Chapter 10
Chapter 10
With twelve hours until the Meridian dinner, Elara and Kael rebuild their infiltration plan around the leaked penthouse intel. Tobias, despite his injuries, forges catering credentials while providing details about the private elevator layout. Kael contacts Declan to verify the leak's credibility, learning a Collector named Soren Marsh may be the insider. Elara poses as catering staff to access the private elevator, while Kael takes a brute-force approach through the building's service corridor. They share a charged moment as Elara paints her tattoos with theatrical cover-up and Kael helps, the intimacy laced with unspoken fear. The chapter ends when Elara, disguised and credentialed, steps into the Meridian's service entrance and spots an unexpected face among the catering team—someone she recognizes from Desmond Crane's public photographs.
Twelve hours is a lifetime when you've been living in increments of minutes.
I sat on the ring apron with the burner phone balanced on my knee, rereading those five lines until they stopped looking like words and started looking like architecture. Crane relocated. Penthouse floor. Private elevator. Two guards personal detail. Dinner still 8 PM. Each sentence was a load-bearing wall in a building I'd have to enter in less than half a day, and every one of them had been placed there by hands I couldn't see.
Kael paced the gym floor below me, shirtless still, the muscles in his back shifting like something alive when he turned. He'd gone quiet after reading the message—processing, I knew, the way I'd seen him process before. Running scenarios. Killing outcomes in his head before they could happen in the world.
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