Chapter 4: Victoria's Day of Reckoning in Dubai

Victoria Hale sat in the dim-lit bunker beneath the Georgetown estate, her pearl necklace mended but scarred like her own skin, fingers curled around a crystal tumbler of aged scotch. The screens before her flickered with drone feeds from the Iranian sky, thermal blooms marking targets in Tehran's shadowed outskirts. She watched the crosshairs settle on a fortified villa, Reza Khorsandi's bolt-hole, where the general paced a balcony lit by the glow of his own cigarette. The air in the bunker hummed with the low drone of cooling fans and the sharp tang of machine oil. Marcus's face flashed in her mind—his broad shoulders slumped in that Iraqi ambush, the blood pooling under him from Victor's trap—but she pushed it down. Today was for settling scores.

Elias Grant stood at her shoulder, polishing his glasses with a linen cloth, his tweed jacket rumpled from the night's preparations. Dylan hunched over his laptops two stations away, encrypted phone buzzing in his pocket, glasses slipping down his nose. Elena lingered by the steel door, twisting her locket, green eyes fixed on her mother with a mix of dread and accusation.

"Feed's locked," Dylan said, voice cracking just once before steadying. "Hellfire payload armed. Khorsandi's alone up there—his guards are in the courtyard, smoking like fools."