All Chapters of The Lost Ricci: Heir Back from the Dead: Chapter 31
- Chapter 40
112 chapters
Ch-31: Royal Arrival
The lobby of Apex Crown was a cathedral of glass and intimidation. Since the "Legacy" transformation had begun, the atmosphere had shifted from corporate greed to a surgical, high-stakes efficiency. The air smelled of expensive ozone and the faint, citrusy scent of the high-end cleaners Leonardo Bronson was currently using to scrub the restrooms three floors down.A woman stood at the center of the marble rotunda, a stark contrast to the sea of grey-suited executives scurrying toward their elevators. She wore a tailored coat of midnight velvet and a silk headscarf that hid most of her face, but she couldn't hide the way she stood—with the effortless, unyielding posture of someone who had never needed to ask for permission.She approached the primary reception desk, where the new secretary, Chloe—a woman hired for her ruthlessness and lack of sentimentality—was currently dismissing a line of vendors."I am here to see the master of this house," the woman said. Her voice was melodic, bu
Ch-32: Ghosts
The news of Princess Elara’s arrival in the city spread through the underworld like wildfire. Her face, now unmasked and regal, flashed across every news channel, alongside breathless reports of her mysterious meeting at Apex Crown. For the Greco family, reeling from the loss of their shipping lanes and the public humiliation of Silvio, she wasn't just royalty; she was leverage.Old Man Greco, the patriarch of the family, sat in his darkened study, his face a roadmap of ancient grudges. His son, Silvio, was currently in a secure holding facility, screaming about a "ghost" and a "woman with a planted ledger." The old man didn't believe in ghosts, but he believed in weakness. And a foreign princess, unprotected by her own nation, was a glaring vulnerability in Dante Ricci’s impenetrable armor."She’s staying at the Ricci estate," a loyal capo reported, his voice hushed. "Imperial Suite. Dante has the Ghost Legion patrolling the perimeter. It’s a fortress.""A fortress for a man, not for
Ch-33: Morning News
The industrial docks felt like the edge of the world. The fog rolled off the black water in thick, sulfurous banks, swallowing the rusted skeletons of cranes and the stacks of shipping containers. At the heart of this graveyard stood the Greco Warehouse—a concrete monolith that had seen more contraband and blood than the city’s history books would ever admit.Inside, the air was cold and stagnant. Old Man Greco sat in a frayed velvet armchair he had brought from his estate, watching the tied and gagged Princess Elara with a look of sadistic triumph."Dante Ricci is a meticulous man," Greco said, his voice a dry rasp. He tapped a heavy ring against his cane. "He has satellites, he has a private army, he has billions in the bank. But he has one fatal flaw, Princess. He still thinks like a soldier. He thinks if he can find the target, he can win the war."Elara’s eyes remained fixed on him, cold and unblinking. She didn't look like a victim; she looked like a predator waiting for her lea
Ch-34: Bad Luck Charm
The sickly grey sunlight of dawn filtered through the salt-encrusted windows of the guest house. Inside, the air was frigid. The heater, a rattling unit from the 1980s that Dante had painstakingly kept alive during his years of residence, had finally breathed its last.Herbert Bronson sat at the small, splintered kitchen table, his head buried in his hands. His back felt like a sheet of cracked glass. His palms were blistered and raw from twelve hours of pushing a heavy industrial floor buffer over the very marble he had once commissioned. Behind him, Marcus was slumped against the wall, his eyes staring blankly at a half-empty can of cold beans."The news," Beatrice whispered, clutching a threadbare blanket around her shoulders. "Switch it on, Marcus. Maybe the Grecos… maybe Silvio succeeded."Marcus reached for the remote with a trembling hand. The small television flickered to life, the volume low to avoid attracting the attention of the security drones that now patrolled the prope
Ch-35: The Syndicate
The descent into Oakhaven, the capital of Crimania, was nothing like the polished luxury of the city Dante had just left. Here, the air tasted of pine resin and cordite. As the Ricci private jet broke through the heavy cloud layer, the landscape revealed itself; a rugged expanse of jagged mountains and ancient, black-wood forests that seemed to swallow the light.Dante sat across from Princess Elara, his eyes fixed on the tactical display integrated into his armrest. Beside the landing strip, instead of a royal guard in ceremonial gold, he saw the dull olive-drab of armored personnel carriers and the erratic heat signatures of a city under tension."The Juniper Syndicate," Elara whispered, her hand tightening on the hilt of the ceremonial dagger at her waist. "They’ve moved into the capital. General Varkas didn't even wait for the mourning period for my father to end.""They aren't here to mourn, Elara," Dante said, standing up as the wheels touched the tarmac. "They’re here to see if
Ch-36: The Glitch
While the mountains of Crimania still echoed with the roar of Dante’s victory, the city he had left behind remained a sprawling grid of glass, steel, and secrets. In a high-rise office block that lacked the golden flash of the Bronson Tower but possessed a far more lethal level of technical sophistication, Adrien Vane sat in a room bathed in the soft, blue glow of twelve synchronized monitors.Adrien was everything his younger brother, Ken, was not. Where Ken was loud, Adrien was silent. Where Ken sought status, Adrien sought control. He didn't care about the Ricci name or the dramatic reveals; to Adrien, Dante Ricci was simply a "glitch"...an anomaly in the predictable flow of global capital and power that needed to be smoothed over."He thinks he’s playing a game of kings," Adrien whispered, his eyes tracking a cascade of green code on his center screen. "But he’s just a variable I haven't solved for yet."Adrien stood up and adjusted his glasses. He didn't call for a motorcade or a
Ch-37: Harbor
The financial district was a forest of light, but beneath its roots lay the "Sub-Level 9", a private, windowless vault reachable only by an industrial elevator and a series of biometric scans. Here, the air was chilled to protect the massive server banks hummed in the background, providing the white noise for the city’s most dangerous poker game. Adrien Vane sat at the center of a circular table carved from obsidian. He didn't look like a man in the middle of a gamble; he looked like a surgeon mid-operation. On the holographic display floating above the table, the global markets were hemorrhaging. Apex Crown’s stock was a jagged red line plummeting toward the floor. Adrien had initiated a coordinated short-sell of unprecedented scale, leveraging the "vulnerability" he believed he had found in Dante’s encrypted heartbeat to flood the market with counterfeit sell-orders. "The Legacy Foundation is bleeding out, Dante," Adrien said, his voice a calm, analytical drone. He fanned out a s
Ch-38: The Citadel
The victory in the "Sub-Level 9" vault had been absolute, but as the elevator ascended back into the crisp, midnight air of the financial district, Dante felt a strange, lingering dissonance. He had deleted Adrien Vane, but the code Adrien had been using felt… familiar. It was too efficient, too ancient to have been written by a man of Adrien’s generation.While Dante’s private jet screamed across the Atlantic toward the jagged peaks of Crimania, five hundred feet beneath the Bronson Tower, the true architecture of the city began to breathe.At the Apex Crown headquarters, Selena sat in the central command hub. The room was bathed in the golden glow of the stabilized markets, but her monitors suddenly flickered. A massive power draw was originating from a sector of the building that didn't exist on her diagnostics."Dante, are you seeing this?" Selena’s voice crackled into his headset, thousands of miles away.Dante looked at his tablet. A ghost-signal was pulsing from the very founda
Ch-39: Guest of Honour
The armory of the Oakhaven Citadel was not a room for display. It was a subterranean vault carved into the tectonic roots of the mountain, shielded by six feet of lead-reinforced basalt. Inside, the air was cold, recycled, and hummed with the vibration of high-end servers.Princess Elara stood in the center of the room, her silver mantle reflecting the harsh, clinical glare of the overhead strips. She watched as Dante bypassed three separate biometric locks, his movements fueled by a restless, lethal energy she hadn't seen since the Blackwood days."Dante, you’re scaring the council," Elara said, her voice echoing in the metallic silence. "You left for the Docks to find a merchant, and you return talking about ghosts and scopes. What happened at the border?"Dante didn't answer immediately. He approached a central pillar and swiped his hand across a darkened glass panel. A holographic display bloomed into life, but it wasn't showing Crimanian troop movements. It was a wire-frame re
Ch-40: Mercy
The air in the Crimanian armory grew so thin it felt like breathing glass. Dante did not lower his rifle. The man standing ten feet away—the man with the sharp Ricci jawline and eyes that mirrored Dante’s own—stepped fully into the light.This was not the paralyzed, hollowed-out man Dante had seen in the bed at the Ricci estate. This man was upright, powerful, and dressed in a suit that cost more than the Bronsons' entire remaining net worth."You’re supposed to be a vegetable in a penthouse, Pietro," Dante said, his voice a jagged rasp of disbelief."Pietro was the name for the public, Ryan. A name for the ledgers," the man said, his voice smooth and terrifyingly familiar—it was the exact frequency of the Oracle. "And the stroke? A necessary retirement. I needed the world to stop looking at me so I could start looking at the world. I needed to see if my investment had matured."Dante’s finger twitched on the trigger. "Investment? You’re talking about your son. You let a woman kidnap