While Lady Hampton was in the park, Raymond was finishing a brutal business deal.It was midnight in the secret, heavily guarded meeting room of the Old Guard Council—the group of wealthy, old families who secretly ran the city. Thorne, the Chairman and Raymond’s biggest secret enemy, was nervously talking to the other aging members."Raymond beating Lady Hampton was a distraction," Thorne insisted. "His power is still weak. We must push the Senate to investigate and release more documents. We will crush him before the year is out. He can't possibly beat all of us."Just then, the massive doors violently burst open.It was Raymond, perfectly dressed, standing with his massive security chief, Mr. Shack, and three other men holding heavy briefcases. Raymond didn't smile. He just coldly looked at the room, counting his enemies."The meeting is over," Raymond said quietly, his voice cutting through the shocked silence.Thorne jumped up, furious. "This is a private meeting! You are trespas

Get the Senate Oversight Committee, the one Thorne wanted to push into action, to issue a statement that they will investigate the claims of disinformation, not the contents of the Charter itself. Buy us more time, at any cost.” “And the core issue, sir? The document itself, the very thing that will ruin us?”John walked to the window, watching the first pale, weak light of dawn touch the cold city he had believed he owned completely. He was a god, watching his church burn down to the ground. “The Charter must be invalidated, legally, politically, and morally. It must cease to exist in any form that matters to the public consciousness.I can’t let her release it to the world. It will cause a major panic in the financial markets, a federal inquiry will begin by noon, and the dissolution of everything my family built will happen before the week is out.” John paused, his eyes turning to an ice cold blue. “Lady Hampton has made her first move and it was perfect. Now I make mine, a move th

“I will burn the fields to deny Lady Hampton the harvest she is waiting for. Sell it all, and use the liquid capital to secretly purchase two specific things: a majority stake in every major Senate member’s personal investments, and the controlling shares of the City’s largest private security firm, the one Thorne tried to purchase.” His officers stared at him, aghast at the sheer scale of the destruction he was planning. “But the loss of face, the public humiliation of selling off so much in a single day—”“The loss of face is temporary and can be recovered. The loss of my entire life’s work is permanent and cannot be recovered if I do nothing,” John roared, full of fury. “Go, now! If the market thinks I’m suddenly weak and losing control, I’ll be buying my own government and my own private army in the span of a few hours. She took the past. I will control the very near future.”The market reacted within the hour, exactly as John had predicted. John’s public companies saw massive se

He was interrupted only once, by a short, coded message from one of his officers—not about the stock market, but about the private security firm. The cash from his asset fire-sale had successfully bought the controlling shares. He still owned the biggest private army in the City. He had a weapon, even if he had no country to defend. He was a general without an army to lead.Just before the first pale light of dawn touched the office windows, Sarah came back, looking calmer but exhausted."Sir," she said, putting a thin file on his desk. "The Bastion Trust. We found a loophole. It has one single hidden owner, protected by three layers of shell companies in three different countries. The last layer is a charity based in a faraway, neutral place. We tracked the charity’s registration to her old university professor—the same law expert who helped her with her father's estate decades ago. He’s dead, but the papers are flawless. She built this whole thing herself, starting when she was a s

The encrypted sequence. The first lock. A wave of cold air washed over him. His father had planned for this, for total collapse. It wasn't sentimentality at all; it was a contingency plan hidden inside a memory.He studied the code for twenty seconds, his memory, honed by years of handling classified data, committing it instantly. He closed the box, slid it back into its compartment, and twisted the master key until he heard the final, satisfying click.Before he left, he wiped down the vent cover, the small area around the box—everything. He was a ghost, leaving nothing behind. Following her rules perfectly.He climbed out of the vent and retreated through the maintenance tunnels, finding a different route to the surface. He emerged from a side door, half a block from City Hall, just as the 8:00 AM rush hour started to choke the streets.He pulled his phone. A single word to her: Rising.The reply was instantaneous: The second key is not a key. It is a place. Meet me at The Exchange,