Free Web NovelChapter 56: Chapter 56 The plan worked
_Author’s POV_
The plan worked exactly the way Rowena said it would.
Word of Rita’s transfer leaked through the right channels at the right time. It traveled quietly through the network, passed from one ear to the next, shaped carefully to sound like information that had slipped out accidentally.
Just enough detail to be convincing. Just enough urgency to make Alice feel like she was running out of time, which she was in reality because Rowena didn’t plan on taking it lightly with her anymore.
Her presence in the Asthorne mansion already irritated the living daylight out of Rowena and Kyra.
Just as expected, Alice made a fast move.
She always moved fast when she felt a window closing.
Rita slipped out of the Ashthorne residence just before midnight. The route had been planned down to every turn. The quiet streets, low lighting, a minimal foot traffic. It looked exactly like what it was supposed to look like which was a woman trying to escape without being noticed.
She kept her head down and moved quickly, her breath short and visible in the cold night air.
But she didn’t make it half a block before two men stepped out of the dark ahead of her.
She was caught off guard because there was no warning or words.
They just moved with the specific economy of people who had done this kind of work many times before and had long stopped finding it complicated. They weren’t there to talk to her. She understood that immediately.
Rita stopped walking, her entire body going cold as fear crept up her spine.
But before those men could make a move on her or touch her, Kasper came out of the shadows to her left.
And he never thought twice before doing anything. He moved fast and put himself between Rita and the two men before they’d fully closed the distance. He was good in a fight. frёeωebɳovel.com
Better than most people assumed when they looked at him. He handled the first man quickly, a nice controlled sequence that dropped him before the second one had properly processed what was happening.
But the second man didn’t panic. He adjusted without hesitation and came back harder, and Kasper felt immediately that this was a different level of powerful.
He immediately realized that these weren’t hired thugs pulled together at the last minute. These men had real training behind them, the kind that didn’t come from ordinary sources.
Kasper absorbed a hit to the ribs. Then one to the shoulder. He kept his footing but it cost him, and the second man pressed the advantage without giving him room to reset.
Rita pressed herself flat against a wall behind Kasper, both hands over her mouth, not making a single sound.
And just then, Rowena came around the corner.
She had been close the whole time, watching what was happening. Letting the scene develop just far enough to confirm what she needed to confirm before stepping in.
She took everything in within one second, the two men, Kasper’s position, Rita against the wall, and she moved into it without hesitating.
With Kyra’s help, she joined the fight and fought with a stamina that was different from Kasper’s style.
Hers was tighter and more deliberate. Every movement she made had a specific purpose and very little was wasted.
Kyra ran just beneath the surface of everything she did, not separate from her but woven through her, sharpening her timing and feeding a quiet steady strength into her limbs that pushed past what was purely physical.
The two men shifted their focus to her almost immediately. Both of them at the same time.
That told her everything. She was the target. Rita had been the trap to draw her out and these men had been briefed specifically on her, not on Kasper, or Rita.
Just on Rowena.
She absorbed that information and kept fighting.
It was harder than she showed. These men had been prepared for her specifically and they read her movements with an attentiveness that suggested they had been given detailed information about how she moved. One of them landed a hit across her left side that drove the breath out of her.
She adjusted and came back and didn’t let her face change.
It was during a brief reset in the middle of the third exchange that she got a clear look at the taller man’s face.
She stopped for just a fraction of a second.
She knew that face. Not personally but from documents. From the cross-referenced files she had spent weeks building about that facility Corby spoke about, the ones that kept pulling the same names back to the surface no matter which direction she approached them from.
A name connected to Ridgeline Medical. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
A name connected to Dickson Ashford.
Drake Ashford.
Dickson’s son.
He saw the recognition cross her face and his expression didn’t shift at all. Not surprise or discomfort. He had known she would figure it out. He had come anyway, which meant either he was very sure of himself or he had been given instructions that removed the option of walking away.
She filed it and kept moving.
She ended the fight.
When it was over and both men were down and the street had gone quiet again, Rowena turned around.
Rita was still against the wall. She hadn’t moved. Her eyes were wet and her hands were still shaking slightly at her sides.
She looked at Rowena. And something in her expression cracked open like something that had been sealed under pressure for a very long time.
"It was Alice," she said, shaking her head as her voice came out small and fractured. "All of it. From the beginning, all of it was Alice. She planned everything. I just did what she told me to because she said she was protecting me and I believed her." She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "She just sent men to kill me. She sent men to kill me like I was nothing."
Rowena looked at her steadily.
She wasn’t surprised. But she let Rita feel the weight of the moment rather than rushing past it.
"I know," she said quietly. "Tell me everything. Start from the very beginning and don’t leave anything out."
Rita took a shaking breath.
And she started talking.
Kasper stood nearby, nursing his ribs, and listened. The street was empty and cold around them and somewhere in the city Alice was waiting to hear that the job was done.
Unknown to her, she was about to hear something very different.
