บททั้งหมดของ Play Thing Of The Enemy: บทที่ 91 - บทที่ 100

Damian POVAdrian lasted four hours, longer than I would have liked and shorter than he expected.We found him just after nine, not in hiding, not running, just waiting.He had moved through Rome after the alley like a ghost, shedding routes, breaking patterns, slipping through surveillance gaps that would have held most men in place. But he had not tried to leave the city.He had not tried to disappear, he had chosen a location and stayed there.An abandoned administrative building near the river, a place where a man could make a stand.We went in quietly.Luca on my left, two operators behind us.We cleared the first level in silence, the rooms were empty, doors hanging open. Broken glass crunching under boots no matter how careful we tried to be.Second level.A shift of weight. A breath that did not belong to us.We stopped as one.I raised a hand.Wait.Then I moved.Every instinct narrowed to a single point.The hallway ahead stretched long and dim, light cutting in through brok

Damian POVThe world did not break cleanly, it never does.By the time the first official statement hit global networks, the damage was already spreading faster than anyone could contain it. The Architect had not just been a system, it had been woven into everything–Governments, corporations, intelligence agencies and courts.You do not pull something like that out without tearing everything attached to it.We watched it happen in real time, screens filled with faces that had spent years pretending control. Now they looked strained, defensive and careful with every word in a way that told me they already knew how much of the truth was about to reach daylight.Emergency sessions convened in multiple countries within hours.Press briefings turned into interrogations, journalists who had spent years chasing fragments suddenly had access to entire archives.They did not hesitate, names started surfacing.At first, cautiously, then all at once.A minister in Brussels tried to convert fundi

Luca POVWe didn’t announce it.There were no messages sent out beyond the few people who needed to be there. No schedule, no formal invitation, just a time, a place, and an understanding.If you came, you came.If you didn’t, no one would ask why.The location was quiet.Not hidden, but private enough that the world wouldn’t stumble into it by accident. A stretch of land just outside the city, where the air felt cleaner and the noise of everything else faded into something distant and manageable.By the time I arrived, Marcus was already there.He stood a few feet from the tree, hands in his pockets, looking out at nothing in particular. The wind moved lightly through his hair, he didn’t turn when he heard me approach.“Thought you’d be late,” he said.“I’m not that predictable.”A small sound left him, not quite a laugh.“You are,” he said. “You just don’t like it.”I stopped beside him.For a moment, we just stood there.“You okay?” I asked.He shrugged slightly. “Depends what that

Luca POVThe courthouse was already surrounded when we arrived.Media vans lined both sides of the street, barricades cut the crowd back in layers, cameras flashed nonstop, bright and sharp even through the tinted windows of the car.I could hear the noise before I stepped outside.People shouting questions, reporters calling names and security barking orders.It sounded like chaos, it felt strangely far away.I sat in the back seat beside Damian, staring through the glass at the stone steps ahead of us.For years I had imagined places like this as untouchable, places where men in expensive suits decided what truth looked like, places where people like Matteo and my parents never got justice because justice had never really been made for them.And now I was about to walk inside one.My stomach turned and Damian looked over at me.“You can still leave,” he said quietly.Even after all the preparation, all the evidence, all the negotiations.If I asked him to turn the car around, he wou

Luca's PovThe first week after the testimony felt wrong, I woke up every morning expecting noise, a call, a message or someone pounding on a door.My body kept waiting for the next disaster like it had forgotten there could be anything else but there wasn't.No one was chasing us, no one was hunting us.The silence should have been comforting, instead, it made me restless, I paced constantly.From the kitchen to the window, from the window to the balcony, from the balcony back to the kitchen again, I checked locks three times before bed.A car backfiring in the street below made my heart jump so hard one afternoon that I was halfway to the hallway closet before I even realized what I was doing.I stood there staring at them for a long moment, feeling stupid, then I shut the door.Damian found me in the kitchen twenty minutes later, standing in front of the coffee machine with a cup in my hand I had forgotten to drink."You've been staring at that for five minutes," he said.I looked