The Chauffeur's Insight

The city slid past in a smear of amber light, rain beading on the windshield like mercury. You'd been driving Julian Sterling for eleven months, three weeks, and two days—long enough to know the weight of his silences, the cadence of his breathing when he was about to make a deal that would bleed a rival dry.

Tonight, he'd forgotten you were there.

"Say that again," he said, voice low and clipped. The phone pressed to his ear glowed against his sharp jawline. "They're moving tomorrow night. The tunnel under the Meridian."

Your hands stayed loose on the wheel. Your eyes never left the road. But every muscle in your body had gone wire-tight.

A hit. Not a deal. A hit.

The car glided to a stop at a red light. In the rearview, you caught his reflection—cold, handsome, utterly untouchable. He hadn't looked at you once in a year. You were the invisible man in the front seat, the one who knew the back streets, the safe houses, the panic routes he'd never needed.

Until now.

"Understood," he said, and hung up. The silence in the cabin was thick as smoke.

You had a choice to make. And the light was turning green.