Heartstone - Chapter 2: Chapter 2

The plane touched down in the outskirts of Belgrade just before dawn. A contact—an old ally from a forgotten mission in Kosovo—waited near the runway. Luka Petrovic. Ex-intelligence, like Mark, but with roots deep in the Balkans and debts paid in blood.
“You look like hell,” Luka muttered as Mark climbed into the battered Lada, cradling Avera against his chest. “And you brought a baby? Christ, Mark.”
Mark didn’t respond. He was listening—always listening—for rotors in the distance or the telltale buzz of a drone. Paranoia wasn’t a flaw anymore. It was survival.
They drove in silence through a forest road lined with frost and shadows. The safehouse was a stone farmhouse near the Danube, half-swallowed by ivy and time. There were no neighbors. No signals. No questions.
Insde, Mark laid Avera down in a crate padded with folded towels. She slept easily—too young to understand the fear that surrounded her. He envied her.
Luka handed him coffee, thick and black. “So,” he said, lighting a cigarette, “you gonna tell me what the hell is going on?”
Mark hesitated, then pulled the flash drive from his coat.
“This,” he said, placing it on the table, “is why they’re hunting me.”
Luka’s eyes narrowed. He reached for a laptop, disabled the Wi-Fi manually, and plugged it in.
As the screen came to life, a grim silence filled the room. The files opened—raw footage, transcripts, operation logs. Names of dead civilians. Codenames of classified operations. Evidence of a kill list that included diplomats, journalists, whistleblowers and documents of the hearthstone. All carried out under black-budget programs that officially didn’t exist.
“This…” Luka said, his voice dry, “this could collapse world.”
Mark nodded. “And if I die, it never will.”
They both looked at Avera, still sleeping peacefully, unaware that her father’s choices might one day change the world—or destroy it.