Page 58 of Tag (The Golden Team #9)

Graves

G raves hated interruptions.

Especially when they came in the form of a knock on his office door, followed by the hesitant shuffle of a man who clearly didn’t want to be there.

The messenger stopped three feet from his desk. “Sir… it’s Sable.”

Graves leaned back in his chair, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “Go on.”

“She’s dead. One of her own… took the shot.”

The whiskey burned down his throat as he swallowed, slow and deliberate. He set the glass aside and steepled his fingers. “And the drive?”

The man swallowed hard. “The Golden Team has it.”

Silence. Heavy enough to crush a spine.

Graves’ smile was slow, cruel. “Then they think they’ve won.”

He rose, moving to the massive map on the wall, pins and red string crisscrossing continents like a web. His hand drifted to a section marked with a single black pin.

“Tell our people to stand by,” he said, voice calm as a snake sliding over stone. “And put every resource we have on them. Tag. Aponi. The whole damn team. I want their movements, their safehouses, their weaknesses.”

The messenger hesitated. “Sir, if they—”

Graves turned, his gaze a blade. “If they what? Think they can come for me?” His smile widened into something far too cold to be human. “Let them try. I’ll make them wish they’d left Sable alive.”

He went back to his desk and picked up the glass, the whiskey no longer burning—it was ice in his mouth.

Because this was no longer about business.

It was personal.