The drive was silent.
Aria stared out the window, eyes tracking the lights blurring past like dying stars. Julian hadn't spoken since the flash drive. His knuckles were tight on the steering wheel, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the road as if it could save them both.
But Aria knew better.
No road could outrun ghosts.
"I need answers," she said finally.
Julian didn't flinch. "About what?"
She turned toward him, voice low. "My father. The codes. The lies."
He didn't respond.
"Julian."
He exhaled. Slow. Controlled.
"I've been protecting you from the truth."
She gave a cold laugh. "Then stop."
The car pulled to a sharp stop on a dirt road that sloped into a forgotten estate—one Aria hadn't seen since she was a child. A place her father kept hidden in the French countryside.
The door creaked as she stepped out. The air smelled like ash and memory.
Julian opened the iron gate.
"He left this place for you. But it was never safe enough."
They walked in silence through overgrown hedges and rusted statues, until they reached the entrance. Julian keyed in a code she didn't recognize, and the door swung open.
Inside was dust. Silence. And a locked vault.
Julian slid a key from his jacket.
The same silver one he'd always worn around his neck.
"I wasn't ready before," he said. "But you are now."
The vault opened with a groan.
Inside: a single metal box, sealed with a thumbprint scanner.
Aria stepped forward.
And placed her hand on the glass.
The scanner lit green.
And clicked open.
—
Inside the box was a leather journal.
Black. Weathered. And marked with her father's initials in faded gold.
Aria opened it with trembling hands.
Every page was encoded in numbers. Lines and lines of digits. Useless—unless you knew the cipher.
She flipped through, faster and faster, heart pounding—
Then stopped.
A loose slip of paper fell out.
Written in her father's sharp, elegant handwriting:
"The truth is buried beneath the lie you were told the day I died."
Aria stared.
And everything shifted.
—
"He knew," she whispered. "He knew someone would come for him."
Julian stepped behind her. "That's why he gave you the journal."
"It's not a journal," she said slowly. "It's a map."
—
They worked for hours.
Decoding each number. Each line.
Her father hadn't just chronicled financials or enemies—he'd detailed something else entirely. Something deeper. A secret ledger buried beneath a fake identity, a name that hadn't existed in any database. A ghost account that tracked not weapons, not money—
But names.
Code names.
Operatives.
People trained to disappear.
People like Julian.
And one in particular: Echo.
Aria stared at it.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked him.
Julian didn't answer.
So she asked again.
"Do you know who Echo is?"
His silence gave her the answer.
"You."
His throat worked. "I was trained under that identity. Before I was Julian Ward."
She blinked. "You lied to me."
"I didn't have a choice."
"Why? Why hide this?"
"Because the Echo program wasn't supposed to exist."
Her stomach twisted. "What do you mean?"
Julian looked at her, eyes unreadable.
"It was illegal. Off-books. Funded through shell corporations and authorized by a shadow council. Your father included."
Aria's blood ran cold.
"My father helped create you?"
"He created all of us."
She staggered back.
"No."
"Yes."
"But he told me—he always said—he wanted to keep me away from violence. From all of it."
Julian's voice was razor-thin. "He lied."
Aria clutched the journal. "What else?"
Julian stepped closer. "Your father was part of a secret initiative. A defense protocol. It was meant to protect the country if everything else failed. But it got twisted. Corrupted. People died."
"How many?"
Julian looked away.
She already knew the answer.
Too many.
—
They stayed in the estate that night, neither speaking.
Aria sat on the floor with the journal in her lap, decoding until her fingers cramped, until her mind blurred. She found another name buried deep in the cipher.
One that stopped her heart.
Helix.
Not a codename.
A location.
Her father had circled it.
And next to it, a single sentence:
"If I disappear, Helix will know why."
She didn't wait until morning.
—
Julian followed her into the car before dawn.
"You're not going without me," he said.
"I'm not asking."
"Too bad. I'm coming anyway."
She didn't argue.
Because deep down, she didn't want to do it alone.
—
Helix was a cold storage facility built into a cliffside in Montenegro. Off-grid. Untraceable. Owned by a shell company no longer listed under any government. The closer they got, the more Aria could feel it—that crackling charge in the air, the hum of secrets buried beneath steel and stone.
They breached it at nightfall.
No guards.
No lights.
Just the sound of their breathing in the dark.
Julian hacked the security door with surgical precision.
And they stepped inside.
Rows of lockers. Climate-controlled rooms. And a terminal blinking faintly in the corner.
Aria logged in.
Her father's name was the passkey.
A file opened.
Project Ashes.
Julian stiffened beside her.
"I thought it was destroyed," he said.
Aria clicked through.
The screen filled with images—child soldiers. Genetic profiles. Behavioral conditioning. Implants.
Monsters.
"They were experimenting," she whispered. "On kids."
Julian's voice was tight. "I was one of them."
She turned.
He met her gaze.
"I was nine. They called it training. I called it survival."
Tears burned in her throat. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want you to see me like this."
"Like what?"
"A weapon."
Aria reached for him. "You're not a weapon."
He flinched.
"You're a man."
He looked away.
"No. I'm what your father made me."
Aria touched his cheek.
"Then help me end it."
—
They downloaded everything.
All the files.
All the names.
Everything the world wasn't supposed to see.
And that's when the alarm blared.
Julian shoved her behind a pillar. "Get out. Now."
"What about you?"
"I'll hold them off."
"No!"
He grabbed her wrist, shoved a drive into her palm.
"Take it. Run. I'll find you."
She shook her head. "Julian—"
"I love you."
And then he kissed her—hard, desperate, final.
And ran toward the fire.
—
She didn't remember escaping.
Not the gunshots.
Not the smoke.
Not the cliff she threw herself off to reach the river below.
Only the cold.
And the emptiness.
And the drive clutched in her hand.
—
When she woke, it was in a safe house miles from the facility. Damon had pulled her out. Said the extraction point had been compromised. Said Julian hadn't made contact.
It had been three days.
No word.
No trace.
Only a message, encrypted and time-delayed, triggered by her voice.
Julian's voice played in the dark.
"If you're hearing this, I didn't make it. But the truth will. Finish what I couldn't. And don't trust anyone—especially not the one who claims to love you next."
The message ended.
And Aria sat in the dark.
Broken.
But not done.
Never done.
Because this wasn't the end.
It was war.
And she wasn't afraid anymore.