Page 25 of Veil of Ashes

They’re not just tools. They’re her, and Gia’s got her scent now. I exhale smoke, watching it twist in the night air.

Dante’s words circle back. “Use yourself wisely.” I’ve been a weapon for years, aimed where he pointed.

Now I’m aiming myself. At Gia, at Rizzi, at the whole rotting mess. And Sylvara’s tangled up in it, whether I like it or not.

I stub the cigarette out, grinding it into the railing. The ember flares, then dies. Thunder rumbles again, faint but closer.

The city doesn’t care. It never does. Lights flicker on, oblivious to the war brewing under its skin.

I step inside, locking the balcony door. The apartment feels small, the walls pressing in. I check the guns again, just to be sure.

The hard drive sits in its hole, waiting. Those IDs, that cash—they’re my ticket if it all goes south. I don’t want to use them.

But I might have to. For her. For me. Loyalty’s a blade, and it’s cutting deeper every day.

I sit on the couch, boots still on. The burner phone stares back from the counter, silent now. I don’t call her again.

She’d hear it in my voice—the lie, the fear, the need to keep her safe. I can’t risk that yet.

The cigarette taste lingers, bitter on my tongue. I lean back, eyes on the ceiling, tracing cracks that weren’t there yesterday.

Gia’s out there, plotting her next move. That box was just the start. She’s testing me, seeing how far I’ll bend.

I won’t. Not for her. I’ll break this city before I let her touch Sylvara again.

Thunder rolls through, shaking the windows. I close my eyes, but sleep doesn’t come. Just the weight of her tools, and the fight ahead.

Chapter 8 – Sylvara

The UV lamp buzzes overhead, flickering like it’s dying, but I keep my focus sharp. A needle-fine stylus glides through the final digit of the routing number, the heat-reactive ink bonding invisibly to the paper’s texture. The thermal watermark pulses once when I breathe on it—just enough humidity to test the reaction.

Verified. Clean.

I blink once. Don’t relax. My back screams from hours hunched over the press table, but the pain keeps me present. Keeps me from unraveling. One loose thread, one moment of drift, and the whole thing collapses.

Beneath my gloves, my fingers are steady. Always are. Even when my pulse jackhammers like it is now.

The documents laid out in front of me don’t just tell a story. They bury one. Doctoring these accounts took fourteen hours, two protein bars, and every line of data I’ve ever siphoned from Veyra’s laundering network. This is the information that feeds the ledger I’m working on.

Page one routes through a Dubai import front—clean, indistinguishable from thousands of other shell accounts. Page two leads to a Belizean trust fund managed by a man who technically died in 2007 but still files taxes. Page three is the prize. Veritas Holdings. My mother’s name, twisted into a corporate brand for blood money.

I press a hand against my sternum. Feel the sharp pendant beneath my shirt.

Veritas.

I triple-check the serial tags. Each falsified document holds an embedded nano-signature, encrypted in a thermal matrix that even top-level forensic auditors wouldn’t catch unless they knew what frequency to ping. And none of them do.

These aren’t just forgeries. They’re traps. Every wire, every false entry, leads to a name that Veyra swore didn’t exist on record.

That was the point.

I slide the pages into a flat pouch, waterproof, fire-resistant. It seals with a hiss. I wrap it in a canvas sheath, duct-taped for grip, then tape a smaller packet to the underside—decoy data. Sloppy, half-cooked files, the kind meant to be found if someone gets too curious too fast.

I check the window.

11:06 PM.

The press groans as I shut it down. It’s old, industrial—scavenged from a government clearance sale and rebuilt from scrap. The machine wheezes like it’s tired of hiding too.

---