The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 200

Chapter 180: The Panic-1

Bella pov

Claim

“Jade Hart,” I said immediately. “My sister. She’s been building toward something for months. She has a history of paid operatives and the capacity to fund a short-term operation.” I paused. “Victoria Lane is a possibility but she’s under a plea deal. Diana Black’s name came up in a threat network we dismantled last year, but she’s been cleared and is currently in family therapy with us.”

Reyes nodded, writing. “Anyone else?”

Caleb spoke. “My uncle, Cole Black. He was arrested months ago but he referenced there were ‘more people like him but we never fully mapped his network.”

Reyes looked up at that. “We’ll pull his associate list tonight.”.

“How incomplete is the network map?” Reyes asked, looking at Caleb directly.

“Incomplete enough that we don’t know what we don’t know,” he said. “Cole had been operating inside Black Enterprises for years before we found him. Shell companies, third-party contractors, at least two people we identified who we believe were feeding him information from inside our organisation.” He paused. “We cleared the house after the arrest. But networks don’t disappear when you arrest the person at the top, they go quiet.”

“And Jade Hart’s connection to Cole Black?” Reyes asked.

Caleb and I looked at each other.

“Unconfirmed,” I said. “But Cole was present at two events where Jade was also present in the eighteen months before his arrest. We flagged it at the time and couldn’t establish a direct link.” I paused. “We stopped looking when Cole was charged, that may have been a mistake.”

Reyes wrote something. “It may have been,” she said, without judgement. “We’ll look at it now.”

“If Jade and Cole’s network are connected,” Caleb said, his voice carefully controlled, “then this isn’t a short-term operation. This was planned before Cole’s arrest, possibly as a contingency.”

The room went quiet, heavy with the realization that the situation had just become far worse than anyone had feared.

“Then we work faster,” Reyes said simply, and moved on.

My phone buzzed. It was a number I didn’t recognise-different from the ransom call. I showed it to Reyes, who nodded, and answered it on the speaker.

No voice. Just a video file, loading slowly on my screen.

The loading bar moved in deliberate increments. Fourteen percent. Twenty-two. Thirty-one.

Nobody spoke.

Reyes held up a hand, keeping her team perfectly still. One agent ran the number while another recorded the screen in real time. Caleb stood behind me, his composure feeling forced.

(Chapter 180-he Panic-1

watched the bar. Fifty-eight percent. Seventy-three.

“Breathe,” Caleb whispered.

I hadn’t realized I’d stopped,

Ninety-one percent. Ninety-seven

Then the screen loaded.

Claims

Tom appeared. He was sitting on a concrete floor against a grey wall, knees pulled to his chest, his dinosaur backpack beside him. His face was blotchy from crying, but he wasn’t crying now-he was doing that thing he did when he was trying very hard to be brave.

His grey eyes found the lens, and he said, very quietly, “Mommy.”

He stopped and swallowed. His chin had that determined set-the same look Caleb got when he was trying not to cry-and seeing his father’s jaw on a five-year-old’s face was physically painful.

“Mommy,” he said again. “I’m okay. I’m not hurt.” He spoke carefully, as if he’d decided that saying it would help me. “I had my snack. The one in my bag.”

He glanced briefly to the left, checking someone out of frame, then looked back. “I’m being brave like you said. You said I can be scared and still be brave. So I’m being brave.”

His voice wobbled on the last word.

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