Page 13 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
And then there are eyes. Gold, furious, too close.
I wake gasping, sheets tangled, skin slick with sweat, the city outside still dark and silent. My chest undulates in sharp bursts as I press my palms against the mattress, trying to steady myself.
I don’t believe in visions. I don’t believe in warnings that come wrapped in dreams.
But the sound of that roar lingers in the room even as my breathing evens, and no matter how much I tell myself it’s just stress, just exhaustion, I can’t shake the way it felt like something had looked straight at me.
7
MALEK
The Zurich lab has always been the most secure of my holdings, locked so deep under corporate facades and shell companies that not even seasoned auditors can follow the trail without choking on paperwork.
It is not a place meant to be seen, much less spoken about, because it holds the kind of projects that governments pretend they know nothing about while quietly sending funding through back doors.
The Syndicate would love to break it open, and my rivals would sell their own blood to find its location. For years it has stayed quiet, a vault in the center of Europe’s cleanest banking city, and tonight that quiet fractures.
Lysa’s voice cuts across the encrypted line, steady and unflinching as always. “Zurich reports unusual movement. A flagged IP trace from DOJ. Not a full breach yet, but close. They were searching through the biotech holdings, specifically anything linked to our Eastern branches. The trail is masked, but we picked up the endpoint before they realized. I sent you the full brief.”
I sit in the dark office, curtains drawn tight against the lights of Geneva. The city hums beneath me, but up here it is silence except for the sound of her voice. I turn the glass of whiskey in my hand, not drinking, just watching the amber liquid catch what little light spills from the desk.
“Relocate the Zurich projects,” I say at last, voice low. “Everything. Don’t wait for authorization. Move them into secondary safehouses and burn the old files. No evidence left behind.”
“Yes, sir.”
She hesitates, and she never hesitates.
“There’s more,” she adds finally.
“Say it.”
“We pulled the name attached to the trace. Not the hacker, whoever signed the warrant that allowed them to dig in the first place.”
“Who?”
“Jennifer Callahan.”
The whiskey turns bitter in my mouth even though I never taste it.
Her name settles like smoke in the room, thick, alive, refusing to disperse. I don’t move, don’t answer right away, because inside me something else does.
The lion stirs.
Not in warning, not in anger, but with recognition. A deep growl rising from marrow, telling me in no uncertain terms that this woman is not just another threat in a tailored suit. She is something that touches me where nothing has in a century.
I set the glass down, steady, slow.
“Leave the report,” I tell Lysa. “Do not pursue her. Do not countertrace. Pull back every agent with her name on their target list. If she shows up again, I’ll handle it myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line cuts.
For a long moment, I simply sit there, elbows braced on the desk, hands steepled, listening to the silence press in.
I should end this now. She is a prosecutor digging where she does not belong, already too close to truths that would rip the floor out from under her life. I should put distance between us, shut her down through channels, ruin her credibility, send her back to Washington with her career in ash. It would be easy. I have ended senators with less.
But instead I rise, cross the office, and press my palms to the glass.
