Charles POV

“The best lies are told in silence.”

The city didn’t sleep, not really.

It hummed, like a machine built to serve those who could afford its pulse.

And tonight, that machine worked for him.

Charles Black stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse safe house he’d used only once before the kind of place where every curtain was bulletproof and every reflection told half a lie.

Below, the city flickered like a dying heartbeat. Above, he stared at his own face in ...