Chapter 224
Felix
The earpiece crackled with static, then Wesley's voice cut through—cold, final, dripping with barely restrained violence.
"If it's Felix? He won't live long enough to regret it."
I'd heard those words before, of course. Listened to them live as they left his mouth back at that filthy warehouse. But hearing them again now, in the silence of my apartment with nothing but the hum of the city outside, they hit differently.
They sounded like a promise.
A sudden roar of engines tore through the audio feed—multiple vehicles, heavy, fast, closing in. My hand jerked, nearly dropping the device. For one horrible, irrational second, I thought they were coming for me. That Wesley had somehow traced the signal, pinpointed my location, and was already on his way with that feral pack of street rats he called a "brotherhood."
My pulse spiked. My fingers went numb.
Then the feed cut to static.
I exhaled slowly, forcing myself to breathe, to think. He wasn't here. Not yet. But he would be. Soon.
I looked down at my right hand. The small button I'd been clutching—no bigger than a shirt stud—was slick with sweat, the edges digging into my palm. I'd been gripping it so hard I'd left an imprint in my skin.
Across the room, Anthony stood near the window, hands clasped behind his back, his posture as calm and controlled as ever. But I caught the flicker of concern in his eyes as he turned toward me.
"Mr. Lawson," Anthony said quietly, his British accent clipped and precise. "How did it go? They didn't trace it back to you, did they?"
I let out a sharp bark of laughter—humorless, bitter—and hurled the earpiece onto the coffee table. It skittered across the glass with a harsh clatter before going still.
"Fuck." I dragged a hand through my hair, gripping hard enough to hurt. "I sent that stupid bitch straight to hell before she could open her mouth. At least I got that right."
Anthony's face remained perfectly neutral, but I caught the shift in his posture—the slight lean forward, the tightening around his eyes. He already knew what was coming.
"But?" he prompted, his voice too careful.
I met his gaze and felt something cold settle in my chest. "But I'm still the one they're looking at. The only one."
"Lance suspects you."
"Lance suspects," I shot back, the word tasting like acid. "Lance is still playing detective, weighing evidence, building his case like the good little Boy Scout he is. But Wesley?" I laughed again, sharper this time. "My dear, beloved nephew isn't suspecting a goddamn thing. He's locked on. He's already digging."
Anthony's jaw worked once, the only crack in his composure. "If he's investigating with the kind of resources he has now—the street network, the manpower—it won't take him long to find the button."
I felt my pulse spike, hot and vicious. "That button cost me a hundred thousand dollars, Anthony. Custom-engineered. Perfect weight. Perfect threading. Identical down to the fucking microscopic level. There's no way he'll spot it. Not that fast."
"Perhaps not," Anthony said, his tone maddeningly even. "But you and I both know it's only buying time. And not much of it."
I wanted to argue. To tell him he was wrong.
But the truth was already clawing at the back of my throat.
I thought back to last night. Vanessa, passed out in her cheap hotel room, sprawled across the bed in that pathetic little dress she'd worn to impress me. I'd been so careful. Swapped out one of the buttons on her coat—third from the top, where no one would think to look—and replaced it with my masterpiece.
A button that wasn't just a button.
Inside that tiny shell: a top-tier MEMS microphone. A micro high-pressure liquid reservoir holding exactly 0.5 milliliters of VX nerve agent—more than enough to stop a heart in under thirty seconds. And a spring-loaded ejector needle made of shape-memory alloy, so thin it would pierce skin without leaving a visible mark.
Three systems in one. Elegant. Brutal. Untraceable.
Or so I'd thought.
Anthony's voice pulled me back to the present. "Mr. Lawson, we need to move. Now. Wesley will trace the toxin back to your pharmaceutical holdings—BioGenix Labs has the only private facility in North America capable of synthesizing that compound. And if he cross-references your movements over the past seventy-two hours..."
He trailed off, but I knew what he was implying.
Wesley would come for me. And when he did, he wouldn't bother with lawyers or evidence or any of the civilized bullshit Lance still clung to.
"Fuck," I said again, louder this time. "Wesley. That useless, pathetic waste of a human being. He drove his ex-girlfriend to her death, and now he's ready to kill me? His own uncle?"
Anthony didn't flinch. "He's not the boy you raised, sir. Not anymore."
I knew that. God, I knew that. But hearing it out loud made it real in a way I wasn't ready to accept.
"You should leave the country," Anthony said, his tone maddeningly calm. "If you go now, tonight, they won't have time to react. I can arrange everything—flights, safe houses, contacts in Europe. Your father still has people in—"
"Run?" I cut him off, my voice sharp enough to draw blood. "You want me to run?"
Anthony met my gaze without blinking. "It's the best option you have."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I still had cards to play, that I wasn't some cornered rat scrambling for the nearest exit.
But the truth was, he was right.
And that made it so much worse.
I thought about the message I'd sent my father last night. The one where I'd told him I'd made my decision. That I was staying in New York to finish what I'd started. That I wasn't going to let Lance win.
And now here I was, less than forty-eight hours later, with nothing to show for it but a dead girl and a nephew who wanted my head on a spike.
"So that's it, then," I said quietly, almost to myself. "I lose. Again."