Chapter 4 - The Shadow War on the Wharf
Armed with the truth, I could no longer remain entirely passive. Operating in the shadows while maintaining my fragile, timid persona at home, I began waging a one-woman intelligence war against Julian’s network. Utilizing a burn phone and encrypted channels I hadn't touched since fleeing my past, I contacted my former handler, a retired fed named Miller who owed me his life. Meeting him beneath the rotting piers of the South Boston wharf in the pouring rain, I learned the full scale of the threat: my supposed death eight years ago had been compromised by a mole inside the agency, and Julian Gallagher had recently purchased a dossier labeled Project Thimble from an anonymous broker. Julian didn't just want to force a divorce to break Ronan’s inheritance; he intended to execute me publicly at the council hearing to frame Ronan for harboring an elite federal assassin, thereby utterly destroying the Gallagher name in one stroke. Miller begged me to run, offering fresh documentation and a safe house in Canada. I looked at the rain rippling across the dark Atlantic water, thought of Ronan’s gentle hands checking my face for bruises in the kitchen, and shook my head. "I spent eight years running from a ghost," I told Miller quietly. "I’m not running from a cousin with a dossier."
