Chang stood motionless in his office, the fan overhead slicing the air in slow, lazy rotations that did nothing to temper the heat or his rising fury. The silence had stretched on too long with no word from Elijah. No confirmation. No proof of a body. Just the heavy thud of time, mocking him with every second that passed.

He had expected better.

For a while, he’d even seen something promising in the young Maasai. Elijah had nerve, a calm hand under pressure, the kind of local intuition money couldn’t buy. He’d thought, maybe, in time, the boy might even become a right hand, someone to mold, to trust in the field when things got tight.

But this silence… this absence…

Elijah’s betrayed me.

The thought hit like a gunshot. Chang’s jaw clenched.

A glass shattered as he swept it off his desk, shards spraying across the floor like sparks. The whiskey soaked instantly into the silk rug beneath him, leaving a dark stain that seemed to widen with his rage.

He wasn’t just angry. He was cornered.

Because while he might run things here in the savannah, the ports, the underpaid checkpoints and corrupt ranger posts; in the grand scheme of the Firm’s global machine, he was nothing more than a small cog. Replaceable. Expendable. And now, thanks to a disappearing asset and a growing list of logistical setbacks, he was looking less like a stronghold and more like a liability.

God forbid they recall me. Force me to crawl back and account for why the ivory’s slowed. Why the rhino horn is stuck at borders. Why I’m hindered at every damn turn by women, rangers, and defectors.

He braced both hands against the desk, breath flaring through his nostrils, his knuckles whitening.

No. He would not be dragged back in disgrace. Not because of one misguided village boy and some foreign vet with a bleeding heart.

He’d find Elijah. And he’d send a message so clear, so brutal, that even the Firm’s shadowy directors would pause before thinking him soft.

***

Tina paced a short line across Bette’s office, one hand raking through her hair in frustration. Light filtered in through the high windows, warm and dappled, but the tension in the room made the air feel tight. She turned abruptly, her expression incredulous.