Jay's pov
The metallic drive felt unnaturally cold against my palm.
My thumb traced the handwritten note once, twice, three times. The black ink was crisp. 'Keifer's father wasn't the one who ordered the driver to hit the gas.'
"Jay? What's wrong?" June's sharp voice broke through the quiet. She had already noticed the shift in my posture, her hand dropping instinctively to the encrypted tablet at her side.
Without saying a word, I held out the flash drive.
June's eyes narrowed as she took it. She didn't waste time asking stupid questions. She immediately slotted the drive into her tablet's side port, her fingers flying across the screen to run a rapid threat scan.
"It's clean," June whispered, her brow furrowing as a single audio file and an image folder decrypted on the screen. "No malwares, no tracker payloads. Just... raw data."
"Play it," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, though my heart was hammering against my bruised ribs like a caged animal.
June tapped the audio file. Static crackled through the tablet's low speakers, followed by the heavy, muffled sound of two men talking in a crowded venue...
The static cleared, and a smooth, low voice filled the quiet room.
"The payment went through," the first voice said. It was heavy, slightly muffled by background noise, but distinct. "The Watson patriarch made sure the funds were clean."
"Good," a second voice replied. This one was chillingly calm, sharp, and entirely unfamiliar. "Let him think he's the one pulling the trigger. Tell the driver to hit the gas the second she steps off the curb. Don't wait for his final signal."
A beat of silence hung in the recording before the first man spoke again, hesitant. "If we move early, the blame lands squarely on the old man's lap. Keifer will tear his own father apart."
"That's the point," the second voice cold-laughed. "Keifer Watson gets distracted burning his own bloodline down, the girl gets put out of commission, and we take the rest of the board while they're at each other's throats. Make it look like an accident, but make sure it hits hard enough to put her under."
Click.
The audio cut off.
The silence that followed was suffocating. The rhythmic beep-beep-beep of my heart monitor seemed to grow louder, matching the rapid, violent thudding against my bruised ribs.
June stared at the tablet, her fingers frozen over the screen. "Jay... someone deliberately accelerated the hit. Keifer's dad set up the funds and the route, but this third party hijacked the execution to force a full-scale war between Keifer and his father."
"They used his dad's money and authority as a front," I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous, icy calm. "And they left this drive here to make sure I found out, hoping I'd push Keifer into destroying his family even faster."
"Who left it?" June's eyes snapped toward the door. She tapped the screen, bringing up the hospital room's local proximity sensor. Her jaw tightened. "Jay. The physical access log for this floor... someone bypassed the door sensor three minutes ago. Right while you were on the call with Keifer."
My eyes narrowed. Three minutes ago. Someone had walked right past June, past the nurses, and slipped that drive onto my tray while my back was turned.
"They're still in the building," I whispered.
June didn't hesitate. She hit a rapid sequence on her tablet, triggering an internal alert to Michael and Alex. "Locking down the west wing elevators now. Michael is intercepting the main stairwell."
"No," I cut in, wincing as I forced myself to sit up a little higher, my hands gripping the edge of the mattress. "Don't flush them out with a full lockdown. If they realize we caught on this fast, they'll dump their phone, blend into the crowd downstairs, and vanish."
"Then what's the play?" June asked, her hands hovering over her screen.
"They want a show," I said, a slow, cold smirk pulling at my lips despite the sharp ache in my chest. "They gave me a piece of the puzzle because they think I'm a pawn who will react on emotion. So let's give them exactly what they want to see—until we flip the trap."
I looked at June, my eyes flashing with absolute focus.
"Call Felix. Tell him to make a scene in the hallway. Make it look like we're panicking over Keifer's dad. Let whoever is watching think their plan is working perfectly."
"And the drive?" June asked.
"Keep the audio file," I replied, leaning back against the pillows as my inner strategist took full control. "They played their hand trying to set Keifer against his father. Now it's my turn to use their own tape to track where that second voice came from."
I looked toward the dark window reflecting the city lights outside.
"They wanted a war between the Watsons? Too bad for them. They just gave me the exact key I needed to hunt them down instead."
"June," I added, calling her back before she could step toward the door. "One more thing."
June paused, her thumb hovering over her screen. "What is it?"
"Check the timestamp on that recording," I said, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "Where was that second voice recorded? That background noise... it wasn't a street or a restaurant. Listen closely to the echo."
June replayed the last five seconds of the audio file. Beneath the cold laugh of the second man, there was a distinct, metallic rhythmic clinking sound—like heavy steel chains against concrete—followed by the muffled chime of an automated floor speaker announcing an arrival in high-society French.
June's eyes widened as she isolated the frequency. "That's... that's an VIP private elevator hub. Specifically, the private terminal at the international airstrip."
"Not just any airstrip," I said, a dark, realization-laden grin spreading across my face. "That chime plays at the private terminal in London."
June froze, her tablet almost slipping from her fingers. "Jay... you don't mean..."
"The second guy wasn't in Manila when he gave that order," I whispered, the pieces clicking together like a fatal jigsaw puzzle. "He was in London. Right under Keifer's nose."
The air in the room felt instantly colder. The person who accelerated the hit on my life, the person who framed Keifer's dad, and the person holding the real puppet strings wasn't hiding in the dark alleys of the Philippines—they were orbiting the exact same high-society circles Keifer was currently trapped in across the ocean.
"They didn't just leave this drive here to provoke me," I murmured, staring at the small, black piece of metal now sitting safely in June's palm. "They left it here because they think I can't reach them in London. They think being thousands of miles away makes them untouchable."
My fingers tightened into a fist against the thin hospital blanket, my ribs aching as a cold, dangerous fire ignited in my chest.
"Tell Michael and Alex to stay on standby," I commanded, my eyes fixed on the ceiling light. "We aren't just going to play along with their little show in the hallway. We're going to let them think their leak worked... right up until we send every byte of this audio straight back to London."
June looked at me, a mixture of awe and sharp anticipation flashing in her eyes. "To Keifer?"
"No," I replied, my smirk widening into a lethal edge. "To Honey Bee. If there's a snake in the London high-rise, Keifer doesn't need to fly home to find it—we're going to bring the hunting ground directly to him."
"Consider it done," June said, her fingers flying across her screen as she initiated the transmission. "The file is routing through our private node now."
I leaned back against the pillows, letting out a long, quiet breath. For the first time since waking up in this sterile room, I felt in control. London thought they were playing us from across the ocean, but their underestimation had just handed us their neck on a silver platter.
Suddenly, June's tablet didn't emit its usual soft confirmation chime. Instead, a harsh, rhythmic red error box flashed across the screen, casting a blood-red tint over June's pale face.
"What is it?" I asked, my smile instantly vanishing as I saw the sudden terror in June's eyes. "Did the transmission fail?"
"It didn't fail," June whispered, her voice trembling so badly the tablet almost slipped from her hands. "It... it got intercepted."
"By who?"
June didn't answer right away. Her hands froze over the screen, and for the first time since I'd known her, her sharp, composed mask completely cracked. Tears welled up in her eyes, raw and terrified.
Slowly, she turned the screen toward me.
Hovering over the red interface was a remote override notification. The file hadn't just been blocked—a third-party server was actively mirror-recording our entire room through a hidden microphone feed.
And right under the error message was a incoming text displayed on June's private burner phone:
'Send the file to London, and your family in Manila doesn't survive the night. Do what you were paid to do, June.'
My breath hitched in my throat as the heart monitor's beep-beep-beep suddenly spiked into an erratic whine.
June looked up at me, a single tear slipping down her cheek as she reached into her pocket. Her shoulders were shaking, but as she looked me dead in the eye, I saw something else behind the terror in her face—a subtle, calculated twitch of her left index finger tapping against her thumb.
Our Morse signal for 'Trap.'
She was being watched and blackmailed in real-time. The enemy had targeted her family to force her into acting as their proxy inside my room.
"I'm sorry, Jay," June said out loud, her voice cracking with forced dryness for the hidden mic's benefit, even as her eyes silently begged me to read her next move. "I can't let you send that file."
She pressed her thumb against her screen, deliberately triggering a backup protocol—not to wipe the data, but to secretly ping Michael, Alex, and the rest of Section E to trace the blackmailer's active signal before they realized she was playing them from the inside.