All Chapters of The Lost Ricci: Heir Back from the Dead: Chapter 101
- Chapter 110
114 chapters
Ch-101: The Cost of Breathing
The emergency summit began with someone shouting before the microphones were even calibrated.“You are not listening to them,” a delegate from the North American Trade Compact snapped, pointing at the screens ringing the chamber. “You are listening to fear.”A woman from the African Health Coalition shot back immediately. “No, we are listening to people who have been told for generations that sickness was normal.”“That is a false equivalence,” the delegate replied. “What Ricci has done destabilizes every environmental treaty we have.”“And what you did destabilized human biology,” she answered without hesitation.The chair attempted to interject, but the argument had already fractured into side conversations. Advisors leaned into ears. Messages scrolled across private screens. Outside the chamber, millions of people were watching the broadcast delay tick down, waiting to hear whether the word restoration would be dismissed or acknowledged.Henry Dale sat at the witness table, hands f
Ch-102: Attempted Shutdown
The first retaliation did not come from governments.It came from systems.“Power grid anomalies detected,” Jacob said, his voice tight as he scanned the incoming data. “They’re not cutting electricity. They’re throttling redundancy.”Dante did not look away from the city. “Which means they want something to fail on its own.”“Water treatment sensors are being flagged as noncompliant,” Jacob continued. “Environmental oversight just issued a provisional suspension on Basin export interfaces.”Dante turned. “Export of what?”“Everything,” Jacob replied. “Data, materials, even waste processing metrics. They’re isolating the city digitally.”“So they are trying to make us invisible,” Dante said. “That never works.”An alert chimed again.Jacob frowned. “They’re invoking emergency authority under global environmental safety protocols.”Dante nodded slowly. “They are preparing justification.”Within the hour, the emergency broadcast channels activated again. This time, there was no tribunal
Ch-103: Not Welcome
The morning started off strange. The coffee was just coming to a boil when the bell rang. The envelope was folded once, heavy paper, hand-delivered by a courier who waited just long enough to confirm receipt and then left without a word.Dante turned it over once in his hands before opening it.“Private residence,” he read aloud. “No recording devices, no aides. No observers. Formal dinner.”Mara, seated across from him, didn’t look up from her console. “That’s not a dinner, sounds more like a military camp."Dante smiled faintly. “No. A military camp has sensible rules.”She finally met his eyes. “But you’re going anyway, right?!" “Yes.”“You’re not bringing security.”“No.”She exhaled through her nose. “You realize they’re not inviting you because they like you.”“They’re inviting me because they don’t know what to do with me.”That, at least, made her smile.The residence sat on a cliffline overlooking the water, old architecture preserved behind new materials, the kind of place
Ch-104: The Second Invitation
By the following morning, the world had already made up its mind three different ways, and none of them felt safe.Across global media feeds, analysts argued over what Dante Ricci represented. Some framed him as a disruptor flirting with legacy power, suggesting that proximity to influence would eventually blunt his edges. Others insisted he was already being absorbed, that the dinners and private meetings were simply the early stages of assimilation. A quieter group, made up mostly of people who had seen systems fail from the inside, suspected something worse—that Dante was operating on a timeline no one else had access to, and that his refusal to clarify intentions was not indecision but control.What unsettled people was not that these interpretations contradicted each other, but that none of them could be conclusively disproven.Inside the Basin, speculation turned personal. Protestors gathered outside regulatory buildings, shouting past one another rather than at authority. Some
Ch-105: Optics
The photo should never have existed.It was grainy, taken from across a street at the wrong angle and the wrong moment. Dante was stepping out of the residence. She was half a step behind him, her hand lifted as if she had just reached for his sleeve. The light caught them in a way that suggested intimacy rather than proximity.By the time the image hit the feeds, context no longer mattered.Markets reacted before explanations could form. Health conglomerate stocks surged, then dipped violently as algorithmic traders tried to anticipate what a Ricci alliance with legacy capital might mean. Government briefings were called within hours, not because officials knew anything, but because voters were already demanding answers they did not have.Inside the residence, the mood shifted from calculated tension to outright panic.“This cannot stand,” one of the board members snapped, pacing near the long windows. “We look compromised.”“We look aligned,” another countered. “Which is worse.”Eli
Ch-106: Damage Control
The silence did not last. It fractured under the weight of people who were used to controlling outcomes and were suddenly forced to witness one unfolding without them.Elias broke first.“You disconnect that,” he said, voice low but sharp, eyes fixed on the screen as if staring at it hard enough could undo what had already been seen.Dante did not move. “No.”A donor near the far end of the table slammed his palm down. “You can’t just drop something like this and walk away.”“I didn’t walk away,” Dante replied. “I stayed right here.”Marena Vale had not said a word. She was still staring at the screen, her hands braced on the table, shoulders rigid, as if holding herself upright required conscious effort.“You didn’t warn us,” Elias said.Dante finally turned to face him. “You didn’t ask.”“That’s not how this works.”“That’s exactly how this worked,” Dante said evenly. “For decades.”Elias stepped closer, lowering his voice so the others would have to strain to hear. “You’ve crossed
Ch-107: What Gets Taken Away
The silence that followed Dante’s last words did not stretch into reflection. It collapsed inward, tightening the air in the room until every breath felt measured and deliberate.A chair scraped against the marble floor.The sound was slow, intentional, and unmistakably controlled.“Enough.”The voice came from the far end of the room, older than Elias’s, carrying the weight of someone who had never needed urgency to command obedience.Marena turned immediately.Her grandmother had risen from her seat.Celeste Vale stood with the aid of a slim black cane, her posture immaculate despite her age. The room instinctively recalibrated around her presence. Conversations that had been murmurs only seconds earlier stopped entirely. Even Elias straightened, his shoulders drawing back as if muscle memory had taken over.Celeste’s gaze moved across the room in a practiced sweep before settling on Marena.“You have embarrassed this family,” Celeste said calmly, her tone devoid of accusation and t
Ch-108: The Tribunal
The room had been changed, but the intention had shifted so sharply that Dante felt it the moment he crossed the threshold. The long conference hall of the Vale residence, usually reserved for donors and ceremonial agreements, had been rearranged into something colder. Chairs formed a shallow arc rather than a table. The lighting had been lowered just enough to feel interrogative rather than intimate.This was not a meeting. Rather, a reckoning, staged to look consensual.Marena was already seated when Dante entered.Not beside him. Not at the head of the room. She had been placed slightly behind the arc, off-center, hands folded tightly in her lap. Her posture was composed, but the set of her shoulders told him everything. She had been instructed to observe, not participate.To be spoken about, not spoken with.Dante took the empty chair opposite the arc without waiting for permission.A ripple of discomfort moved through the assembled group.They had come in numbers. Donors with so
Ch-109: When One House Falls
The collapse did not begin with sirens or press conferences, nor did it announce itself through emergency broadcasts or hurried official addresses. It began in the quieter way these events always did, through resignation letters prepared by legal counsel instead of handwritten apologies, through public statements that cited “personal considerations” and “health-related decisions,” and through a conspicuous absence of denial where denial had once been reflexive.Silence, in this case, was not restraint. It was concession.By midmorning, every major network had converged on the same framing, not because of coordination but because there was no other version of events that could still plausibly hold.LEGACY BOARD IN FREEFALL AFTER INTERNAL LEAKSThe banner repeated itself across screens, identical in substance even as anchors changed, studios rotated, and commentators layered speculation on top of what were already verified facts.The name attached to the collapse was not the Vale family
Ch-110:Question Asked Too Late
It wasn't technically a meeting, because meetings implied preparation, structure, and an outcome that could be guided. What they convened instead was described as a conversation, a term families like the Vales used when they wanted the appearance of informality without relinquishing control. In practice, it meant that no aides were present to document concessions, no fixers were nearby to intervene if tempers rose, and no donors waited in adjacent rooms to remind everyone of leverage still held. The absence was deliberate. So was the setting.The remaining elders gathered in the smaller sitting chamber overlooking the inner courtyard, a space traditionally reserved for inheritance negotiations, closed-door reconciliations, and the early planning stages of funerals. The room carried the weight of endings disguised as continuity, and every person seated there was aware of the symbolism even if none chose to acknowledge it aloud.Marena sat to one side of the room, positioned just outsid