Page 137 of Fractured Allegiance
Drazen.
Not alone.
He’s seated across from a man I don’t recognize. Tall, lean, wearing a chilling smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. The audio’s too warped to make out what they’re saying, but Drazen’s posture isn’t casual. He’s listening. Careful. Like he’s negotiating with someone he doesn’t fully trust.
The timestamp is two years old. Location: one of the side warehouses that was supposed to be cleared after a fire.
So why is this meeting still on record?
I zoom in frame by frame. On the table between them is a briefcase. Unremarkable. Generic.
But Drazen slides it across like it’s nuclear.
There’s weight in that exchange. And then—one frame before the clip skips—the unknown man looks straight at the hidden camera.
Right into it.
Like he knew it was there.
I sit back, suddenly cold.
This was never meant to be surveillance. Not really. Not for security.
It was leverage.
And Elias kept it off-books.
I shut the clip.
My pulse is steady but wrong. Too calm. The kind of calm that means something in me is starting to snap tight, not unravel.
They think I’m still boxed in.
They think I’ll stay loyal because the leash hasn’t snapped loud enough yet.
But they forgot what happens when the thing you corner decides it would rather break the room than beg.
I push up from the table and look around the loft. Everything feels wrong now. Staged. Wired. Like the couch has ears and the vents are listening.
The photo’s still on the counter in pieces.
I don’t touch it. I don’t need to.
Its message already landed.
The game isn’t about survival anymore.
It’s about ownership.
And I’m not anyone’s.
Not Drazen’s. Not Silas’s. Not whoever left that picture.
Chapter 16 – Silas - Break Protocol
The burner phone I found in the trash behind Lydia’s building, discarded by the fiend who’d fled is shattered—screen cracked, casing split—but the SIM card is intact.
I pry it out carefully with the edge of a knife and slide it into one of my burner phones. The number loads on the screen.
