You think you’re playing chess.
But some games don’t have kings.
Just knives in the dark — and only one person walking away.
The message reached Harper at 3:04 a.m.
Subject: Protocol triggered.
Queen identified. Knight unstable. Pawn activated.
Response: Clean house.
She stared at it for a long time.
This wasn’t her op. Not fully.
There were factions within factions now.
Strauss was just a mouthpiece. Someone else was giving orders.
Someone who’d just marked Eve for execution.
And maybe Marco too.
Harper lit a cigarette she’d quit three years ago.
Then started deleting contacts.
She knew how this ended.
And she wasn’t going to be standing in the blast radius.
Marco didn’t go back to the safehouse.
He went to a cemetery outside Yonkers.
Grave #48-03. His sister’s.
He dug it up.
Two hours. Shovel, sweat, silence.
The coffin was there.
The body wasn’t.
Inside was a phone.
It rang when he touched it.
He answered. Didn’t speak.
A woman’s voice — not Lyra’s — came through.
“She’s alive. And you can still save her. But you’ll have to give us something in return.”
Marco closed his eyes.
He didn’t cry.
Didn’t break.
Just whispered:
“I don’t betray Eve.”
The voice replied:
“You already have. You just don’t know it yet.”
Nathan followed the symbol.
It had appeared in two places now:
— On the paper in the alley.
— Etched into the back of the chess rook left in his apartment.
A symbol older than the cartels.
Older than even Eve’s empire.
A circle, broken in three places.
Each gap pointing to a different cardinal direction.
He found it again in a records archive — stamped on a sealed file connected to Krane.
He broke the seal.
And found documentation of payments from Krane… to National intelligence.
Drug money for black ops.
Weapon shipments greenlit under fake IDs.
And a name repeated three times:
Project Bullseye.
He sat back.
And laughed, once. Sharp. Bitter.
They weren’t trying to stop Eve.
They were trying to replace her.
Eve stood over the body.
Young. Female. Late twenties. Strangled.
A courier. One of her best.
Found in the Hudson.
Her ID tagged her as “Lana.” But that wasn’t her name.
Her name was Asha — and she was one of Eve’s originals.
From the first ring. From before the empire.
Someone had found her. Turned her. And then silenced her.
Vasha handed Eve a file pulled from Asha’s apartment.
Photos. Surveillance.
Half of Eve’s lieutenants marked.
But not sent to the cops.
Sent to someone else.
The watermark on the pages was that same strange symbol Nathan had seen.
Eve stared at it.
And felt something she hadn’t felt in years.
Threatened.
The final move came in silence.
Lyra sat in a café across the street from the gallery ruins.
Sipping black coffee.
Watching.
Waiting.
A man sat beside her.
Dark suit. Clean shave. No shadow.
He passed her a drive.
“No more distractions,” he said. “You’ve got one last shot at him.”
“Marco?”
The man didn’t answer.
Just stood and left.
She plugged the drive into her tablet.
Live camera feed.
Eve’s private location.
Which meant:
Either Eve had slipped.
Or someone inside had sold her out.
Back at the safehouse, Marco walked through the door.
His gun was gone.
His phone was gone.
His hands were shaking.
Eve sat at the table, alone. Calm.
But her eyes weren’t.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“I needed air.”
“Air,” she repeated. “You dug up your sister’s grave. You met with a ghost. And you were followed.”
Marco froze.
“Eve—”
Her voice went quiet.
“Tell me the truth. Now.”
He looked at her.
Then said it.
“I didn’t tell them anything. But they know things they shouldn’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like where you sleep.”
A pause.
Then Eve whispered:
“Then they’re coming tonight.”
Baawa Unfiltered 