing terror momentarily overridden by hyper-alertness. Contact.
The trembling didn't stop, but its source shifted. Adrenaline, sharp and familiar, cut through the debilitating fear. Nyx surged forward, shoving Penelope the terrified wife into a locked compartment. I pushed myself up, moving silently, swiftly, to the balcony doors. Peering through the glass, I scanned the meticulously manicured garden below. Empty. But nestled in the corner of the wrought-iron balcony railing, tucked beneath a trailing ivy frond, was a small, smooth river stone. It hadn't been there this morning.
My fingers, still trembling but now with purpose, unlatched the door. The cool evening air washed over me, carrying the scent of damp earth and roses, failing to dispel the blood. I snatched the stone. It was cool, ordinary. But turning it over, a tiny, almost invisible seam ran around its circumference. A pressure point. I pressed hard.
The stone split cleanly in half. Nestled inside the hollow core was a tightly rolled slip of rice paper, no larger than a matchstick. Heart pounding for a different reason now, I retreated inside, locking the balcony door, and unfolded the paper under the light of the ornate desk lamp in my small, sterile study.
The message was written in a familiar, precise hand, using a cipher key only two people in the world knew. The key derived from the coordinates of a safe house in Prague and the date of my final field assessment. Code Name Confirmation: NYX.
The message itself was brutally concise:
> **STATUS URGENT.**
> **ASSET CAVALIER COMPROMISED. COVER BLOWN.**
> **OPERATION GILDED CAGE IMMEDIATE THREAT LEVEL ALPHA.**
> **PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: SECURE DE LA ROSA ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL "SHADOW VEIL" AT ALL COSTS. SECONDARY: MAINTAIN COVER IF POSSIBLE. TERTIARY: EXTRACTION PROTOCOL ECHO INITIATED ON YOUR SIGNAL.**
> **HE IS CIRCING YOU. TRUST NO ONE. NOT EVEN THE STAFF.**
> **ACKNOWLEDGE VIA DEAD DROP BETA BY 0600 LOCAL.**
> **- FALCON**
The rice paper crumpled in my suddenly cold fist. Compromised ? , Cover blown. Threat Level Alpha. The words detonated in my mind, scattering the remnants of Penelope Bianchi, the debt-ridden pawn.
My real name wasn't Penelope Bianchi. It was Eleanor Vance. And I wasn't a victim bartered to settle a gambling debt. I was Senior Cyber Intelligence Analyst Eleanor Vance, CIA, codename: Nyx. Operation Gilded Cage wasn't my prison sentence; it was my assignment.
The "gambling debt"? A meticulously constructed cover story, leveraging my father's actual, though manageable, financial troubles, amplified and weaponized by Langley to make my sudden, coerced marriage to Vincent de la Rosa tragically believable. My "fear"? Partially real – Vincent was undeniably terrifying – but amplified, a performance honed by months of intense psychological profiling and survival training. The hacking? Not just a hidden talent, but my primary weapon, my reason for being here.
Vincent de la Rosa wasn't just a Mafia Don; he was the architect of "Shadow snake," an encryption protocol so sophisticated, so untraceable, it had become the preferred communication channel for global terror cells, arms traffickers, and hostile state actors. It rendered their communications invisible. Unbreakable. Until Nyx.
My mission: Infiltrate his inner circle, access the core servers housing Shadow Veil, implant a bespoke, undetectable backdoor, and exfiltrate the master decryption key. Marriage was the only access point Langley's psych profiles and intel could identify. He was too paranoid, too insulated otherwise. So, they crafted Penelope – vulnerable, intelligent enough to be plausible, desperate enough to accept the arrangement, and possessing just the right background in computational finance (a cover for my true expertise) to potentially pique his interest without raising immediate red flags.
I looked down at my hands. They were still shaking, but the tremor was different now. Less terror, more… operational stress. The raw panic of witnessing murder was still there, a fresh, visceral wound, but it was now overlaid with the cold, calculating focus of an agent whose cover was potentially blown and whose mission timer had just accelerated to critical.
He is circling you. Falcon's warning echoed. Vincent's intense scrutiny during dinner, his cold assessment after the killing… Had it just been the Don asserting dominance over a disobedient wife? Or had it been something more? Had Silas's tech team found a digital breadcrumb Nyx had missed? Had Vincent's legendary paranoia finally latched onto the inconsistencies in Penelope's carefully constructed background?
Trust no one. Not even the staff. Mrs lamy impassive competence, Massimo's watchful eyes, the young maid's fleeting pity… were they just employees? Or Vincent's eyes and ears, reporting my every move, my every flicker of uncharacteristic composure or hidden panic?
The portrait across the room caught my eye – the woman with the defiant gaze. Earlier, I'd seen a kindred prisoner. Now, Nyx saw something else: a potential security vulnerability. Was that room monitored? Were the eyes in the painting literal? I scanned the ceiling cornices, the edges of the heavy frame, looking for the tell-tale glint of a lens Nyx knew how to hide. Assume everything is watched.
The diamond on my finger felt heavier than ever. Not just a symbol of a forced marriage, but a constant, glittering reminder of the gilded trap I was in. A trap that might have just sprung shut.
I moved to the elegant, useless laptop Vincent provided. Monitored. Walled garden. Nyx needed a different path. My eyes fell on the antique writing desk – the escritoire. Its delicate legs, its seemingly solid structure. A quick, practiced assessment. Hollow space beneath the writing surface? Possibly. Accessible only with specialized tools I didn't have… yet. But a potential dead drop location inside my own prison. Dead Drop Beta. Falcon's instructions.
Acknowledgment was due by 0600. Less than 8 hours. I needed to signal readiness, confirm I understood the Alpha threat status, without revealing my location or method if Vincent was monitoring. The garden… the stone… that path might be compromised now.
My gaze swept the room again, landing on the discarded silk robe from earlier. An idea, fragile and dangerous, sparked. Performance. That was the key Vincent demanded. And performance was Nyx's oldest tool.
I walked to the full-length mirror. The woman staring back was pale, shadows under haunted eyes, hair slightly disheveled. The picture of a traumatized bride who'd just witnessed something unspeakable. Perfect. I didn't need to erase the distress; I needed to weaponize it. Make it so authentic, so overwhelming, that it masked the cold calculation happening beneath the surface.