Chaos erupted as red emergency lights flashed across the sterile hallways of the intelligence facility. Alarms wailed like angry sirens in the night, signaling one truth—James and Isabella were trapped behind enemy lines.
“Plan B?” James asked, pressing his back against a wall as footsteps thundered closer.
“Ventilation shafts. This way!” Isabella replied, pulling him toward a side corridor.
With practiced precision, they scaled a maintenance ladder and slipped into the narrow air ducts above the records floor. Their breathing slowed. Every sound was amplified in the tight space—the pounding boots below, the buzzing comms, the soft metallic creak of their movement.
“Did you get the data?” James whispered.
Isabella nodded and patted her jacket. “Encrypted and uploaded to a ghost drive. But we need a safe location to decrypt it.”
They emerged from a service hatch onto the rooftop under the cover of darkness. The cool Roman air bit at their skin as searchlights swept the city below. Isabella tapped into her wrist comm, speaking rapidly in code.
“Extraction point ETA five minutes. We head to the catacombs.”
James raised an eyebrow. “The catacombs? That’s not ominous at all.”
“They’re off-grid. No cameras, no satellites. Just bones and secrets.”
They raced across rooftops, leaping over alleyways until they reached an old basilica. From there, they descended into the depths of Rome, navigating ancient tunnels shrouded in silence and shadow.
Finally, in a small chamber lit only by Isabella’s handheld torch, they paused. James examined the drive she had retrieved—a custom device with quantum-level encryption.
“Whatever Salvatori is hiding,” Isabella said, “he killed agents to keep it buried. I trusted him. I trained under him. He gave me my first field assignment.”
James placed a hand on her shoulder. “And now he’s part of something bigger. We need to expose it. Together.”
She nodded, steeling herself.
As James began decrypting the drive using his own portable rig, an image formed on the screen: detailed blueprints of a prototype weapon. Below it—transaction logs, codenames, and payments traced to multiple accounts.
“Black Viper’s building something,” James muttered. “This isn’t just arms trafficking. This is a global destabilization plan.”
Isabella’s eyes scanned the list of buyers. One name made her blood run cold: Michael Turner.
She gasped. “That can’t be right…”
James looked at her. “Who is he?”
She swallowed hard. “He’s the lead strategist for the International Intelligence Agency. But more than that—he’s my husband.”
Silence fell like a hammer. James stared at her, the weight of the revelation sinking in.
“You’re married?” he said slowly.
“I… was,” Isabella replied, voice trembling. “We’ve been separated for over a year. I never told you because… I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”
But now, it mattered more than ever.
The love triangle was no longer just emotional—it was political, strategic, and deadly.
And James wasn’t sure if he could separate the mission… from his heart.
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