Page 80 of Forbidden Empire

A beat passed, then she nodded. “Then we start at dawn.”

I pressed my mouth to her hair, breathing her in. “Sleep. The world will still be waiting when the sun comes up.”

Sixteen

ESME

Dawn hit hard.

The band on my ankle blinked green, a quiet accusation and a reminder of the contract I’d signed. Two escorts waited outside the door like punctuation marks.

Aidon was already in the war room. Maps covered the table. Camera feeds transformed the walls into a city of screens.

Ares slid a glossy print into my hand. “East-side warehouse to the airport feeder. Manifest window puts the next run inside two hours. We cut it here.” His finger tapped a narrow choke point—one road in, one road out.

I looked from the route to Aidon. “I lead.”

“You lead,” he said without hesitation.

“Debt-for-deed. You bring the proof home; I retire a marker.”

“One,” I said. “Not my name. Not Olympus.”

“Progress,” he agreed.

“Two-guard rule stands,” Ares added.

“Side by side,” I said. “Or I walk.”

Aidon swallowed the argument I saw forming and gave a sharp nod. “Side by side.”

While Ares ran drivers like a drill sergeant, I let the briefing wash over me and did the only thing that steadied my hands before a job. I ran Rhea’s file in my head.

Vegas resembled an organism, with its neon veins pulsating, arteries humming. Rhea didn’t just sustain it. She constructed it. As the youngest of three, a Greek American raised in The Underworld and groomed as an heir, her father focused on stability with his sandbags and sermons, while she targeted fault lines, tearing them asunder.

After gutter punks shot him in the head, she moved quickly to restore order. She sliced throats, broke alliances, and electrified his walls with razor wire. The Shadow Syndicate was resurrected from the dead, with her name resonating from Moscow to Macau.

Gunrunners were the first to call her. Politicians memorized her contact. Hackers competed for her paydays. Vegas remained her prized possession—her desert fortress she was willing to die for. Her communication was direct and relentless: the lesson preceded the headshot. She didn’t merely win; she imparted knowledge.

Rhea was like a glacier, slow yet unstoppable. Zeno preferred to strike with the sudden power of lightning. She crafted landscapes over many years. I spent weeks in her servers, still marveling at how she planted a seed in January that blossomed into a flower three Decembers later.

Every smile seemed like a trap, every toast a countdown, and every so-called 'random” encounter was part of a web woven across the Strip. I saw her condemn a man with a drink in her hand and a plan already underway across town.

Today, I cut a vein. Make her feel it.

The screens refocused—route, timing, proof.

“Ninety minutes,” Ares said. “Gear up and brief the drivers.”

I put the photo in my jacket and headed to the hall.

Aidon caught up beside me. “Rhea’s not getting near you again.”

“It was too easy,” I said. The words felt wrong. “She let us walk. Rhea never backs down unless there’s something behind it.”

“Maybe,” he said, mouth a hard line. “But we’ll still cut her feeder.”

I didn’t answer. The strip burned beneath the windows like an open circuit. Somewhere in that neon, Rhea was preparing her next move.