Page 26 of Prospect’s Curvy Vinyl Girl

Her name. Wendy. The Vinyl Vault.

I turn the page. Grainy surveillance photos stare back at me.

Wendy sweeping the front walk of the shop in the early morning fog. Wendy walking down Main Street clutching a paper cup of coffee. Wendy sitting behind the heavy oak counter, her dark hair falling over her shoulder as she sorts records.

Notes fill the margins in jagged handwriting. Inherited property. No remaining family. High value real estate. Vulnerable.

He’s been watching her for seven months. Building a case to forcefully absorb her shop into the Syndicate's network. Documenting her routines. Treating her mother's legacy like an asset waiting to be liquidated. Treating her like prey.

A roaring starts in my ears. It grows deafening, drowning out the hum of the streetlights. The edges of my vision tunnel until all I can see is the photo of her face, unaware and exposed.

My chest heaves. A low, violent sound tears out of my throat, raw and uncontrolled in the cramped sedan.

The need to kill him overrides my training. My bones ache with it. I want to carve him to pieces. I want to mount his head on a spike outside the shop so the Silver Serpent Syndicate understands what happens when they look at my woman.

The adrenaline spikes, hot and toxic. I’m halfway out of the sedan, the combat knife gripped in a reverse hold. I’m going up those stairs. I’m going to end him. I’m going to paint the walls of apartment 3B with his blood.

My boot hits the asphalt. The freezing wind hits my face.

What don't they know yet.

Her voice echoes in the quiet alley. Sassy, brave, terrified but refusing to back down. Yesterday, she stood in the ruins of her mother's records, looked at my deep-cover files, and chose to fight with me. She accepted the danger. She accepted me.

If I walk up those stairs and slaughter Martino, the Syndicate will retaliate. They won't just write it off as the cost of doing business. A murdered enforcer brings the Lieutenant crashing down on this block. The investigation trail leads backward. It leads to the shop. It leads to the stranger who showed up right before the murder. It puts a neon target on Wendy’s back. It drags her into the crosshairs of a full-scale cartel war.

I can’t be an animal.

I have to be the operative.

I force myself back into the Civic. I slam the door shut. I drop my head against the freezing steering wheel, fighting the violent sickness churning in my gut. I breathe through gritted teeth. In. Out. She’s safe. Keep her safe. Use your head.

I’m the Broken Halos' undercover operative. I run phantoms. I build ghosts. I dismantle lives from the inside out without firing a shot. I don't need a knife to kill a man.

I need a keyboard.

I flip open my encrypted laptop. The screen casts a sterile blue glow over my hands.

I reach over and pull the manila envelope Daniel Gunnar gave me out of my go-bag. The paper spills open, revealing the club's digital arsenal. Dummy accounts, phantom employee histories, encrypted routing numbers. Everything a ghost needs to operate in the dark.

I connect to the mobile hotspot routing through Petra’s dispatch tower forty miles away in Pine Valley. Untraceable.

A secure channel is already open when the connection locks. Not Petra. The Chapel.

"Cipher." Daniel Gunnar’s voice, flat and close, like he’s riding shotgun instead of sitting forty miles north. "Your routing’s wrapped in three layers. Stay on my line, stay a ghost. Go off-book and you go dark alone."

"Copy."

A second voice cuts in. Older, colder. Elias, the club’s Treasurer, doesn’t waste a syllable. "You’re moving their money to bury their own man. Do it my way or their auditor unravels it by Friday. Don’t take it in one clean number—bleed it in small cuts across all six months, backdated to before their last reconciliation. An auditor forgives a skimmer. He hunts a thief. Make Martino a skimmer."

I reset the half-built account on my screen. I do it his way.

Then Logan, low, from somewhere behind them. The whole weight of the club in three words. "Burn him clean."

The line stays open. Four years I’ve run phantoms alone in the dark. Tonight the knife going into Martino’s back has the club’s whole hand on the hilt.

Nadia’s intel included Martino’s administrative login credentials. The Silver Serpent Syndicate corporatized their extortion operations over the last year. They want to run like a legitimate business, which means they keep centralized digital ledgers. Idiots. You put your money on a server, you give me the keys to your throat.

I log in. The crude firewall crumbles in ninety seconds. Code flows down the screen. This is my domain.