All Chapters of The Lost Ricci: Heir Back from the Dead: Chapter 41
- Chapter 50
114 chapters
Ch-41: Is it over?
The air inside the tunnels of the Oakhaven Citadel didn't just turn cold; it turned clinical.Dante felt the shift before he heard it. The neural-link behind his ear—the device that had allowed him to coordinate the Ghost Legion with the precision of a master conductor—began to emit a high-pitched, rhythmic throb. It wasn't a communication. It was a countdown."Dante, the guards!" Elara hissed, pulling him into the shadow of a massive granite support beam.Thirty feet ahead, two Ghost Legionnaires stood at the junction of the Geothermal Core. Their movements were no longer human. They didn't scan the room with the natural, erratic gaze of soldiers; they moved with a jerky, synchronized efficiency, their visors glowing with a harsh, crimson light that Dante had never programmed."They've been redacted," Dante whispered, his hand tightening on the grip of his rifle."Redacted? What does that mean?""It means my father didn't just build an army. He built a remote-access bypass. He’s over
Ch-42: Fugitives
The city did not welcome its King home. It did not even recognize him.The night air in the harbor district was thick with the smell of stagnant saltwater and industrial exhaust. Dante and Elara stepped off a rusted tramp steamer that had carried them through the coastal blockades, their clothes tattered and their faces smudged with the grime of the engine room.Dante reached into his pocket and pulled out his primary credit card—the titanium Ricci Black Card that could once buy a skyscraper with a single swipe. He stepped toward a public kiosk and inserted it.[ACCESS DENIED: ACCOUNT TERMINATED]He tried his biometric thumbprint on a secure public terminal.[ERROR: SUBJECT NOT FOUND IN NATIONAL DATABASE]He looked at the high-definition news screen towering over the plaza. A sleek, professional anchor was speaking over a montage of the Oakhaven Citadel in flames."...the tragic loss of the Representative in a volcanic accident in Crimania has sent shockwaves through the global market
Ch-43: South Tower Dorms
The South Tower custodial dorms smelled of damp concrete and the sharp, chemical tang of industrial bleach—a scent that had become the scent of the Bronsons' lives. In the dim light of Unit 4-B, the atmosphere was thick with a tension that felt like a physical weight.Dante was hunched over the small, scarred wooden table, his fingers moving with surgical precision as he soldered a wire onto a salvaged motherboard. Beside him, Princess Elara was sharpening her tactical blade on the edge of a ceramic mug, her royal poise intact even in a jumpsuit that was two sizes too large."Someone’s coming," Dante said, his voice dropping into that low, vibratory frequency that signaled the onset of the Lion’s focus.He didn't need a high-tech sensor to know. He heard the rhythmic, heavy tread of military boots on the linoleum—too synchronized to be the tired shuffle of a night-shift janitor. And beneath that, the clicking of high-end Italian leather soles.Herbert Bronson stood up, his face pale.
Ch-44: Fugitive!
The high-altitude tactical drones of the Iron Syndicate did not possess a sense of irony, only a mandate for precision.Six stories above the harbor’s main waste-management facility, a swarm of "Vulture" class drones hovered in a perfect, lethal hexagon. Their sensors were locked onto the high-frequency pulse of the platinum card—the beacon Adrien Vane had so confidently left with the Bronsons. On the digital tactical maps inside the Ricci Estate’s war room, the beacon was labeled [TARGET: RYAN RICCI - FUGITIVE]."Target confirmed," a synthetic voice echoed through the command center. "Initiating kinetic saturation."The drones fired simultaneously.A hail of high-velocity slugs tore into the churning, mountainous pile of trash on the conveyor belt. Refuse exploded into the night air—shredded plastic, rotted organic matter, and twisted metal flying in a grotesque fountain. The drones continued to fire until the beacon’s signal flickered once and went silent, crushed beneath a ton of l
Ch-45: The Representative
The darkness in the sub-basement was absolute, the kind of crushing void that exists only in places where technology has completely failed. The only light came from the dying embers of the short-circuited servers—angry orange sparks that flickered like fireflies in a tomb."Internal sensors are offline!" Adrien’s voice was a frantic, high-pitched scrape against the silence. "The Redaction protocol is blinded! Uncle, I can’t see him!""Silence, Adrien," Pietro’s voice was a chilling contrast, steady and cold. "He’s still a biological entity. He still has a heartbeat. He’s in the room."A few yards away, tucked behind a titanium cooling rack, Giulia clutched her mother’s hand. Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs. She looked at the silhouettes of the Phantoms—men turned into machines—and then at the darkness where Dante had vanished. For the first time in her life, the gold and the marble didn’t feel like a goal; they felt like a burial shroud.Thud.The sound was heavy, wet, a
Ch-46: Banquet of Mockery
The Grand Horizon Hotel stood as a gilded monument to the city’s collective amnesia. Less than forty-eight hours after the "accidental" destruction of the Oakhaven Citadel and the supposed death of the Representative, the social gears of the elite had already shifted back into their comfortable, predatory rhythms.To the people in this ballroom, Dante Ricci was a fever dream that had finally broken. They were back in a world where money was loud, power was inherited, and the "unlisted" were meant to be seen only when they were holding a tray.Marcus Sullivan stood at the center of a circle of admirers, his chest puffed out under a tuxedo that cost forty thousand dollars. He had been "reinstated" as the interim CEO of a restructured Bronson-Vane holding group, a gift from the Iron Syndicate for his "unwavering loyalty" during the crisis."It’s a new dawn, gentlemen," Marcus declared, raising a glass of vintage Cristal. "The glitch has been patched. The 'Legacy' nonsense is being rolled
Ch-47: Debt of the Damned
The Grand Horizon ballroom was a vortex of glittering malice. Governor Sterling stood behind the podium, his knuckles white as he gripped the marble edges. The golden light from the payment terminal reflected in his eyes, but it wasn't the light of awe—it was the light of a cornered rat finding its teeth."A Sovereign Key? A Master Ledger?" Sterling’s voice cracked through the high-fidelity speakers, trembling with a mix of terror and desperate defiance. "Preposterous! This is a grand theater of deception! I am the Governor of the Central Exchange, boy, and I know a digital forgery when I see one!"He slammed a panic button beneath the desk. Red emergency lights began to pulse in the corners of the ceiling, drowning the soft glow of the chandeliers in a rhythmic, bloody hue."Guards! Lock the doors!" Sterling screamed. "This man is not a bidder; he is a financial terrorist! He has hacked a dormant system to simulate a balance that doesn't exist. By the authority of the Iron Syndicate,
Ch-48: Paycheck of Gods
The Grand Horizon ballroom had become a theater of the absurd. The air was thick with the scent of expensive perfume turned sour by the cold sweat of a hundred bankrupt "gods." On the digital screens, the Master Ledger continued its relentless harvest, a golden scythe reaping the offshore accounts, trust funds, and secret holdings of every person in the room."It’s a glitch! It’s all a glitch!" Governor Sterling shrieked, his voice cracking as he clutched the podium like a drowning man. "Help is coming! The Iron Syndicate is already here! You haven't won, Ricci! You’ve just guaranteed your own execution!"As if in response to his prayer, the heavy, blast-proof doors of the ballroom were not merely opened—they were detonated. The shockwave blew out the remaining crystal glassware, sending shards of light flying like diamonds in a storm.From the smoke emerged the Iron Legion.They were the Syndicate’s ultimate redaction tool—twelve men in high-density liquid-carbon armor, their movemen
Ch-49: The "Trash"
The night was a canvas of rain and neon, but the Starlight Hotel stood above the grime like a diamond set in obsidian. It was a seven-star sanctuary, a vertical city where the elevators moved on magnetic cushions and the walls were lined with crushed pearls and gold leaf. This was the crown jewel of the Global Commerce Council, a place where a single night’s stay cost more than a commoner earned in a lifetime of labor. To enter the Starlight was to prove one’s humanity; to be barred from it was to be less than a ghost.Dante Ricci stepped onto the heated marble of the hotel’s grand entrance, his heavy work boots leaving streaks of Oakhaven mud on the pristine white surface. His blue custodial jumpsuit was shredded at the shoulder, stained with the black grease of the geothermal vents and the copper-scented blood of the Phantoms. Beside him, Princess Elara walked with the chin-up defiance of a fallen goddess, her silver mantle replaced by a tattered grey shawl that smelled of the harb
Ch-50: The Blood of the Architect
The penthouse of the Starlight Hotel was a fortress of glass suspended in the clouds, a place where the air was thinner and the morality even more so. This was the sanctum of the Twelve Kings, the global board of the Iron Syndicate. They were the men who moved borders with a stroke of a pen and decided the lifespan of nations over glasses of hundred-year-old cognac.The boardroom was a circle of shadow and chrome. Eleven men sat around a table made of a single slab of obsidian, their faces illuminated by the holographic displays of global markets and military deployment maps. The twelfth chair—the Prime Chair—remained empty, a silent tribute to the man they believed was still their puppet master: Pietro Ricci."The situation in the harbor was a mess," King Varick, a man whose family controlled the central banks of three continents, growled. "Adrien Vane was a fool. He let the boy play with the drones like a child in a sandbox. We cannot afford these theatrical distractions.""Pietr