Chapter 9

Mika continued. “And then I found this.” She tapped a key, bringing up the intelligence reports she had managed to access. The words The Morrígan Syndicate appeared on the screen, bold against the government-sealed documents.

Elliot stilled.

Mika watched him closely, waiting for a reaction. His jaw tightened, his usual sharp confidence slipping for the first time.

“You’ve heard of them.”

A long silence stretched between them. Then, Elliot exhaled through his nose, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Shit.”

Mika had seen Elliot Grayson in a lot of situations. High-pressure financial negotiations, intense client disputes, even fraud cases that could have landed companies in federal court. He had never flinched. Never showed doubt.

But now, he looked like someone had just confirmed his worst fear.

“What do you know?” Mika pressed.

Elliot sat back in his chair, rubbing his jaw before meeting her gaze. “Not much. And that’s the problem.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The Morrígan Syndicate isn’t just some criminal group. They don’t operate like the others. There’s no hierarchy. No confirmed leadership. No headquarters. They exist in the shadows, moving through finance, politics, and intelligence like ghosts.”

Mika felt a cold shiver crawl down her spine. “Then how do you know they’re real?”

Elliot let out a humorless laugh. “Because I’ve seen the aftermath of what they do.”

That sent a sharp pulse of unease through her.

She crossed her arms. “So why the hell is Grayson Analytics flagged as a target?”

Elliot’s expression darkened. He didn’t answer immediately, instead turning the laptop slightly toward him, scrolling through the flagged transactions.

Mika’s patience thinned. “Elliot.”

His eyes met hers, something weighing behind them. “Because we work in intelligence, Mika. And intelligence is currency.”

Her stomach twisted. “You think we have something they want?”

“Or we’re in the way of something they’re doing.”

Mika clenched her jaw, turning back to the screen, her mind running at a mile a minute. The transactions weren’t just random funding trails. They were strategic. Purposeful. Like someone was laying the groundwork for something bigger.

And then a realization struck her.

The flagged wire transfers—the offshore accounts—they weren’t new.

She scrolled back through the data, pulling up older records, transactions that had been overlooked. She ran a comparative analysis, watching as the screen filled with past financial movements that mirrored the current ones almost exactly.

Mika swallowed. “This has happened before.”

Elliot frowned. “What?”

She turned the screen toward him. “These financial patterns—they aren’t new. The same kind of structured transfers appeared in multiple companies before. Always through different corporations, different accounts. But every single time, within months, something happened.”

Elliot studied the screen, his expression unreadable. “What kind of something?”

Mika inhaled. “High-profile corporate collapses. CEOs stepping down under scandal. Companies liquidating assets overnight. Every single one of them imploded.”

Elliot’s jaw tightened. “And now, it’s us.”

A tense silence filled the office.

Mika felt the weight of it pressing on her chest. If the Syndicate was involved, then this wasn’t just about fraud or financial crimes. It was about power.

And Grayson Analytics had somehow found itself in the crosshairs.

Mika let out a slow breath. “We need to do something.”

Elliot didn’t respond immediately. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the screen like it held answers he wasn’t ready for.

Then, finally, he looked at her. “No. We need to tread carefully.”

Mika’s brows pulled together. “What?”

Elliot’s voice was calm, but firm. “We don’t go to anyone yet. Not legal, not our clients, not the board. We don’t even mention the name Morrígan Syndicate in a single report.”

Mika’s heart picked up speed. “Elliot, if we’re a target—”

“Then we’re already in danger.” His tone was sharp, cutting through her protest. “We need more than financial records. We need proof of why we’re a target. Until we know that, making noise will only paint a bigger target on our backs.”

Mika hated that he was right.

She let out a breath, glancing back at the screen.

If the Syndicate had buried their movements this deep, there was a reason.

And she was going to find out what it was.

Even if it meant stepping into the dark.

Mika was used to compartmentalizing.

That was how she survived the chaos of her job—by breaking down problems into manageable pieces, by focusing on logic instead of emotion. But when Elliot didn’t show up to work the next morning, something inside her cracked.

Elliot Grayson was never late.

He was the kind of man who scheduled his life down to the minute, who sent preemptive emails at five in the morning and responded to crises before they even had a chance to unfold.

But today, his office was dark.

His phone went straight to voicemail.

And the unease that had been gnawing at Mika’s insides turned into something worse.

She checked the company’s internal system, pulling up his access logs. No entry this morning. No sign of him at all.

Mika’s pulse quickened as she grabbed her phone and dialed his number. Straight to voicemail. Again.

She tried not to panic. Tried to rationalize. Maybe he had a last-minute meeting. Maybe he had an emergency.

But that didn’t explain the feeling sinking like lead into her stomach.

She turned to the one place where Elliot had left his mark—the files they had been working on. The ones tied to The Morrígan Syndicate.

Mika sat down at her desk, fingers flying across the keyboard as she pulled up their research from the night before. But the second her screen loaded, her stomach dropped.

The files were gone.

Every trace of their findings, every flagged transaction, every piece of encrypted data they had uncovered—wiped.

Mika’s hands went cold.

This wasn’t a glitch.

This wasn’t an accident.

Someone had deliberately erased their work. Someone knew what they had found.

Her breath shallowed as she ran a deeper search, checking the server logs. There. A data access timestamp from late last night. One hour after she and Elliot had left.

Whoever had done this had been careful. But not careful enough.

They had left a signature in the system. A familiar code embedded into the deletion log—an internal administrator override.

Mika felt a wave of nausea rise in her throat. The company had done this.

Grayson Analytics wasn’t just a target. They were involved.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she traced the override back to its source. A firewall-protected section of their database that she had never had clearance for before.

Her mind screamed at her to stop. To let it go.

But Mika had never been good at walking away.

She bypassed the security blocks, her breath coming in slow, measured intervals as she waited for the restricted files to load. And when they did—

She felt her entire world tilt.