*CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE FIRE THAT FOLLOWS*
They came at dawn.
Black SUVs without plates. Armed men in black. Silencers. Headshots. No questions.
Zee was the first to notice the breach.
In the hideout's control van, she saw the CCTV glitch once—then all feeds went dark. Her breath caught. She yanked off her headset and ran.
Inside, Edward and Ayo were going over maps for their next hit.
"Move!" Zee screamed as she burst in. "They're here!"
The door exploded a second later.
Gunfire erupted.
Edward flipped the table for cover. Ayo returned fire with calm fury, mowing down two mercs before diving for a side hallway. Zee pulled her laptop bag and followed, breath ragged.
Lena, upstairs, heard the chaos. She grabbed her bag, clutching the external hard drive with everything—the files, the article, the audio.
She hesitated for one second too long.
A masked man appeared at the top of the stairs.
Gun up.
Edward tackled him from behind, slammed him through the stair rail. No mercy.
"Go!" he shouted. "Safe route—tunnel out the back!"
Lena bolted down the hall.
They'd prepared for this. Not *if*, but *when*.
Beneath the building, a narrow underground tunnel led to an abandoned warehouse two blocks away. It was their dead man's exit.
One by one, they slipped into it—Lena, Zee, Ayo, Edward last.
Behind them, the hideout burned.
***
By the time they reached the warehouse, sirens wailed in the far distance—firefighters, too late.
Zee slumped against the wall, blood trickling from her arm. "That wasn't Victor's usual men," she gasped. "That was *Okafor's personal unit*. She's cleaning house."
Ayo spat. "So she wants a war?"
"She already has one," Edward said darkly.
He turned to Lena. "Do you still have the story?"
Lena nodded, holding up the drive. "Everything. Ready to go live."
Edward looked at her, tired but unshaken. "Then we don't run."
He opened his phone. Dialed a secure line.
"It's Wraith," he said. "Activate Protocol Ember."
Pause.
"You sure?" the voice asked.
Edward's voice went cold. "They just tried to kill all of us. Burn it all."
He hung up.
Zee's eyes widened. "What's Protocol Ember?"
Edward looked at the team—his family now.
"It means every ally I still have in the shadows moves tonight. Retired operatives. Dead names. Ghosts like me."
He stared out at the rising smoke.
"She tried to wipe us out. Now we erase her empire."
***
Elsewhere, Mrs. Okafor sat in her compound, drinking wine as she watched footage of the destroyed hideout.
She smiled.
"Wraith thinks he can outlast me."
Victor Kalu stood beside her, bruised but alive.
"He won't stop," Victor warned. "He's not like other men."
Okafor's smile faded. "Then it's time we stop pretending."
She walked to a locked safe, opened it, and pulled out a black case.
Inside: a list. A kill order.
Ten names.
At the top: *Edward. Lena. Zee. Ayo.*
Beneath them: *Isaiah Grey. Three journalists. One hacker. One ex-general.*
"Kill them all," she said again. "No witnesses. No records. And no mercy."