POV: Emilia Conti
Luciano's absence felt louder than his presence ever had.
The compound buzzed with controlled activity—agents moving in pairs, voices clipped, equipment rolling in and out—but beneath it all was a hollow space where one man should have been contained and wasn't.
"Thirty minutes," I said. "That's a head start, not a disappearance."
Agent Strauss didn't disagree. "It's enough time to dissolve into infrastructure."
"And you let him," Alessio said quietly.
Strauss met his gaze without flinching. "We didn't 'let' him. He anticipated the trigger."
"Which means he knew," Dante said, arms crossed. "Before she went public."
"Yes," Strauss replied. "Which suggests surveillance."
My stomach tightened. "On me."
"On everyone," she corrected. "But you were the catalyst."
I nodded slowly. "Then the leak wasn't the first move."
"No," Strauss agreed. "It was the rehearsal."
That framed everything differently.
