Page 21 of Fallen Empire (The Fallen Trilogy #2)

Nic crossed her arms, hesitation flickering across her face. “We could send in Layla.”

Ben’s head snapped toward her. “Absolutely not.”

“She’s already in Manhattan,” Nic pushed. “I had her watching affiliates the last few days. She’s local. Prepped. And she’s played this part before.”

“You mean bait,” Ben snapped. “That’s what you’re suggesting? That we send her in as one of the women Koslov cycles through like fucking room service?”

“She knows the drill, Ben,” Nic shot back. “She’s posed as worse—for men who made Koslov look like a choir boy. And they never suspected a thing.”

Ben’s head turned sharply. “Do you hear yourself?” he snapped. “The man was face to face with us. Jax held him by the fucking throat—and we never even knew who he was until what... ten fucking minutes ago?”

Nic’s arms folded tighter, jaw clenched. “It only took me a few hours once I had something to look for.”

Ben gave a dry laugh. “Yeah? And what if we never had?”

“I wasn’t looking for him,” she shot back. “I was too busy tracking someone you lost.”

The room went still.

My gaze bounced between them. They didn’t usually take shots like that, especially not with this kind of heat. Ben never backed down from a mission.

But now?

He wasn’t just fighting for Layla.

He was fighting against sending her.

And that meant something.

Nic finally looked at me. “She can handle it.”

I stayed quiet a moment too long.

The kind of pause that carried weight.

“If anyone can... it’s her,” she added.

The silence that followed said it all.

We were out of time. We needed eyes inside, and we needed them now .

“Do it,” I said finally. “One night. That’s all she gets. In and out. And then she’s done.”

Nic didn’t say anything else. Just gave a sharp nod and stepped away, already pulling her phone from her back pocket as she disappeared from the cafeteria.

The second she was out of earshot, I felt it—the silence wasn’t relief. It was a countdown.

Ben sat across from me, arms folded tight, jaw ticking like it was the only thing keeping him from exploding.

“I don’t like any of this,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” I said, “I got that.”

He didn’t look up.

“You usually run toward the fire,” I added. “So tell me, what’s got you flinching now?”

He finally lifted his head, and the look in his eyes wasn’t fear. It was calculation. The kind you make when the perimeter’s been breached and your fallback options are already burned.

“This isn’t a mission anymore,” he said flatly.

“Not in the way we’re trained for. We’re not dropping into foreign airspace with a six-man unit and an exfil chopper waiting on standby.

We’re not gathering intel from ten clicks out and planning for six contingencies before boots ever hit the ground. ”

His voice was calm, but cold.

“We’re not infiltrating their stronghold. They’re already inside ours .”

I leaned back against the wall, arms folded. “And that’s new?”

“It’s not just new. It’s wrong.” He stood and paced once. “Everything about this op feels inverted. We’re chasing ghosts on our own turf. No map. No satellite feed. No field reports from local assets. Just... guesses.”

“And Layla?”

“She’s a solo asset with no comms backup being dropped behind enemy lines with no extraction window and no safehouse,” he snapped. “That’s a goddamn suicide run.”

He exhaled hard through his nose, then looked at me again.

“Protection was never supposed to be this close to home, Jax. We work from a distance. We intercept. Disrupt. Get in, get out, clean. But this?” He shook his head. “This is too fucking close.”

I didn’t say anything right away. Because he wasn’t wrong.

“I’ve seen you kick in doors with half the intel we have now,” I said carefully. “So what’s different?”

Ben’s eyes flickered—just for a second—and then steeled again.

“There’s no perimeter to breach here,” he said. “No coordinates to plug into a drone. This one’s already inside the wire.”

“And you can’t protect what you can’t see coming.”

Ben ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I don’t like not knowing who’s watching who. Koslov plays a long game, and we just tossed Layla into the lion’s den without knowing if the lion even eats.”

“We’ve played riskier hands,” I said.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “But we held the cards then.”

Nic reentered the room, phone still in hand. Her expression was unreadable—cool, clipped, composed.

“She’s in,” she said simply. “Layla’s onboard.”

Ben didn’t flinch. He stood there for a second, arms still crossed, but I could see it, the tension tightening in his jaw, the twitch in his temple that only showed up when shit was about to go sideways.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked, voice low but sharp. “You really sure this is the call you want to make?”

Nic didn’t hesitate. “She knows what she signed up for.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Nic arched a brow. “She’s not green, Ben. She’s done dirtier jobs with fewer parameters. She’s in and out in one night. I’m not sending her into a war zone, we’re dropping her into a Penthouse with champagne and satin sheets. She’ll be fine.”

Ben shook his head, eyes narrowing. “You’re underestimating him.”

“I’m not underestimating anything,” Nic snapped. “I’m playing the cards we’ve got.”

“No,” Ben said, stepping forward. “You’re gambling with someone else’s life and calling it strategy. If something happens—”

“It won’t.”

“If it does,” Ben said, voice hard now, “it’s on you.”

The room went quiet.

Nic didn’t flinch. She just slipped her phone back into her pocket, cool as ever. “Then let’s make sure nothing does.”

But I saw it—just for a flicker—when she turned away. That crack in her armor. The part of her that wasn’t sure. That maybe knew, deep down, we weren’t ready for what we were walking into.

Ben dropped back into his chair. I gave him a beat. But we both knew there was nothing else to say.

“I need to get back to Savannah.”

He didn’t lift his head. Just gave a single nod.

I stepped into the hall and pulled the door closed behind me, but the silence didn’t follow. It clung to me, wrapped around my shoulders like a warning I couldn’t shake.

I trusted Nic.

The problem was—I trusted Ben more.

And if he was on edge?

I should’ve been, too.

There was a weight pressing down on this mission, something thick and bitter that made the air feel wrong.

Like we were already too late.

Maybe it was because Savannah was still helpless upstairs, and I’d already failed her once.

Or maybe it was the feeling I knew too well.

The kind that crawls up your spine when ghosts from your past start taking shape again.

I tried to go back to that place—the world I once called home.

If home was what you called hell on earth.

As the elevator doors slid closed, I shut my eyes and stepped into Costa’s shoes.

It wasn’t Koslov, not really.

It was worse.

But their tactics, their cruelty, their games —they all played from the same bloodstained script.

If I saw Layla walk in?

I’d know.

She could wear a thousand faces, a million disguises. But I’d recognize her for what she really was—undercover.

She stood out.

But would Koslov?

The elevator dinged. I opened my eyes and stepped out, walking toward the room that held my entire fucking life inside it.

Koslov wouldn’t get to her now.

But he wasn’t trying to.

He was going to cripple us in a way we didn’t see coming.

I just had to figure out which direction he was gunning for—

Before he pulled the trigger.