CHAPTER 272: PLAYING THE LOSING HAND

Lilian evacuated the site hours later, but she didn’t return to Washington. Not only did she feel like an outsider amongst her team but she was scared to report back to her Director Caldridge.

Also, her head hurt.

She decided to deal with this the old fashion way. By drinking.

So, Lilian pushed through the scarred oak door of a bar by the street and almost stumbled inside. The air was marginally cooler, thick with the tang of stale beer, cheap disinfectant, and the low thrum of indifferent conversation.

It was a place for the worn-down and the anonymous. Perfect.

As throbbing thoughts of the failed Nevarro mission filled her head, she slid onto a cracked vinyl stool at the far end of the bar, the blazer she shrugged off looking incongruously expensive against the grimy wood.

Her white blouse was rumpled, the top button undone, sleeves shoved past her elbows revealing faint smudges of warehouse grime she hadn’t noticed. The polished regulator was buried under layers of fatigue and frustration.

"Bourbon," she rasped to the impassive bartender. "Neat. The good stuff. If you have it." Her voice was sandpaper rough.

The amber liquid arrived, catching the weak overhead light. She cradled the cool glass, the condensation slick against her palm.

For a moment, she just stared into its depths, seeing the hollow stares of her team, Caldridge’s cold disappointment. Her phone buzzed, a malignant beetle on the bar. She thumbed it open, the screen’s harsh glare making her wince. Caldridge’s message, the final sentence a cold blade:

"...your job is on the line."

She sucked in a sharp breath, the air suddenly thinner. She was not going to lose her job, the one thing she’d worked hard to get because of that man child, Darren Steele!

Saying that in her mind, it only felt like she wasn’t learning her lesson. The glass felt heavy as she lifted it, the first sip a welcome conflagration down her throat, momentarily searing the edges off the tension.

"You’ve got good taste," a voice said beside her.

She turned, the compliment already forming a polite, automatic dismissal on her lips – "Just needed something strong" – when her eyes locked onto the source.

The glass froze halfway back to the bar. Ice water flooded her veins.

"You’re kidding me."

Darren Steele was there. Lounging on the adjacent stool, impossibly out of place in the dingy bar, swirling a glass of deep red wine that looked like captured twilight. A faint, knowing smile played on his lips.

"You," Lilian breathed, the word a low hiss.

"Agent Greaves." He inclined his head, the picture of casual elegance. "Fancy meeting you in a place like this."

Her knuckles whitened around her glass. "Stalking me now, Steele? Feeling the heat?"

His chuckle was soft, infuriatingly relaxed. "Stalking? My dear Agent, that’s rather rich, coming from the woman who’s turned shadowing my corporate filings into an Olympic sport. Besides,I was here first. Working on my Cabernet Sauvignon appreciation. Terribly underrated in dive bars, you know."

She still glared at him.

Darren scoffed. "Can’t a man enjoy a drink without it being a federal case?" He took a slow sip, his eyes never leaving hers over the rim. "What do you want to do now? Reach for your gun? Make a scene? Arrest me for... enjoying a vintage? We both know you won’t. What’s the charge du jour? Conspiring to appreciate tannins?"

Lilian slammed her glass down, bourbon sloshing perilously close to the rim. The sound was sharp in the bar’s murmur. "You’re always so confident, aren’t you? Well cut the act."

"How demanding."

She leaned in. "Voltaire Holdings. Black Cipher LLC. They’re not ordinary subsidiaries, are they? They’re labyrinths you built to bury illicit transfers. Money flowing like sewer water, filtered through so many layers it comes out sparkling clean for the regulators. You think that makes you clever?"

"Precision, Agent," he corrected smoothly, swirling his wine. "It makes me precise. Unlike your rather... blunt instrument approach at Nevarro. A shame about the timing. Power fluctuations, terribly unreliable in those old buildings."

"R. Talmor," she fired back, forgetting her drink. "A ghost on your vendor logs. Invoices signed into the ether. Who is he? Your invisible accountant? Or just another name you burn when the trail gets warm?"

Darren shrugged, a picture of indifference. "R. Talmor? Could be anyone. A figment. A convenient shadow for those who need monsters under the bed. Like the Boogeyman. Or," his gaze sharpened, "he’s just exactly what we told you. A once upon a time client."

"And John Brittle?" Lilian pressed, the name a weapon. "That one I know is a real person. Very real. Very dead. Now you own his warehouse. The same warehouse I still suspect you’re using for illegal cryptocurrency activities."

"Still believe?" Darren raised a brow. "Agent Greaves, you have enough imagination to create an Oscar winning movie."

"Don’t get witty me."

"People die, businesses fail," Darren sighed, unflappable. "The city breathes in, breathes out. Tragic, certainly. Causation? That’s a heavier burden. One your Nevarro raid spectacularly failed to lift." He took another deliberate sip. "Speaking of which, impressive speed your team had. Almost as if someone tipped you off just in time to find... precisely nothing of consequence. Almost like the evidence took a pre-emptive vacation."

"Because you scrubbed it!" Lilian hissed. "Wiped it cleaner than a surgeon’s scalpel. The power logs re-written, the manifests vanished. You left us breadcrumbs leading straight to a dead end. You think bleaching the scene makes you innocent?"

"Or perhaps," Darren mused.

Lilian’s eyes began to quiver as she gazed at him. "Are you intentionally playing with me, Darren Steele? Do you find me... entertaining?"

Darren smirked. "Don’t flatter yourself, Agent Greaves. This just demonstrates the gulf between meticulous preparation and... enthusiastic flailing. Your financial crimes obsession, for instance. Cayman whispers, anonymous tips leading to arrests, conveniently freeing up assets... You frame it as theft. I see it as... efficient resource reallocation. Removing predators. Doesn’t that make me something of a vigilante?"

"You’re a bastard," she cussed, the fury barely contained.

"Okay, but at least I’m a clever one. Even you would have to agree," he conceded with a faint, maddening smile. Then, his expression shifted, a fraction of something resembling contrition. "But... I apologize. For mentioning your father. That was... beneath the game. It was only a move to throw you off."

The air left Lilian’s lungs. The warehouse, the bar, Steele’s face – everything blurred for a split second. Her father.

She looked at Darren. "So you admit it. It was a desperate move which means you were hiding something."

"No. I just wanted you to get angry," Darren corrected softly, his eyes holding hers with unnerving intensity, "because I knew it would resonate. Not because I’m hiding that particular secret. Not in the way you imagine." He paused, letting the unspoken accusation hang. "Besides, desperation implies lack of control. I assure you, I am very much in control."

"But how?" The word scraped out of her as she stared at him. "How do you know about him?"

Darren pursed his lips. "That," he murmured, the ghost of a smile returning, "I cannot say." He held up a hand, stopping her retort. "Won’t say. Some mysteries are more fun unsolved, don’t you think?"

The space between them crackled. Not just hostility, but a dangerous, magnetic pull. A chess game played with lives and secrets, charged with an intimacy that felt illicit. His gaze lingered a fraction too long, hers refused to break away.

"You should know," Lilian stated, her voice regaining its icy authority, a shield against the unsettling current, "if I substantiate even one of these threads, if a single charge finds purchase, you won’t see daylight from anything but a prison yard for decades. Your empire turns to dust. I know that you’re connected to Red Fang somehow."

Darren didn’t flinch. He studied her for a brief moment before replying. "Gotta suck having all that knowledge and can’t do anything with it." Then he sighed. "You’ve been playing the losing hand from the start, Agent Greaves, it’s already too late now."

She didn’t reply to that. This time she gazed at him more intensely, wondering what he was trying to get at.

"But ask yourself, Lilian," Darren murmured, saying her name in a way that felt like a violation. "While you bleed yourself dry chasing phantoms I may or may not embody... who are you really serving? This crusade you embarked on for your father’s ghost – is it cleaning up the city? Or are you just the sharpest knife in the drawer for the Department of Financial Integrity?"

He leaned closer, the scent of expensive wine and his cologne briefly cutting through the bar’s staleness. "The DFI. Shiny badge, stern pronouncements. You never know, you may be working for your very own enemy."

He paused, letting the poison seep in. "Sometimes, Agent, the greatest predator doesn’t lurk in the shadows. It operates under the brightest lights, wearing the most respectable mask. The biggest scam of all might just be the one you’re sworn to uphold."

Lilian recoiled as if scalded. "Don’t you dare—"

"I mean that’s already too late at this point" he cut her off, his voice losing none of its intensity but gaining a chilling certainty. "Just make sure to keep an eye around yourself. And... your own allies."

He stood in one fluid motion, leaving his half-finished wine glinting on the bar like a bloodied jewel. He didn’t offer a hand, didn’t bow. Just held her gaze for one final, electric moment.

"Enjoy the bourbon, Agent Greaves. Sleep well."

Then he was gone, melting into the grimy twilight beyond the door as seamlessly as he’d appeared. Lilian didn’t move. She stared at the space he’d occupied, his words echoing in the sudden, hollow silence within her.

’He’s just a kid, Lilian,’ she told herself.

’He’s just a fucking kid.’