A billionaire stood in front of a room full of CEOs, diplomats, and scholars, offering $100,000 to anyone who could answer a question in a forgotten form of Arabic because he was certain he would embarrass everyone there. The moment I answered from behind my waitress tray with a single word, his confidence cracked, and every powerful person in the room realized I knew a language they believed had vanished forever.

I did not scream. Fear had pushed me beyond panic into a cold, clinical clarity that I recognized from my grandfather's teachings.

I reached down, slid my fingers into the side of my combat boot, and pulled out the small brass-handled bone folder Elias had given me—an antique bookbinder's tool with a pointed, hardened tip that could pierce leather or skin with equal ease.

I kicked the door open with the flat of my heel and flattened myself against the outside wall.

Nothing moved. No sound came from inside except the faint hiss of my radiator and the crackle of smoldering parchment.

I stepped over the threshold.

The apartment had been dismantled.

Books were torn from the shelves, their spines split and scattered across the linoleum like butchered birds. My small desk had been overturned, its drawers emptied onto the rug. In the center of the kitchen floor, sitting inside my cast-iron skillet, a small pile of handwritten notes was turning to gray ash.

They hadn't taken the television or my laptop. They hadn't touched the jar of tip money on the kitchen counter.

They had been looking for Elias’s papers.

I dashed into the tiny bedroom. The mattress was slashed down the middle, foam spilling out like entrails. The floorboards beneath the radiator—the loose oak planks where I kept the cedar box—had been pried up with a crowbar.

The box was gone.

My knees buckled, and I grabbed the doorframe to steady myself. The cedar box had contained the only three surviving fragments of the *Kitab al-Manara*—the Book of the Lighthouse—which my grandfather had spent thirty years hiding from academic institutions and private collectors alike.

"Looking for this, Miss Vance?"

The voice came from behind me, smooth, low, and completely composed.

I spun around, raising the brass bone folder like a dagger.

A man was sitting in my worn armchair in the corner of the living room, shrouded in the shadows cast by the streetlamp outside. He was massive, his broad shoulders stretching the seams of a black tactical turtleneck, his hands resting loosely on his thighs. On the small table beside him sat the polished cedar box, intact and unopened.

"Step back," I said, my voice dangerously level.

The man didn't flinch. He raised his hands slowly, palms open, showing empty fingers.

"If I wanted to hurt you, Hannah, I wouldn't have put the fire out in your kitchen," he said. He had an Eastern European accent, gravelly and refined. "My name is Lev. I work for Khalid Al-Masri."

"He sent you to rob my home?"

"He sent me to ensure Tariq’s men didn't kill you before you got back from your shift," Lev countered calmly. "Unfortunately, Tariq’s cleanup crew was faster than anticipated. I arrived forty seconds after they breached your lock. They are currently sleeping in the trunk of a sedan parked three blocks away."

I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Who the hell is Tariq?"

"Khalid’s half-brother," Lev said, rising slowly to his feet. He was easily six-foot-four, moving with the deceptive fluidity of a trained fighter. "And the man who had your grandfather run down by an unregistered delivery van on 44th Street three years ago."

The room seemed to tilt sideways.

For three years, the NYPD had told me Elias was the victim of a tragic hit-and-run. A blind corner, heavy rain, an uninsured driver who panicked and fled the jurisdiction. Case closed.

"You're lying," I whispered, though the cold dread pooling in my stomach told me he wasn't.

"Elias Vance was never a librarian, Hannah," Lev said, picking up the cedar box by its brass handles. "He was the chief archivist for the House of Masri until 1989. When Khalid’s father died, the inheritance of the family archives was split. Elias saw what Tariq intended to do with the seventh seal, so he stole the key, took you, and disappeared into Queens."

Lev extended the cedar box toward me.

"Khalid spent ten years shouting that riddle in public rooms because he knew Elias would only teach the answer to his heir. He wasn't showing off tonight. He was fishing. And you bit the hook."

"And if I walk away?" I demanded, gripping the bone folder tighter. "If I take my money and disappear to Canada?"

"Tariq’s collectors don't lose scent twice," Lev said plainly. "They know what you look like now. By sunrise, your face will be on every phone from here to Istanbul. You have approximately twelve minutes before the second wave arrives."

He reached into his pocket and tossed a set of car keys onto the table.