The rain in Berlin didn't wash things clean; it just turned the city's sins into a slick, oily sheen on the pavement.
Liora Reyes stood in the shadow of a crumbling brick archway in Kreuzberg, her fingers flying across the customized mechanical keyboard of a deck that looked like it had been salvaged from a lunar lander. It hadn't. It was a custom-built monster, designed for one thing: piercing the legendary "Aegis" firewall of Voss Dynamics.
Above her, a sleek, black drone hummed—a silent predator patrolling the air. It was one of Sebastian's. Even three thousand miles away from his headquarters, his presence was a physical weight, a digital God watching over the world he'd built on the bones of people like her brother.
Focus, Lia, she told herself, the cold biting through her tactical gear. Don't let the ghost of him distract you.
But the "ghost" was hard to ignore. Every time she closed her eyes, she didn't see the ruthless billionaire who dominated the evening news. She saw the man in the Swiss penthouse six months ago—the way his pupils had blown wide with desire just seconds before she'd triggered the neural surge that had shattered his mind. She remembered the sound of his body hitting the floor, the smell of ozone and expensive cologne, and the terrifying realization that she had just erased eighteen months of a monster's life.
A green light flickered on her screen.
"I'm in," she whispered, her voice a raspy thread in the damp night air.
She wasn't looking for money. She was looking for the "Lethe Project" files. Her brother, Leo, had been a lead engineer at Voss Dynamics before he was found dead in a "tragic" car accident. He'd sent her one frantic, encrypted message before he died: Lia, he's rewriting people. He's not just monitoring the world, he's editing it. Stop him.
The data began to crawl across her screen.
Voss_Dynamics/Internal/Security_Protocols/Neural_Interface_v.4.2
Her heart hammered against her ribs. This was the tech she had used against him. A prototype that allowed for the direct manipulation of the hippocampus. Sebastian had been the first human test subject, driven by a god-complex that demanded he be the strongest, the smartest, the first. He'd wanted to see if he could "optimize" his own focus by pruning unnecessary memories.
Lia had just helped him prune a little more than he'd intended.
Suddenly, the screen turned a violent, pulsing red.
CRITICAL BREACH DETECTED. AI COUNTER-MEASURE 'HADES' INITIATED.
"Damn it," she hissed.
She didn't panic; panic was for people who didn't know how to code their way out of a grave. She initiated a ghost-protocol, bouncing her signal through twelve different servers in three different continents. But the 'Hades' program was faster. It was learning her patterns in real-time. It felt… personal. Like a digital extension of Sebastian's own relentless mind.
He's coming for me, she thought, a shiver that had nothing to do with the Berlin cold racing down her spine. Even without his memory, his systems are built to hunt me.
She yanked the hard drive just as the drone overhead tilted its camera directly toward her shadow. A red laser dot painted the brickwork three inches from her head.
Lia didn't wait. She dove through the archway, sprinting into the maze of the back alleys she'd spent weeks memorizing. She heard the whine of the drone's rotors as it accelerated.
She turned a sharp corner, skidded past a pile of trash, and leaped over a low chain-link fence. Behind her, a muffled thud followed by a hiss of gas told her the drone had deployed a neuro-paralytic. Sebastian didn't want her dead—not yet. He wanted her captured. He wanted his questions answered.
She ducked into an abandoned subway entrance, the air thick with the smell of rust and damp earth. Deep in the tunnels, where the signal couldn't reach, she finally stopped, leaning against the cold tile wall. Her breath came in ragged gasps.
She pulled out her phone and checked the last ping she'd managed to extract before the system crashed.
It wasn't a file. It was a flight manifest.
Voss, S. – Private Terminal – Zurich to Nice. Destination: Monaco.
Lia closed her eyes, resting her head against the tile. Monaco. The high-stakes poker circuit. It was where the ultra-wealthy went to play at being vulnerable, and where the information brokers went to trade secrets like currency.
It was also where she had first met him, eighteen months ago, under the guise of "Elena," a high-end escort with a PhD in mathematics and a hidden agenda.
The memory of his hands on her waist, pulling her flush against his tailored suit, hit her with the force of a physical blow. He had looked at her then with an intensity that felt like it could strip the skin from her bones. He hadn't just wanted her body; he'd wanted her soul. And for a few dangerous weeks, she'd almost forgotten she was there to kill him.
Almost.
She opened her eyes, the grief for Leo hardening into a cold, sharp diamond in her chest.
Sebastian Voss had no memory of her. He didn't remember the "Elena" who had slept in his bed, nor did he remember the woman who had stood over his convulsing body in the Alps and told him he deserved to forget everything he loved.
But he was looking for something. His "Black Void" was driving him mad, and according to the chatter she'd intercepted on the dark web, he was becoming more volatile, more dangerous, and more obsessed with the woman who lived in the shadows of his mind.
"You want to find me, Sebastian?" she whispered to the darkness of the tunnel. "Fine. Let's see if you like what happens when I stop hiding."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, silver coin—a high-stakes poker chip from the Casino de Monte-Carlo.
She had to get to Monaco. She had to get back into his orbit. But this time, there would be no "Elena." This time, she wasn't just there to gather evidence. She was there to finish the job. She was going to wait until he remembered exactly who she was—until he felt the full weight of his sins—and then she was going to burn Voss Dynamics to the ground with him inside it.
Lia checked her internal clock. She had forty-eight hours to transform herself back into the siren he wouldn't be able to resist.
She knew the risks. If he regained his memory too soon, he would kill her. If she fell for his "human" side again, she would be betraying Leo's ghost. It was a suicide mission wrapped in silk and lace.
But as she walked deeper into the subway, disappearing into the dark, Liora Reyes didn't feel like a victim. She felt like a hunter.
Three Thousand Miles Away – The Swiss Alps
Sebastian Voss stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, staring at the jagged, snow-covered peaks. He didn't feel the cold. He didn't feel much of anything except for the gnawing, persistent itch at the back of his brain.
He held a glass of neat scotch, the amber liquid catching the moonlight.
"Sir?"
He didn't turn. He knew it was Julian Vane, his CFO and the only man he currently trusted—mostly because Julian was too greedy to be anything other than predictable.
"The breach in Berlin," Sebastian said, his voice like grinding stones. "Was it her?"
"We couldn't confirm the identity, Sebastian. The hacker was… exceptional. They bypassed Hades for nearly ninety seconds. But the drone's facial recognition caught a partial match."
Julian stepped forward, holding a tablet. On the screen was a grainy, rain-blurred image of a woman's face. Half-hidden by a hood, but the eyes—large, dark, and filled with a terrifying intelligence—were unmistakable.
Sebastian felt a jolt of electricity shoot down his spine. His heart rate spiked, a biometric sensor on his wrist chiming a warning.
He knew those eyes. Not from his files. Not from his boardrooms.
He knew them from the dreams that woke him up drenched in sweat at 3:00 AM. He knew them from the phantom sensation of soft skin against his palms and the taste of salt and jasmine on his tongue.
"She's the one," Sebastian whispered, his fingers tightening around the glass until it cracked.
"The one who robbed the server?" Julian asked.
"The one who stole my life," Sebastian corrected.
He turned away from the window, the ruthlessness that had made him a billionaire snapping back into place. The amnesia had made him a ghost in his own empire, but now, the ghost had a face.
"Cancel the meetings in Paris. We're going to Monaco ahead of schedule."
"Monaco? But the poker tournament isn't for—"
"She'll be there," Sebastian said, a dark, predatory smile tugging at his lips. "She's a predator, Julian. And a predator can't resist a wounded animal."
He looked back at the image on the tablet. He didn't remember her name. He didn't remember why he hated her or why he wanted to crawl inside her skin.
But as his body hummed with a sudden, violent need, Sebastian Voss knew one thing for certain.
When he found her, he wasn't going to just ask for his memories back. He was going to make her regret she'd ever left him with a blank space to fill.
"I'm coming for you, little thief," he murmured. "And this time, I'm not letting go."