Chapter 86 The Hidden Force

Chapter 86 The Hidden Force
Ethan's POV

The moment Eva left, I turned to Paige, urgency already gripping my chest.

"Hack Bobby's phone now, I want to know everything he's been sending and who he's been talking to." I instructed Paige.

Eva's text had only given us his name, but that was enough for me to act on immediately. Bobby had worked in our tech department for years, quiet and unassuming, exactly the kind of person nobody would suspect of anything more than fixing servers and running maintenance checks late into the night without complaint.

I had personally approved his hiring years ago, trusted him with access to systems most people never even saw. The betrayal stung more than I wanted to admit, even before we had fully confirmed anything.

Paige nodded and wasted no time settling into a chair, her laptop already open in front of her. Her fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard, lines of code scrolling past faster than I could follow, her focus completely absorbed in the task.

I paced the room while she worked, my mind still racing from everything that had just happened. Two spies uncovered in the span of a single morning.

My organization, the one I had spent years building from nothing, apparently riddled with holes I hadn't even known existed, holes that had already cost us two hundred lives before we even realized how deep they ran.

"I'm in," Paige said after a few tense minutes, her voice cutting sharply through the heavy silence hanging over the room.

She scrolled through messages, her eyes scanning quickly, her brow furrowing with concentration. Then her expression shifted, confusion settling across her features in a way that made my stomach tighten with unease.

"This isn't what we thought," she said slowly, almost to herself.

I stopped pacing immediately. "What do you mean?"

"Kim wasn't recruited after Eva came back," Paige said, turning her laptop toward the rest of us so we could all see the screen clearly.

"Look at this conversation between her and Bobby. The timestamps go back years, when they joined the organization. Long before any of this recent chaos even started."

Lyra leaned in closer, reading over Paige's shoulder, her eyes narrowing as she took in each line of text. Her frown deepened with every message she read.

"They were both planted here from the start," Paige continued, her voice steady despite the gravity of what she was revealing.

"Members of THE FIRM sent specifically to infiltrate this organization. This has nothing to do with Eva's return. It was already happening long before any of us even suspected something like this was possible within our own walls."

I felt something cold settle in my chest, the reality of what this meant sinking in slowly.

If that was true, it meant Benjamin had been quietly working his way inside my organization for years, patient and methodical, waiting for the right moment to strike, watching us from the inside the entire time without any of us ever suspecting a thing.

"That means Benjamin has been planning this for years," Lyra said, echoing my exact thought out loud, her voice tight with barely restrained frustration and disbelief.

"This wasn't some rushed reaction to Eva showing up again…This was calculated from the very beginning, long before Eva even joined the organization as a trainee"

Naomi crossed her arms, her expression grim, her eyes fixed on the screen still displaying the damning conversation between the two traitors.

"This has to be how he's taken over so many other organizations too. Think about it. All those smaller gangs that suddenly folded or got absorbed into larger networks over the years. This is probably the exact same method he used on all of them, planting people, waiting patiently, and striking only when the moment was finally right."

The pieces clicked together in my mind, forming a picture far larger and more disturbing than I had initially realized.

Every rumor I had ever dismissed, every strange collapse of a rival organization I had never bothered to investigate too deeply, suddenly made a horrifying kind of sense.

"So the mysterious force everyone's been whispering about," Paige said with a calm voice, still staring at her screen with a mixture of dread and fascination. "The ones buying out organizations, eliminating anyone who refuses their terms…. It has been THE FIRM this entire time, hiding behind a dozen different names and fronts."

Nobody said anything for a long moment, the weight of that realization settling heavily over all of us like a physical presence in the room.

Benjamin Monroe wasn't just building an empire. He had already built one, quietly and methodically, hiding it in plain sight while pretending to be nothing more than a respected mayor with connections in the right places, a public servant beloved by the very city he was slowly consuming from within.

"We need to figure out exactly how many organizations he's already absorbed," I said, my mind already shifting toward strategy despite the unsettling weight of everything we had just uncovered. "If we can map out his network…."

Paige suddenly gasped and her eyes went wide.

The sound cut through my sentence instantly, loud enough to make everyone in the room freeze in place.

She shot up from her chair, her fingers flying across the keyboard with frantic urgency, her earlier calm completely gone, replaced by anxiety and panic.

"Paige?" I asked, alarm creeping into my voice as I moved closer to her. "What's wrong?"

She didn't answer right away, too focused on whatever had just appeared on her screen, her eyes scanning rapidly back and forth.

"Paige, talk to us," Lyra said, moving closer as well, concern etched clearly across her face now, her earlier composure slipping.

Naomi stepped forward as well, her eyes darting between Paige's frantic typing and the tense expression twisting her features, her arms unfolding as unease crept over her.

"What is it?" I demanded, my patience thinning with every passing second of silence, my heart already pounding in anticipation of bad news.

Paige's hands finally stilled over the keyboard, her shoulders sagging slightly like whatever she had just read had physically weighed her down.

She turned to look at me, her face pale, her eyes wide with pure panic, and her hands trembling slightly at her sides now.

"Ethan," she said, her voice shaking slightly, barely holding together.

My stomach dropped instantly, dread pooling low in my chest before she even said anything, and I was already bracing for whatever was about to come out of her mouth.

"Eva was in an accident and it seems really bad.” Paige said, her voice cracking with anxiety, tears already gathering at the corners of her eyes.