CHAPTER 7
Madrid
Madrid blazed with late-afternoon light, the kind that turned even old stone into gold. But inside a dim private room beneath the Gran Vía, the world looked very different.
A man sat alone at a polished oak table, sleeves rolled, cigarette smoke rising from the tray beside him. His name was **Luis Fernando Alcázar**, though in the circles that mattered he was known simply as El Archivo — The Archive — because he remembered everything and forgot no one.
He read Lena Moretti's file slowly, like someone savoring a wine rather than drinking it.
A former military intelligence officer. A linguist. A woman who could vanish into any city. He admired that. But admiration didn't matter — not when someone had paid to keep her alive, and someone else had paid twice as much to ensure she never found what she was chasing.
He flipped to the next page:
**Her mother. Dr. Emilia Moretti.**
A photo taken five years before her disappearance. California sunlight on her face.
Luis tapped the picture with a ringed finger.
"She died for something important," he murmured, the words barely audible, "which means the girl is about to make my life complicated."
The door behind him opened.
A woman stepped in — tall, Jamaican, hair braided tight, posture alert. María-Lyn Grant—ex-MI6, currently freelance, always lethal.
"You saw the news?" she asked.
Luis slid the file shut. "Moretti landed in Geneva."
María-Lyn leaned her back against the table's edge. "And you're smiling, which tells me you already made your decision."
He gave her a slow look. "Someone wants her protected. Someone very wealthy. Anonymous transfer. No details. Just one instruction."
"And the other client?" she asked. "The one who wants her gone?"
Luis exhaled smoke, watching it drift toward the ceiling.
"Louder," he said. "More aggressive. More afraid."
A pause.
"I rarely work both sides. It's messy."
"You're doing it now," María-Lyn replied.
"Only until I understand who she truly is. People don't risk billions over nothing."
He stood, buttoning his cuffs, a gesture smooth enough to hide the fact he carried a knife and a gun and knew twenty ways to use either before the other person took a breath.
"Pack your things," he said. "We're going to Geneva."
María-Lyn frowned. "Now?"
Luis nodded. "The girl is moving fast. Too fast. And if we don't reach her first, someone else will."
---
Meanwhile — Geneva
Lena walked out of the police archives building, her mind racing with new fragments of information about her mother's final days.
She didn't know that **two strangers in Madrid** were already on a plane
because of her.
She didn't know that **three different governments** had opened private files with her name on them.
And she certainly didn't know that the man in the gray coat was only the first of many shadows moving across Europe toward her.
But she would.
Soon.
Very soon.