Page 39 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

The financial network that funded the trafficking rings—he managed it. The ghost accounts paying for the assassinations, the bribes, the blood—he balanced them. He didn't build the cage Andrea is trapped inside, but he paid for the lock. Countless lives destroyed, and my father hid the ledgers of their suffering.

My hand moves to my earlobe on instinct, grasping at the phantom weight of the diamond stud I surrendered in the relay den.

An insurance policy against a rainy day.

Blood money. He bought those diamonds with the lives of stolen women.

A sob tears its way up my throat. I bite down hard on my lower lip, tasting copper. I won't cry. I refuse to cry for a monster.

Three months ago, the police told me he died in a tragic hit-and-run in Chicago.

Or was it a hit? Maybe he ran afoul of the monsters he worked for. Maybe it wasn't an accident at all. Maybe the Consortium tied up a loose end.

And then they came for me.

Dax said a buyer requested a profile—a virgin ballerina. Maybe that's the whole truth. Or maybe they came for Arthur Masters's daughter and whatever secrets they think he passed to me. My hand drops from my earlobe, my fingers wrapping around the cold metal of the compass resting against my sternum. The one thing he asked me to keep safe.

But I know nothing.

I stare at the pad.

A second realization lands, worse than the first.

Dax knew.

He reviewed this intel in the lockup. He read the file. He knew the truth about my father.

He drove me into the jungle and sat next to me in the suffocating silence. He watched me hand over my father's diamonds in the relay den. He stayed quiet.

The one person I trusted to keep me alive in this nightmare lied to me.

The driver's door handle clicks.

The devastation crystallizes into something else. The shock burns away in the furnace of my chest, leaving cold, sharp fury.

The heavy door groans open, letting the heat of the jungle flood into the cab.

Dax slides into the driver's seat, dripping, the wet of the jungle still running off the harsh lines of his face. His frame fills the cramped cab with the smell of wet earth, crushed leaves, and gun oil. A press-check of the M4—the metallic clack is loud in the silence.

"Three guards on the perimeter." His voice is a low rumble, stripped of emotion. His eyes stay on the rifle as he checks the safety. "Automated turrets on the primary corners. We breach the eastern wall through a drainage grate. Pistol stays holstered. Quiet until we hit the holding block."

I hold the ballerina's stillness and say nothing.

He turns his head, gray eyes locking onto my face in the dim light of the dashboard, and reads the shift in me. The tactical distance he wears like armor falters. The stillness in my posture, the mask of the ballerina—he recognizes both.

He looks down.

The encrypted data pad sits in my lap. The green text illuminates the name Arthur Masters in bold letters, casting a sickly light over the Kevlar plates on my chest.

The silence in the truck goes absolute, swallowing the hum of the engine and the drip of the canopy on the roof.

I meet his gaze and channel the discipline of the stage, locking my muscles into rigid perfection, hiding the pain tearing through my chest. I weaponize the stillness.

"You knew." My voice is a whisper, level, and it cuts through the thick air like a razor.

He makes no move for the pad, offers no excuse, no hollow apology. He holds my stare, unflinching.

"Yes."