In Brussels, democracy has been legally dismantled. A dying man's final words are the only evidence.

When Klaus Hartmann, one of the EU's most powerful officials, collapses in a Brussels restaurant, he uses his last breath not to call for a doctor, but to give a USB drive to a young journalist, Aoife O'Sullivan . His confession is simple and terrifying: for twenty-five years, he was forced to legally approve mergers that created the very monopolies he was sworn to prevent .

Plunged into the labyrinthine corridors of the European Commission, Aoife discovers that the corruption isn't a secret-it's the system itself. A web of industry-dominated expert groups, opaque negotiations, and a revolving door between regulators and corporations has created a government that is transparently captured, where every crime is perfectly legal because the criminals wrote the laws .

Now, Aoife is being hunted not by spies, but by lawyers and bureaucrats. The "Brussels Protocol" has been activated against her: a systematic, procedural, and entirely lawful campaign to destroy her career, her reputation, and her freedom before she can publish the truth . Her only allies are a disgraced Greek data analyst and a network of officials who know the truth but are too afraid to speak.

For fans of John le Carré and the series Borgen, EUROPEAN FRACTURE is a slow-burn bureaucratic thriller that exposes the terrifying reality of how power truly works. It's a story that asks: what happens when democracy doesn't die in darkness, but drowns in paperwork?