Chapter 63

[ 1,113 words ]

Katia’s POV

The midnight blue felt like a shroud the moment I stepped out of the plaza. The cold, biting air of Manhattan hit my exposed skin, a sharp contrast to the suffocating heat of the ballroom and the even more suffocating weight of Julian’s gaze. My pulse was still erratic, a jagged drumming in my throat that I couldn’t seem to quiet. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the phantom pressure of his hand on the small of my back, a reminder of the fire we had played with in his office.

“You’re vibrating,” Samantha said, her voice low and sharp as she slid into the back of the black sedan beside me. She didn’t wait for me to respond before flipping open her laptop, the blue light reflecting off her glasses. Her fingers were already flying across the keys, checking the perimeter of our digital footprint. “That was a hell of a show back there. You had the board eating out of your hand, but Julian looked like he was ready to dismantle the building just to see what makes you tick p>

“I’m fine, Sam. Just get me out of this dress and into something that doesn’t feel like a trap,” I said, leaning my head back against the cold leather headrest. I needed the roar of an engine. I needed the anonymity of a helmet.

“Well, don’t get too comfortable,” Sam muttered, her brow furrowing as she stared at a scrolling wall of code. “We have a problem. A massive one. Julian didn’t just hire us to build a security system; he’s using the WEG infrastructure to run a parallel hunt p>

I sat up instantly, the fatigue vanishing as adrenaline took its place. “What do you mean? Is he trying to hack IG’s internal servers p>

“No, he’s gone physical,” she said, turning the screen toward me. “Look at the localized WEG server pings from the last hour. Julian has deployed a fleet of mobile interceptors and high-frequency drones across the industrial district and the bridges. But they aren’t looking for intruders. They’re tagging bikes p>

I felt a chill wash over me. “Tagging? With what p>

“Microscopic RFID tracers,” Sam explained, her voice tight with urgency. “The tech is bleeding-edge. The moment a high-performance motorcycle exceeds eighty miles per hour within a five-mile radius of a WEG-owned property, the overhead sensors hit it with a tracker the size of a dust mote. It’s designed to stick to carbon fiber and aluminum. It pings the bike’s location the second the engine stops. Katia, he’s hunting something or someone, it’s obvious. He’s trying to map every bike in the city that matches the specs of the one that humiliated his security team in Manhattan p>

I looked out the window at the blurred lights of the city. Julian was sitting in his high tower, waiting for a light to blink on a map. He couldn’t break me in the boardroom, so he was trying to catch me on the asphalt. He wanted to unmask the rider who had dared to challenge his authority.

“Where’s my bike?” I asked, my voice dropping into a low, steady tone that masked the storm inside me.

“It’s at the Brooklyn warehouse. But Katia, if you move it tonight, you’re playing right into his hands. He’s got the whole area gridded. The second you break the speed limit, you’re a glowing dot on his monitor p>

“If I don’t move it, and his team does a manual sweep of the garages near the tech corridor tomorrow, they’ll find it anyway,” I countered. I wasn’t just thinking about the bike; I was thinking about the proximity of that warehouse to my life, to Aiden. “I need to get into the WEG server and kill the tracking software from the inside. If I can’t do it remotely from here, I have to do it from the bike. I need to lead them into a dead zone and fry the signal p>

“It’s a trap, Katia. He wants you to react p>

“He doesn’t know it’s me,” I reminded her, already reaching for the hidden compartment in the sedan’s floor where I kept my gear. “He thinks he’s hunting a rival, a ghost on a bike. He doesn’t know his sister-in-law is about to tear a hole in his billion-dollar security grid p>

Twenty minutes later, I was in the back of the darkened warehouse. The midnight blue gown lay discarded on the oil-stained concrete like the shed skin of a snake. I pulled on the black carbon-fiber suit, the familiar weight of the reinforced padding settling over my shoulders like armor. I snapped the helmet into place, the Heads-Up Display (HUD) flickering to life, displaying a map of Julian’s digital sensors in angry red pulses.

“I’m in your ear,” Sam said through the encrypted comms. “I’ve bypassed the first layer of the WEG firewall, but the tracking software is hardwired into their local nodes. You have to get within fifty feet of the Brooklyn Bridge node to upload the virus. That’s the heart of his grid. If you hit it there, the whole system collapses into a feedback loop p>

“Copy that. I’m hot p>

I kicked the Ducati into life. The roar of the engine echoed through the hollow warehouse, a violent, beautiful sound that drowned out the whispers of Julian’s voice in my head. I didn’t ease out into the street. I launched.

The city became a blur of neon and shadow. I hit sixty, then eighty, then a hundred. Instantly, a red icon flashed on the corner of my visor.

Target Tagged.

“He’s got you,” Sam hissed. “The ping just went live on the WEG server. Julian’s team is scrambling three interceptors from the Midtown garage. They’re fast, Katia, specialized pursuit vehicles p>

“Let them come,” I muttered, leaning low over the fuel tank until my chest was pressed against the bike. “I need them to follow the signal so they don’t look at where I’m actually going p>

I tore toward the Brooklyn Bridge, the wind screaming against my helmet like a banshee. I could see the black SUVs in my rearview mirror and matte-black armored trucks, the kind Julian used for high-value transport. They weren’t using sirens; they were trying to be as invisible as I was.

I wove through the late-night traffic, my heart hammering in sync with the pistons. The bridge loomed ahead, a massive skeleton of steel and light. I saw the node, a small, nondescript grey box mounted on the first suspension cable.

“Thirty feet,” Sam counted down, her voice trembling. “Twenty. Hold it steady, Katia! If you drop the speed now, they’ll pit maneuver you into the rail p>

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