London's skies were perpetually gray. The kind of gray that wasn't just color—but weight. A pressure that settled into your coat, your bones, your thoughts.
Leonardo liked it.
The DeMarco-owned flat in Mayfair was quiet and secure, with reinforced walls disguised behind Victorian brickwork and a silent surveillance system that would make MI6 blush.
He hadn't come to play hero.
He came to watch.
And the one thing he was watching for had just resurfaced.
Letty.
"She's been spotted three times in the last week," Tabane reported, spinning a 3D map of Central London above the kitchen table with flicks of her fingers. "No electronic signature. No phone. No cards. Just physical sightings."
Leonardo leaned in, eyes scanning the data points.
"She's being protected. Or hidden."
"Same thing in this business," Koko said from the window, sipping her black coffee. "And the only ones who can vanish someone like this… are players at our level."
Leonardo tapped a location. "This one. CCTV caught her riding shotgun in a modded BMW. The driver's masked. But I've seen that license plate routing pattern before."
Tabane blinked. "Pattern?"
"Interpol can't track it because they're trying to match the plate itself. But the routing—the movement between cameras—is artificial. It's been spoofed to mimic a diplomatic vehicle."
Koko whistled low. "Clever bastard."
Leonardo nodded. "Shaw's not just hiding her. He's testing her."
"And you?" Koko asked. "Are you planning to act on this?"
Leonardo didn't answer. Not directly.
He simply stood.
And began packing.
Across the city, deep within an old converted church, Owen Shaw walked through rows of high-performance engines and ordinance crates.
Letty stood near one of the tuning rigs, cleaning her hands with a rag. Her eyes were sharp but distant.
Shaw approached.
"You're not sleeping again," he said.
Letty shrugged. "Didn't know I had to report that now."
Shaw chuckled. "Not to me. But your mind's working overtime. That's dangerous."
"I'm fine."
He studied her, noting the twitch of her jaw, the way her fingers clenched.
"You're remembering things," he said softly.
She froze.
"I don't know what I'm remembering," she admitted. "Faces. Heat. The smell of rubber. And sometimes… music. Bass. Family. But it's all static."
Shaw placed a hand on her shoulder. "You don't need the past. I gave you a clean slate."
Letty's eyes darkened. "I didn't ask for it."
But she said nothing more.
Back in Mayfair, Alfred approached Leonardo with a crisp folder.
"A message from Han. Routed through old channels. No metadata."
Leonardo flipped it open.
Inside was a simple sentence written in Han's style:
"If she's alive, Dom's not far behind."
Leonardo stared at it for a long moment.
Then closed the folder.
"Tabane," he said.
"Yeah?" she replied from the sofa, balancing a holographic tablet on her foot.
"Prep the chase drone."
She lit up. "Finally."
That night, London lit up with movement.
Tabane's drone—a sleek, near-silent flier made from reinforced polymer and equipped with active camouflage—tailed the convoy from a mile out.
Shaw's team.
Three black cars, moving fast. Purposeful. Tactical.
Letty drove the lead car.
Leonardo watched the feed from the surveillance van, parked in a dead zone near the Thames.
He didn't breathe as she skidded around a traffic circle, her movements flawless.
She hadn't lost it.
Not the edge. Not the instinct.
But her eyes...
They weren't hers anymore.
Not the Letty he remembered.
Suddenly, Shaw's convoy braked hard.
A trap?
No.
The tail car peeled off and opened fire on a trailing vehicle—an Interpol agent in plain clothes, burning rubber to catch up.
A clean hit. Tire destroyed. Car flipped.
Shaw's convoy vanished into a tunnel.
Leonardo closed his laptop and stepped out into the night air.
This wasn't a game anymore.
This was chess at grandmaster speed.
And someone just sacrificed a pawn.
Three Days Later
A quiet report surfaced in the black market:
"Stolen NATO warhead intercepted in France."
No media. No police credit.
It had been "solved" before they even arrived.
Leonardo set the file down on his desk.
"They're escalating," he said.
Tabane nodded, sprawled across the rug doing calibrations.
"Each job is riskier than the last. They're feeding off the momentum."
"Or testing the global response system," Koko added from the adjacent room. "Seeing how long it takes before someone important comes knocking."
Leonardo glanced at the old photograph on his desk.
Dom. Brian. Mia. Letty.
He touched the edge.
"Someone will. And when they do, the hammer won't be mine to swing."
Koko raised an eyebrow. "You're not going to interfere?"
"I already did. I stole half their pattern. Bought time. But the rest…" He exhaled. "That belongs to family."
That night, Leonardo stood on the balcony once again.
The city was restless. You could feel it—tension like a coiled spring waiting to snap.
Tabane approached, uncharacteristically quiet.
"You'll let them fight it first?"
Leonardo nodded.
"They deserve the first strike. Especially Dom. He needs closure. He needs to see her with his own eyes."
Tabane studied him. "You're too smart for this world, you know?"
He gave a small smile. "No. I'm just learning when to step back."
A long silence stretched between them.
Then, softly:
"She won't remember," Tabane said.
"I know."
"But she might feel something."
Leonardo nodded. "And that… that might be enough."