Page 71 of Code Name: Ghost

Logan rolls his eyes.

"You picked one helluva time to tell me that, but I reject your declaration."

I'm a bit stunned. "You what?"

"You heard me. I reject your declaration and refuse to respond until you're standing right in front of me to tell me in person."

Logan chuckles softly. "Oh, I do like her. You tell him Cherise."

"Bring him back to me, Logan."

"You can count on me," Logan responds, then turns to me. "So can we go kill the bad guys so you can go claim your lady love?"

"Shut up," I grumble.

The main house looms like a sleeping beast—silent, still, but seething beneath the surface. Every stone in that estate hides something lethal. It’s too quiet, too calculated, and that’s how I know it’s primed to kill. Low lights flicker in the eastern wing—the supposed wine cellar that’s nothing but a front. Our target isn’t a collection of rare vintages. It’s a command nexus buried deep beneath the earth, lined with reinforced steel, anti-surveillance tech, and kill switches designed to erase its existence in under sixty seconds.

Inside that cellar is Vallois’ real kingdom—his fortress of cables and coded cruelty. The servers down there run hot with secrets—shipment logs, diplomatic cover routes, encrypted identities. They pulse with every lie he’s sold under the illusion of immunity. That place isn’t just a nerve center. It’s a coffin waiting to be sealed—and if we make a wrong move, we’ll be the ones buried with it.

We’re not kicking down a door tonight. We’re threading the needle through a kill box. Every step forward is a bet against death, and we’re holding a hand built on muscle memory, strategy, and vengeance. The danger isn’t just real. It’s hungry. And it's watching for one mistake.

We're about to carve the truth out of the dark—but if we fail, we won’t get the chance to scream.

Minimal guards? Maybe. But the kind Vallois hires are more like silencers than sentries. They don’t patrol—they stalk. Quiet, lethal, bred for kill orders with no hesitation. They won’t issue warnings or call in alarms. If they catch so much as a whisper of our presence, we won’t be cuffed or interrogated. We’ll be dropped where we stand. No identification. No retrieval. Just a bullet to the head, our bodies buried in unmarked earth beneath a villa that serves five-star wine to war criminals. Every step forward isn't just risky—it's a countdown. One misstep, one camera flicker, one misplaced breath, and we’re ghosts for real.

I tighten my grip on the pistol and breathe through it, steadying the tremor in my pulse as the cold metal presses into my palm. Every breath is deliberate now—measured, silent. One wrong move down here and we’re not just compromised—we’re dead. No heroics. No second chances. Just a bullet between the eyes or a pressure mine underfoot. The danger is real, tangible, stalking just beyond every heartbeat. I close my eyes for a split second, not to pray, but to sharpen. To remind myself this is what I was built for. The risk is why I’m here.

This is the part where most men flinch. We’re not most men.

We breach clean—but it’s a razor’s edge. Two guards stationed at the east corridor, each armed with suppressed submachine guns and encrypted comms rigs. We take them down fast, simultaneous shots to the throat and temple, dropping them before their fingers twitch near a comm button. They die without a sound, but every step past their bodies carries the promise of retribution.

No alarms yet. But the air is thick with a heavy silence that means something’s watching. We don’t linger. Don’t breathe too deep. Just move, low and fast. Because even a clean breach doesn’t mean safety—it means borrowed time. And we’re seconds from being overdraft.

No mess, but the danger is rising with every breath.

When we hit the cellar door, I signal Logan to hold. He nods, understanding immediately—but there's no mistaking the silent exchange between us. The air hums with danger, thick as the sweat at the back of my neck.

I go in alone.

Because that’s the only play that doesn’t get us both killed.

This door isn’t just an entry point. It’s a threshold. Beyond it lies the man responsible for orchestrating the darkest corridors of this operation—trafficking, laundering, sanctioned movement of untouchable cargo. Vallois isn’t some thug in a tailored suit. He’s a tactician. And if he’s cornered, he won’t hesitate to bring the entire room down with him.

My hand tightens around the grip of the pistol. Every sense is sharpened. Every footstep measured.

The hallway behind me is still, but I feel the charge—Logan holding just outside, ready to move in if things go sideways. And they will. That’s the nature of moves like this. They don’t end clean. They end fast—or not at all.

One last breath. One last thought of Cherise, waiting in the van, tracking our every step with eyes as sharp as her mind. She’s the reason I’m still breathing. The reason I can afford to walk into this darkness.

Then I breach.

The door doesn’t creak. It doesn’t resist. It swings open into a world carved from rot and steel and power. And I walk straight into the jaws of the beast, because I’ve already made peace with the risk. I don’t just need to survive. I need to win. I will win.

Vallois doesn’t look up when I enter—not right away. He’s hunched over a satellite feed, sipping from a crystal glass, framed by a thousand bottles of vintage rot and the illusion of untouchable power. The room is cold, air-conditioned to preserve his rare vintages, but I can feel the heat building—the kind that comes from proximity to a man who knows he's hunted. The monitors behind him flicker with intelligence chatter: comm logs, cargo manifests, biometric scramblers, facial match protocols—all feeding into a pipeline of immunity he believes still holds.

He doesn’t realize the wolves are already inside his den.

The moment stretches, the sound of my boots scuffing stone the only announcement of my arrival. He finally looks up, and in that instant—when his eyes meet mine and widen in disbelief—I see the crack in his armor. The chill is no longer environmental. It's fear, and it slices through the pretense like a knife.

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