Page 76 of Damian

Damian

Morning came fast. Too fast.

I eased out of bed, Morgan still curled in the sheets, her hand resting where my chest had been. I pressed a kiss to her hair before slipping on a fresh shirt, shouldering the weight of the day.

By the time I hit command, the others were already there. Oliver leaned against the table, arms crossed. Gage sat sharpening a knife like he’d been born with it. Cyclone’s laptop glowed, maps and data scrolling fast.

“You look like hell,” Gage said without looking up.

“Feel worse,” I admitted, dropping into a chair. “But I’m here. What’s next?”

Cyclone spun the laptop toward me, his grin tired but sharp. “What’s next? We’ve got Luthor in custody, his network bleeding out, and half the city scrambling to cover their asses. But this—” he tapped the screen, highlighting a cluster of new coordinates “—this is bigger. He wasn’t working alone.”

Oliver’s smirk was thin. “They never are.”

I sat back, the weight of the next storm already pressing down. But in the back of my mind, I held onto the memory of Morgan’s hands on me, her voice whispering I’ll always be waiting.

I could fight another war. As long as I had her to come back to.

102

Damian

Cyclone’s fingers drummed against the keys, his eyes locked on the screens in front of him. The glow of shifting maps and encrypted files painted his face in pale light, but the grin he wore was all adrenaline.

“Alright, listen up,” he said. “Luthor wasn’t king of the mountain. He was a middleman—big, powerful, yeah—but still answering to someone higher up.”

Oliver leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Higher up? Who the hell bankrolls a guy like Luthor?”

Cyclone tapped the screen. Numbers scrolled across, accounts opening and closing with dizzying speed. “Money doesn’t lie. These transfers—millions, sometimes billions—funnel into shell companies spread across Europe and the Middle East. And from there, it’s laundered back into everything from private security firms to shipping conglomerates. He wasn’t building this alone.”

Gage leaned back in his chair, knife flipping between his fingers. “So who’s pulling the strings?”

Cyclone hesitated, then clicked again. A set of dossierspopped onto the main screen—faces half-shadowed, names redacted in places. “We don’t have all of them. But we’ve got enough breadcrumbs to know there’s a council—five or six major players. Politicians. Businessmen. Even a few with military ties. Each one controls a branch of the network. Trafficking. Weapons. Information.”

My jaw clenched, the anger burning hot but sharp. “A hydra.”

“Exactly,” Cyclone said. “Cut off one head, the rest scatter and rebuild. Which is why we can’t stop here.”

Oliver exhaled slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “So Luthor’s capture wasn’t the endgame—it was the opening move.”

“Right,” Cyclone said. “And we just told the world there’s blood in the water. These bastards will either go underground or come gunning for us.”

The room went quiet. Heavy.

I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on the table. “Then we finish it. One by one, we cut them down. I don’t care how deep they’re buried, or how much money they’ve got—if they’re tied to this, they fall.”

Gage’s smirk was sharp, lethal. “Now that sounds like a plan I can get behind.”

Cyclone closed the laptop with a snap, his eyes gleaming. “Then I’ll start pulling threads. And trust me—these guys have plenty to pull.”

Oliver glanced at me, his tone steady but knowing. “That means no downtime. Not for any of us.”

I thought of Morgan, still asleep in the safehouse. Of Ruby curled under her blanket, finally safe. The promise I’d made to them burned like fire in my chest.

“No downtime,” I agreed. My voice was steel. “But I’ll make damn sure they never have to live in fear again. Not while I’m breathing.”

The others nodded, the decision unspoken but solid. The war wasn’t over—it was just beginning.

And I knew with absolute certainty: the next battle would be bloodier than the last.

The End