Felix looked at the docunt for eleven minutes before he said anything.
Dayo sat in the US office, watching Felix’s face cycle through expressions he rarely saw there — surprise, then concentration, then the flat, empty look that ant Felix’s brain had entered a gear most people didn’t have. The screen in front of him showed a financial transfer record. Paynt from a shell company called Whitewater Holdings Ltd to a server hosting company in Montreal. Dated three weeks before Warren Castellano published the first leak.
"Well?" Dayo asked.
"It’s real." Felix didn’t look up. "The routing codes match known Michael infrastructure. The shell company dissolved in 2019, which is classic cleanup behavior. The paynt amount — forty-seven thousand — is exactly the right size for a journalist drop system. Big enough to buy quality, small enough not to trigger automatic reporting thresholds." He finally turned to Dayo. "Where did you get this?"
"Soone who was in the room when it happened. Soone Michael destroyed."
"And they just gave it to you?"
"They gave a taste. The full al cos with a price."
Felix’s eyes narrowed. "Dayo. Is this person hot? Are you about to walk into an Interpol situation?"
"She’s a fugitive. Self-exiled. Has a hard drive full of evidence and nowhere to go."
"So you’re going to Montenegro."
"I’m going near Montenegro. Neutral ground. I’ll be back before anyone knows I left."
Felex stared at him. "Luna?"
"She knows I’m traveling. She doesn’t know where."
"That’s not an answer, that’s a lie of omission."
Dayo didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Felix was right, and they both knew it. He’d stood in his kitchen that morning holding Jennifer while Luna packed his bag, and she’d asked him — directly, in that way she had — "Is this about Michael?" And he’d kissed her forehead and said "Business," which was technically true in the sa way a gunshot wound is technically a scratch.
Felix printed two copies of the verified file and handed one to Dayo. "I’ll keep a backup here. Encrypted, three layers, location only I can access. If you don’t co back, I burn it to the right people." He paused. "Don’t not co back. I don’t want to explain that to Luna. Or to your daughter."
---
The flight to Dubrovnik was fourteen hours with a connection in Frankfurt. Dayo traveled under a Nigerian passport with a na that wasn’t his, wearing glasses he didn’t need and a beard he’d grown over ten days specifically for this purpose. Max and Bella were with him — Max in the seat ahead, Bella two rows back. Felix had arranged the logistics: private car from Dubrovnik to the coastal town of Herceg Novi, just across the Montenegrin border. A fishing village that didn’t appear in guidebooks. Neutral ground that Isobel had selected because she knew its terrain better than anyone who might follow her.
Dayo didn’t sleep on the plane. He kept thinking about Luna’s face when he’d left. She hadn’t said anything dramatic. She’d just held Jennifer a little tighter and looked at him with eyes that said she was done pretending she didn’t know what he was. He’d almost told her everything right there — Isobel, the hard drive, the evidence that could end Michael. But saying it out loud would have made it real in a way that put her in danger too. So he’d kissed them both and walked out the door feeling like a coward who was also, sohow, doing the right thing.
The car ride from Dubrovnik took three hours. The coastline was absurdly beautiful — mountains dropping straight into an Adriatic Sea that glowed turquoise even in November. Dayo barely noticed. He was rehearsing the negotiation in his head, running scenarios like Felix ran code. What Isobel would want. What he could offer. What would happen if she decided he was working for Michael and pulled the trigger she almost certainly had.
The eting point was a dockside café that had closed for the season. Blue shutters peeling paint, a single light burning inside, the sll of old fish and diesel fuel. Dayo told Max and Bella to stay in the car. This was a conversation for one person.
He pushed through the door and found her sitting in the back corner, half-hidden by shadows. She looked different from the photographs Felix had pulled up — thinner, harder, her hair cut short in a way that suggested disguise rather than fashion. She had a coffee cup in front of her that she wasn’t drinking from, and her right hand stayed beneath the table where Dayo couldn’t see it.
"Mrs. Marchetti," he said.
She laughed. It was an ugly sound, bitter and surprised. "No one has called that in twenty years. Sit down, Mr. Dayo. And keep your hands on the table where I can see them."
He sat. The chair scraped against concrete. The café was empty except for them and an old man behind the counter who was either deaf or paid well enough to pretend.
"You’re younger than I expected," Isobel said. "And stupider, if you’re actually here in person."
"I needed you to know I was serious."
"You could have sent soone serious. An adult. Instead you ca yourself." She leaned forward slightly, and Dayo saw the edge of sothing tallic beneath her jacket. "What if I’m working for Michael? What if this whole thing is a trap to see who bites?"
Dayo looked at her steadily. "Then I’d be dead already. And you wouldn’t be drinking cold coffee in an empty café."
She studied him for a long mont. The light from the single bulb caught the lines around her eyes — forty years of being the only woman in rooms full of dangerous n, of building walls so high she’d forgotten there was anything outside them.
"I have forty years of evidence on that drive," she said quietly. "Not just Michael. All of them. Silas, Leonard, Graham. The infrastructure. The paynts. The people who made problems disappear. I kept it because I knew this day would co. I just didn’t know it would be a pop star sitting across from when it did."
"What do you want?"
"Protection. A guarantee that when this is over, I don’t spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I want Michael in prison or in the ground. And I want my na cleared enough that I can walk into a restaurant without checking for exits."
Dayo nodded slowly. "I can offer you the first two. The third depends on how much the world wants a villain when this is over. But I can make sure you’re not the only one they bla."
"And what do I get if I give you this drive and you decide to use it only for yourself? What if you’re just another man taking what a woman built?"
Dayo reached into his jacket. Isobel’s hand twitched beneath the table. He moved slowly, carefully, and pulled out a phone. He set it on the table between them and opened an encrypted ssaging app.
"This is a direct line to five of the most powerful label heads in the music industry. They know about the program I use. They’re allied with against Michael. When I expose him, I expose him through them — coordinated, simultaneous, from directions he can’t defend. Your evidence becos the ammunition for an army, not a solo act." He looked her in the eye. "I’m not taking your drive to use for myself. I’m taking it to end him. And you get to watch."
Isobel stared at the phone. Then she stared at Dayo. Sothing shifted in her face — not trust exactly, but the lowering of a weapon that had been raised for so long her arm had gone numb.
She reached beneath the table and produced a small external hard drive, black and unmarked, no larger than a deck of cards. She slid it across the table. Dayo didn’t touch it imdiately.
"There’s a folder called Montreal," she said. "That’s the server infrastructure — paynts, routing, tistamps. Another folder called Infrastructure — the shared architecture Silas built, the one Michael used to move everything. And a third called Insurance. That’s everything I have on everyone. Including things about your alliance mbers that they probably don’t want public."
"Like what?"
"Like Helena’s tax arrangents in 2014. Like Darius’s settlent with a forr employee. Like Tom’s connection to a hedge fund that shorted his own artists’ stock." She smiled, thin and sharp. "I don’t judge, Mr. Dayo. I just docunt. Use it or don’t. But know that everyone in this ga has skeletons. Including you, probably."
Dayo pocketed the hard drive. It felt heavier than it should have, forty years of secrets compressed into a few ounces of plastic and silicon.
"There’s a safe house in Croatia," he said. "Arranged through a cutout. Two weeks, full protection. After that, we move you depending on how this plays."
"And if it doesn’t play well?"
"Then you run again. But at least you’ll be running toward sothing instead of away from it."
Isobel picked up her cold coffee and finally drank from it. Her hand was steady. "You know what the worst part is?" she said. "I spent my life being careful. Not appearing in docunts. Not leaving traces. And Michael destroyed anyway, using my own infrastructure against . The surveillance systems I helped build. The shell companies I designed." She set the cup down. "Careful doesn’t matter when your architect decides to burn the building."
Dayo stood. "Careful is over. Now we fight."
He was at the door when her voice stopped him. "Mr. Dayo. Michael knows I moved. I don’t know how, but he knows. I felt it two days ago — a shift in the digital silence. He’s hunting ."
Dayo looked back at her. The single light caught her face, and for a mont she didn’t look like a fugitive or a criminal mastermind. She looked like a tired woman who had been running for too long.
"Then we both need to be gone in five minutes," he said.
---
Max was already moving the car when Dayo burst out of the café. Bella had the rear door open, engine running, route mapped to the Dubrovnik airport via back roads that avoided the main coastal highway.
"He’s coming," Dayo said, sliding into the back seat. "She thinks he’s close."
"Who’s coming?" Max asked, already accelerating.
"Michael’s people. Private security. Not the Amato Group — sothing lower tier, sothing faster."
Bella turned in her seat, her hand resting on sothing beneath her jacket. "We have two hours to the airport. If they know she’s here, they know the border crossings. They’ll have the main road covered."
"Then don’t take the main road."
The car tore through the dark coastal hills, headlights off on the straightaways, Max navigating by mory and Felix’s satellite maps. Dayo held the hard drive in his pocket, feeling its edges press against his hip like a brand. In the rearview mirror, he watched for headlights that didn’t belong, for any sign that they weren’t alone on the road.
They hit the Croatian border at 2:17 AM. The guard was half-asleep, barely glanced at Dayo’s false passport, waved them through with a yawn that Dayo would rember for the rest of his life. Two hours later, they were on a private jet Felix had arranged through three shell companies, climbing above the Adriatic with the hard drive safe in Dayo’s bag.
He looked out the window as the Montenegrin coast receded into darkness. Sowhere down there, Isobel was moving to her safe house, or running again, or already captured. He wouldn’t know for hours, maybe days. But he had what he’d co for. Forty years of Michael’s sins, compressed into a black rectangle smaller than his phone.
Dayo closed his eyes and thought about Luna. About Jennifer’s first word. About the farm animal play mat and the way his world had felt whole for one perfect afternoon before the war pulled him back in.
He was going ho. And when he landed, he would hold the weapon that could end everything.
But first, he had to figure out how to tell his wife where he’d been without losing her forever.
A/N: Sorry for not posting yesterday was still not myself but I am getting better and would try to keep it up. Thanks.
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