The moment the cartel came into play, the rules changed.
Ethan leaned over the large glass table in the center of his study, fingers spread across the surface like he was mapping out a war campaign.
Shadows from the city skyline fractured across the table's reflective surface, splicing his hands into broken shards of strategy. The study itself was quiet, insulated from the thrum of the metropolis, but Anna could feel the hum of danger in the air as tangibly as static before a lightning strike.
Anna stood at the window behind him, watching the sunrise claw its way up the city skyline like a warning flare.
The light wasn't soft—it was jagged, slicing between the high-rises, painting the glass in violent streaks of crimson. A day being born, not peacefully, but like a scar reopening.
"We don't handle them like Kellerman," Ethan said finally.
Anna didn't turn around. "Because they're more dangerous?"
"Because they're more adaptable." He straightened and faced her.
For a fleeting moment, their reflections aligned in the glass before he turned away, like two sides of the same coin briefly touching.
"Kellerman built a fortress. The cartel built a jungle. You don't storm a jungle—you set fire to the canopy and let the animals fight each other."
Anna finally turned to face him; arms crossed. "You think internal sabotage will work?"
Ethan's smirk was razor-sharp. "No. I think implied sabotage will. All we have to do is light the right fuse."
He clicked open a folder on his laptop. Maps, profiles, intercepted communications, and financial trails popped up on the screen.
The glow of the monitor spilled upward, cold and surgical, etching sharp planes across his face. The files spread out like veins of blood in a system waiting to be cut open.
"The Velasquez cartel has dozens of revenue channels," Ethan said. "Guns. Crypto laundering. High-end art. But there's one thing they still need—reputation."
Anna's eyes narrowed. "Among competitors."
"Exactly. They thrive on fear, loyalty, and secrecy. If any of those are shaken, the entire pyramid crumbles."
He tapped a folder marked Operation Caiman.
The sound was small, but it struck like a gavel—verdict passed before the trial had even begun.
"There's a splinter faction—the Navarro group. Smaller, more volatile. Recently denied a merger proposal. But if they believe Velasquez is vulnerable... they'll make a move."
Anna came closer, her eyes scanning the screen. "How do we start the fire?"
Ethan's fingers danced across the keyboard.
Each keystroke felt like a match strike, small sparks in the dark that promised an inferno.
"We fabricate a signal intercept. Make it look like Velasquez sold Navarro out to the Feds in exchange for immunity on weapons bust."
"That's bold," she said, impressed despite herself.
"It's plausible. Velasquez has been cleaning his portfolio. He's been cutting dead weight. All we do is suggest one of those cuts got a little too close to home."
Anna was silent for a beat. Then: "And the files?"
"Already in motion. I have a contact in Argentina—he'll leak the story to a minor newswire. It won't hit the front page, but it'll spread like smoke in the underworld."
She nodded slowly. "This could work."
Ethan looked at her, something unreadable in his eyes. "It will work. But once we pull this trigger, there's no going back. This isn't lawsuits or asset freezes. This is blood."
Anna's jaw tightened. "We already crossed that line."
For just a moment, a memory flashed across her face—her father's trial, Kellerman's courtroom victory, the grave dug long before the verdict.
He studied her. "Just remember," he said softly, "we're not in any way in control of this fire. We're just aiming it."
It didn't take a day.
It took a month.
The fire didn't explode.
It smoldered.
Like the glowing core of a cigarette left in an ashtray—unnoticed until it ignited the drapes.
Rumors spread through encrypted channels, whispered like curses between dark-web arms dealers and mercenary brokers in backroom bars from Bogotá to Juárez.
The poison traveled quietly, in text strings, half-heard conversations, coded exchanges that could never be traced back.
Ethan's contact in Buenos Aires didn't just leak the story—he fed it. He stitched just enough truth between the fiction to make it lethal: Navarro's top man photographed with an ATF agent outside a marina, a forged flight manifest, two grainy audio clips that sounded just close enough to Velasquez's voice to fuel every paranoid fantasy Navarro ever had.
A vague tip to a low-tier blog. A whistleblower who contacted an Argentine tabloid with half the details and all the venom.
Navarro's paranoia did the rest.
But that was just the surface.
Behind the scenes, Ethan worked like a surgeon.
His nights blurred into mornings, his coffee sat cold and untouched, his body taut with the constant electricity of risk.
While Anna slept in three-hour blocks and kept watch on the ground, he traced burner phones, scrubbed metadata, and fed whispers into criminal networks like a digital ghost. He built a breadcrumb trail too intricate to backtrack—because he knew Navarro wasn't stupid. The man had survived six assassination attempts and outlived two regimes. But fear, when given a face, doesn't negotiate with logic. It spirals.
By the fifth day, Navarro's runners were disappearing.
Not arrested.
Not seen again.
His once-fluid operations in Zacatecas and Sinaloa locked up like arteries during a heart attack.
Entire routes went cold, drivers vanished, couriers stopped calling. Silence spread where once there had been constant motion.
It wasn't the law—they would've taken credit.
It was something else.
By the eighth day, Velasquez's warehouses in Sonora were hit in the dead of night. No fingerprints. Just a message scorched into concrete:
"Snitches burn."
Anna watched it all unfold from Ethan's encrypted dashboard.
She never asked how many favors he cashed in.
Or how many ghosts whispered the right things to the right ears.
But she saw it on him.
Every night, he looked more exhausted—hollowed out around the eyes, as if the fire they'd started was eating him from the inside. Not guilt. Not fear. Something harder to name.
She didn't tell him about the dream. The one where Navarro's men found her first—tied her up, wired her jaw shut, made Ethan listen through the bugs they planted in her teeth. She woke with blood in her mouth from biting her tongue in her sleep.
The metallic taste lingered long after she woke, as if the nightmare had carved itself into her reality.
This wasn't espionage anymore. It was war.
But the strangest part?
They were winning.
Power shifted in tremors—Velasquez pulled his family out of Mexico and rerouted shipments through Colombia. Navarro stopped appearing in public. His lieutenants began accusing one another of betrayal. A low-ranking enforcer in Durango turned up on Telegram livestream, doused in gasoline and begging for mercy before the feed cut to static.
It was working.
Too well.
And yet, Anna found herself looking at Ethan differently.
Not because of the ruthlessness. She'd known that part of him. Trusted it. Needed it.
It was the way he carried it—the precision, the elegance, the terrible beauty of a man who could create chaos without ever lifting a gun.
It wasn't just effective—it was artful, like watching a maestro conduct an orchestra of destruction.
The fire didn't scare her.
But him?
Sometimes he did.
And the worst part?
Sometimes… she liked that.
But one night, she brought him a tray with a sandwich and a fresh cup of coffee. "Eat something before your body sues you for negligence."
Ethan blinked like he was surfacing from deep water.
His gaze was unfocused, the kind of stare that comes after hours of drowning in code and whispers.
He hadn't realized how dark the room had grown. He accepted the tray with a nod, eyes softening just a degree. "Thanks."
She didn't linger. She returned to her screen, pulling up the latest chatter from whistleblower tip lines.
Later, long after midnight, Ethan noticed the quiet.
Anna had fallen asleep on the sofa. Legs curled beneath her, one hand still loosely gripping her tablet, her breathing soft and even.
He stared for a long moment, the flickering lights from their monitors painting shadows on her face. Her features, so often sharpened by tension and fierce resolve, were now softened by sleep. The arc of her eyebrows relaxed into gentle curves. Her slightly upturned nose and the smattering of freckles across her cheeks gave her an almost youthful vulnerability he hadn't seen before. Her jawline, usually taut with grit, had eased. And her curls—normally wrestled into submission—now rioted across the pillow in chaotic defiance.
He found himself memorizing the details—the quiet curve of her mouth, the way one strand of hair caught the light—because he knew nights like this were a currency they couldn't afford to spend often.
Then he moved, quietly, pulling a thick wool throw from the armrest and draping it over her shoulders.
His fingers hovered for just a second longer than necessary.
He knew they wouldn't have many nights like this. The window was closing. Once it became clear who was orchestrating the cartel upheaval, they'd be hunted. And hunted well.
He just hoped it wouldn't happen too soon.
After covering Anna with the throw, he didn't return to his desk.
Instead, he padded barefoot through the dim corridor, up the spiral stair to the private rooftop terrace.
The night air bit at his skin, sharp with autumn's approach and the faint scent of ozone. From here, the city spread like a glittering circuit board—pulsing, twitching, alive. Neon veins ran between towers, sirens echoed far below, and plumes of smoke—not visible, but felt—rose from fractures he'd begun to pry open.
It was as if the entire metropolis were a patient under his scalpel, every nerve exposed, every artery trembling under his blade.
He stood at the edge of the stone railing, arms folded, wind threading through his shirt. The skyline blinked at him like a patient on life support.
One corner at a time, he was setting fire to this empire. Not with matches—but with whispers. With silence. With doubt and betrayal and the kind of chaos money couldn't contain.
He hadn't felt this awake in years.
But in the edges of that adrenaline, something else stirred—
Not triumph.
Not vengeance.
A strange ache.
Like watching an old house burn, knowing you'd once helped build it brick by brick.
He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling as he whispered to no one:
"Burn slowly. I need more time."
And still, deep down, he knew—
When this collapsed, when the smoke finally cleared—
He might not be standing on the ashes.
He might be buried beneath them.
By the two week mark, Navarro and Velasquez were in full cold war. Suppliers re-routed. Shell companies dissolved. Loyalty questioned. Paranoia bloomed.
And Ethan, like a patient predator, kept feeding the spiral. A nudge here. A whisper there. A breadcrumb sent anonymously through darknet boards.
Anna questioned none of it—though she did watch him closer now.
"You enjoy this," she said one night, without accusation, but without softness.
He didn't look up. "I enjoy doing it right."
She studied him. "Is that what this is to you? Right?"
He turned then, met her eyes. "You tell me. Would it be better if these men stayed untouched? If the pyramid stays standing?"
She exhaled. "I'm not moralizing. I'm a wolf. I understand what it takes to kill a stronger predator."
There was silence between them for a moment—shared, weighty.
Then Anna added, more quietly, "I just hope we're not laying the foundation for another monster."
Ethan didn't respond. He couldn't.
Because somewhere in the hollow of his chest, a voice whispered that maybe… maybe he was the foundation.
It wasn't redemption. Not yet. But the hunger for it stirred like a beast under Ethan's skin.
And it was growing.