Annabel's Private Room 3, 02:49 a.m.
The Dom Pérignon finished its last gurgle into the rug. Sebastian Harrow's reflection in the laptop screen looked ten years older than the man who had walked in here an hour ago.
"Password," Gareth said, pressing the suppressed Glock just behind Sebastian's right ear. The metal was still warm from the four bodies in the corridor.
Sebastian's fingers hovered. "If I do this, they'll kill me. Slowly."
"If you don't," Mira said from the doorway, exhaling smoke toward the chandelier, "we'll kill you quickly. Your choice, darling."
Sebastian typed.
The screen unlocked to a dark-web portal with no name, only a single moving glyph: a black ouroboros eating its own tail. ORPHEUS-9.
Rows of transactions glowed red.
09:00 – £87 bn → Winter Holdings (Cayman) 09:05 – £94 bn → Winter Holdings (BVI) 09:10 – £199 bn → Winter Foundation (Liechtenstein)
Total: £380 billion. Enough to buy half the FTSE 100 twice over and still have change for a small war.
"Reverse them," Gareth ordered. "All of them. Route every penny back to the original black accounts. Then wipe the audit trail."
Sebastian's laugh came out cracked. "You think it's that simple? There are dead-man switches, biometric confirmations, three other signatories—"
Gareth thumbed the hammer back. The click was soft, intimate.
"Two of the signatories are currently bleeding on Mayfair carpet. The third is about to have a heart attack in his sleep. You're the last living key, Seb. Turn it."
Sebastian's hands moved. Lines of code scrolled. Confirmations pinged.
Mira watched the corridor through the cracked door, Sig loose in her hand. "We have ninety seconds before SO19 breaches the front. Helicopters on the roof. This place is about to become a shooting gallery."
Sebastian hit ENTER.
For one heartbeat, nothing.
Then every transaction reversed in a cascade of green. £380 billion began flowing backwards through the same dark pipes it had come from, destination rewritten: ORPHEUS-ZERO, a burn wallet that would torch itself in four hours.
Sebastian exhaled like a man surfacing from deep water.
"It's done," he whispered. "You've just stolen from people who don't lose."
Gareth lowered the Glock. "I didn't steal. I returned stolen goods. There's a difference."
He reached over and ejected the laptop's drive, crushed it under his heel.
Sebastian looked up, eyes glassy. "What happens to me now?"
Gareth glanced at Mira. She shrugged, bored.
"Same thing that happened to me three years ago," Gareth said.
He put one round through Sebastian's forehead. Clean. No spray on the wallpaper.
The body slumped sideways across the table, champagne flute finally falling, shattering into a thousand crystal tears.
Mira didn't flinch. "Sentimental as ever."
"Loose ends drink too much." Gareth was already moving. "Roof. Now."
They stepped over the corpses in the corridor. The bass from the main club had stopped; only sirens and rotor blades now.
Emergency stairs. Forty feet vertical. They took them three at a time.
Rooftop door burst open into freezing wind and searchlight white.
Two police AW169s hovered thirty metres off, spotlights pinning them like insects.
"Armed police! On your knees!"
Mira looked at Gareth, rain plastering black hair to her face. "Plan?"
He scanned the roof: HVAC units, satellite array, and one matte-black helicopter idling on the far helipad, blades already turning. No police markings.
Gareth smiled for the first time all night. A real smile, sharp and terrible.
"Plan's the same as always. We steal something faster."
He raised both hands, walked forward slowly. Mira followed, palms open.
The nearest sniper relaxed a fraction.
That was all the time Gareth needed.
He dropped, rolled, came up firing. Suppressed rounds punched through the cockpit glass of the nearest police bird. The pilot jerked, helicopter lurching sideways.
Mira sprinted, barefoot on wet concrete, vaulted into the unmarked black helicopter before the pilot even registered her.
Gareth fired twice more, covering, then ran.
The police chopper spiralled away, rotor wash blasting rain sideways.
Gareth threw himself into the open door of the black bird just as Mira yanked the collective. The helicopter leapt upward like it had been kicked.
Below, SO19 officers poured onto the roof, muzzle flashes chasing them into the night.
Mira banked hard south over Green Park, staying under five hundred feet to avoid radar.
Gareth pulled on a headset. "Whose bird?"
"Registered to a shell in Guernsey. Same shell that paid Albion tonight." She grinned, feral. "I borrowed it earlier. Call it an insurance policy."
He checked the fuel: three quarters. Enough.
"Where to?" she asked.
"City Airport. There's a Gulfstream G700 fuelled and waiting under Winter Holdings tail number. Filed flight plan to Reykjavik, then disappears over the Atlantic."
Mira levelled off above the Thames, Tower Bridge sliding beneath them like a jewelled necklace.
"And after that?"
"After that we find the man who taught me how to disappear," Gareth said quietly. "And we ask him why he sold me to the highest bidder."
The helicopter banked east, skimming the water, red and green navigation lights reflecting in the black river.
Behind them, London burned with sirens and strobing blue.
Ahead, the sky was the colour of fresh bruises.
The wolf and the serpent had stolen the night.
But dawn was only three hours away, and somewhere in that darkness, the real monster was already awake.