Chapter 110

**Emilia POV**

“What kind of shitshow have you gotten us in?” William asks, gripping the ends of the steel bench as the van makes a hairpin turn. “Tell me why we shouldn’t drop you off at the nearest police station.”
I look him up and down skeptically, my head taking a derisive dip to the side. “I’m not about to be intimidated by a wanna be roadman, brudda,” I say, invoking the accent as I gesture to his Nike tracksuit.
Sophia snorts humouredly and William gives her a betrayed look before glaring back at me.
“It’s comfortable, and not the point. What the hell is going on? CIA claims you shot one of their operatives in cold blood?”
“Which we know isn’t true or isn’t the full truth,” Sophia says, including him in her look of shared doubt. “No one in the agency believes that because you have always been above reproach, Commander.”
“No, I did it.”
Their shock mirrors each other in almost a comical way.
I glower back at them reproachfully, almost insulted. “Come now, you should know better than to believe I would do that without just cause. Did the CIA mention they unlawfully detained us for three weeks, torturing one of my assets, Calum Taylor with sensory deprivation to cause intense psychological stress. They couldn’t break his bones, but they tried to whittle down his will.”
“And he didn’t crack?” Sophia asks.
I shake my head. “This thing—this book, books that they are after. It exposed one of their clandestine operations. Calum informed that there is a trove of classified information on not just high-profile missions but high-value individuals. I’m talking dirty cops, officials and politicians. And that was just in one book—you can only imagine what is in the other four.”
“Five books,” William clarifies. “How is that even possible for such sensitive data about American intelligence to be encrypted in a book or books? Which one of them a Spanish cartel boss was in the possession of?”
“And the second bearer was Moretti, a big-time trafficker.”
“Yes, he’s on the priority watchlist—has been for a long time. Until he was found dead in his estate and his entire security slaughtered like swine. The footage had been scrubbed. There’s no telling who, no digital proof, but we have viable guesses on the mysterious and murderous third party.”
“Orian Moon,” I say, since she’s afraid to say it like the name will bring forth a demon. “You see that’s what I'm saying. It all began with Hadassah when she stole from Gaza, thinking the book was a ledger that held incriminating transactions that could link Zenith to Gaza’s criminal entities.”
“Turns out the conspiracy looms larger?” William insinuates.
I nod theatrically. “So much bigger and when I saw the Director of the CIA, his deputy and other high-ranking intelligent officials shaking in their suits. My guess is there’s not just secrets about the Americans. I’m sure it details privileged information about other global superpowers.”
“That’s impossible,” William says with a lifted and incredulous brow. “That would require incalculable amounts of data and that can’t be encoded on hand-written pages of a book. That needs superluminal computing power.”
“And that had me thinking about the providence of the books,” I speculate, theories that had been churning in my mind for a long time. “The author or authors must be some kind of ultra intelligent hacker that figured out a way to infiltrate clandestine systems to be able to draw all this data and put it in the one place that is unhackable. The written word, anyone can hack a remote system but you can’t hack a book.”
Sophia nods with dawning comprehension. “So this entity, whoever they are, they are well-advanced cyber terrorists?”
“I think it’s more complex than that,” I say objectively. “They could have sold this information that could dismantle regimes, break peace treaties—intelligence worth billions.But they didn’t. They had all this information, for all this time.”
“Instead, they entrusted the key to Pandora's boxes with infamous criminals, so far two of the most prominent in the underworld. I highly doubt they have noble intentions.”
“And the Americans themselves will do anything to seize this power. They promised Calum that they would protect him—he’s involved because his acclaimed skills helped decrypt the first book. He was the one that hacked into the CIA, alerting them of the breach in the first place. They were going to kill him the moment he found a lock on Hadassah’s location.” I expound. “I killed one of them during transit to an undisclosed location. I asked him to yield. He got jumpy, and that's when I discharged my weapon. I was safeguarding my asset.”
Sophia and William share a tormented look, clearly conflicted.
“Honestly, there’s nothing you could say to exonerate you. The agency wants you to turn yourself in, and the CIA wants your head.”
I drop my back against the metal surface with a rough exhale. “Then what are you waiting for?”
“We also know that the moment we turn you over. They will notify the Americans,” Willian says, caught between fealty and friendship. “And then you’re as good as dead.”
“And no one wants to see that,” Sophia says with a comforting smile.
“I know that there’s nothing I can say to absolve me. The only thing is to give them a bigger target. I can get the location of the books—given time and I can serve up the rest of the criminal syndicates behind all of this.”
William frees a whooshing breath. “That’s a big promise.”
“I can meet it.”
“Can you handle what that would cost?” William probes.
“Meaning?”
“You are very protective of your assets, both Calum Taylor and this troublesome Hadassah. What if your targets clash with your interests, and your decisions come at a crossroads where your duty takes you down a path away from theirs?”
“My duty?” I intone with dry humour. “Are you really questioning my allegiance?”
“William only wants to know if you’re prepared to make the hard choice if the situation demands it?” Sophia gently translates.
“I didn’t come this far without having the resolve to make difficult choices,” I affirm. And suddenly I slip into silence because I truly never considered once again being pitted against Calum. Forcibly, I say, “I will do what I have to.”
William nods contently. “That’s good to say.” He lifts his fist to bang it on the interior, signaling the end. “Keep your head low. We’ll continue to try to keep the feds off your scent.”
My eyes leap to him and he nods exaggeratedly with an arrogant smile.
“Yeah, you think you’ve been evading detection all on your own? You’re good, but no-one’s that surveillance to elude around-the-clock surveillance both digitally and physically. We’re not the only ones who doubt your culpability—we have techs rerouting and working overtime to erase any digital trace of you. But that will only hold for so long. A random cop or even a nosy civilian with an iPhone could catch you. You’re on the clock. Make sure you get your targets before we’re forced to get you.”