The room was carved out of old stone and reinforced steel, deep beneath a city that no longer existed on any map. The mobile base hummed with low, constant motion—treads shifting, ballast stabilizing, generators breathing like something alive. Maps flickered across curved walls: shipping lanes, shell corporations, syndicate territories, Imperium proxy fronts. Money routes glowed brighter than troop movements.Adrian stood at the center, hands resting on a steel table scarred by decades of war planning. The Regent watched from the shadows, arms folded, eyes sharp but restrained. Zara leaned against a console, silent, wary—she had learned that when Adrian grew quiet like this, something dangerous and deliberate was forming.“This won’t work,” Zara said finally, breaking the tension. “If you hit them head-on, they’ll crush you. They always do.”Adrian didn’t look at her. His eyes traced a glowing web of transactions—drug routes bleeding into casinos, casinos washing into shipping firms,

The room was carved out of old stone and steel—an underground transit hub abandoned decades ago and repurposed into something new. Power hummed through jury-rigged cables. Screens glowed with maps, live feeds, and scrolling data streams. The air smelled of oil, dust, and ozone.Men and women stood in a loose circle.They didn’t look alike.A former cartel driver with scars on his knuckles.A hacker with shaking hands and sharp eyes.An ex-Imperium logistics officer who never stood with his back to a wall.Smugglers. Runaways. Survivors.People who had already lost everything once.Adrian stood at the center.Not on a platform. Not elevated.Just there.That unsettled them more than if he’d been looming above them.He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t pace. Didn’t posture.He waited.Silence stretched—long enough that a few people shifted uncomfortably. Long enough for them to realize this wasn’t a rally. This wasn’t recruitment.This was a line being drawn.“The Black Hand isn’t an army,

The convoy never saw the Black Hand coming.Rain slicked the asphalt into a mirror, reflecting sodium streetlights and the red glow of brake lamps as three trucks rolled through the industrial corridor. On paper, it was a nothing route—generic pharmaceuticals, customs-cleared, guarded by contract muscle paid to look alert and ask no questions. In reality, every crate carried Imperium-linked narcotics refined in offshore labs and laundered through shell charities.Adrian watched from the skeletal remains of an overpass, rain threading down his hood, breath steady. Beneath him, the Hand waited—silent, dispersed, connected by encrypted pulses that barely existed. No names. No ranks. Only vectors and intent.He felt it before the first signal: the tightening of the night, the way the air leaned forward as if anticipating impact. His instincts drew lines—routes, angles, outcomes—then went quiet. He raised two fingers.Execute.The road died.A blackout rippled across the corridor as substa

The meeting did not appear on any calendar.No invitations were written.No phones rang.No messages were sent.Yet, before midnight, ten men and women arrived separately at the same place—an underground chamber buried beneath a shuttered opera house whose name had been erased from city records decades ago.Each arrived with their own security.Each left that security behind at the steel doors.Because what was discussed inside was not meant to survive the walls.---The chamber smelled of old stone, gun oil, and money.A circular table dominated the center, carved from a single slab of black marble. Above it hung a chandelier made from melted-down revolvers—art from a more brutal age. Dim light caught the polished weapons, throwing warped reflections across the faces seated below.Ten families.Ten empires.Ten rulers who rarely shared air.Viktor Malenkov of the Northern Routes sat with his hands folded, bear-like shoulders tense beneath a tailored coat. His empire moved narcotics a

Fear never arrived all at once.It leaked.It seeped through cracked conversations, half-finished sentences, men lowering their voices when certain names brushed the air. It crept into bars where deals were usually loud and sloppy, into backrooms where laughter died too quickly, into encrypted channels where messages went unanswered for just a second too long.The Black Hand didn’t announce itself.It echoed.---The first whisper started in a dockside bar on the south coast, the kind of place that reeked of diesel and cheap alcohol. Two smugglers sat across from each other, a crate of weapons delayed somewhere between customs and hell.“You hear what happened to Corso’s convoy?” one asked, voice casual, eyes not.The other shrugged. “Ambush?”“No bodies.”That made the glass pause halfway to his lips.“No bodies?” he repeated.The first man leaned in. “No ransom calls. No warnings. Trucks found empty. Drivers gone. Clean as surgery.”A beat of silence stretched.“…Police?”The first