Michael slammed the door to his hotel suite and leaned against it, from the other side, feeling the cold surface of the heavy door on her back as his chest heaved up and down. His heart hammered so hard he could feel the sound and vibrations of the beat in his throat. Everything around him, including the the luxury suite, and its marble floors with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the glittering sprawling city of New York, suddenly felt like some sort of cage to him. Melody’s words echoed in his head, replaying over and over, steady on loop: "You got rich suddenly too, Michael. There’s a gap in the explanation."She suspected him. She knew. And even if she did not know, she was atleast close enough to the truth, that it terrified him and made his blood cuddle inside of him.He paced the room, running his hands through his hair in manner akin to madness. But in all of what she said, and all of what he thought, he felt more hurt than he felt anything else. The hurt cut deeper th

The armored SUV carrying Nathan and the body guards slowed almost to a stop, half a block from Cloven Tower. Just before then was a massive herd of people. This forced Nathan to look up from his phone. Immediately, he felt his stomach drop down below.The massive crowd had swallowed the plaza in front of the building, filled with people, all of whom were waving signs on placards and cardboards about, voices rising into a roar."Shit." Stacy cursed under her breath from the driver’s seat. “Protesters,” she said. “I think there are of two groups. They’ve been here since dawn.”Nathan’s jaw tightened as he scanned the scene around him. On one side, were hundreds of people in ordinary clothes, all holding signs that read NO MORE DRUGS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS and PAUPER KING = DRUG KING. At the front stood Martha Thunberg, leading them, as always with, megaphone in hand, and her face flushed with righteous anger.On the opposite side, a totally different crowd pushed forward, signs declari

Victor Lee was sitting alone in the study of the family mansion, with his phone as he scrolled through the storm that was growing on social media. He had never been the type to go crawling through the streets of social media; a place he had always thought to be for distractions, but ever since his company began being managed by Nathan, he has had more leisurely time to pursue other leisurely interests, which scrolling through social media seemed to be a part of. Right now, Michael’s latest tweet was staring back at him like a slap on his face. The twitter handle MichaelLeeOfficial had just tweeted once again: "The Pauper King didn’t just buy our company. He used our own offshore accounts to launder money for his drug operations. The merger was never about saving us, it was about covering his tracks. #ExposeThePauperKing"The post had already crossed a two million views bench mark, with its likes and reshares going beyond seventy thousand. "I am not going to take this one lying down

Amelia Frank sat with her legs crossed on her dorm-room floor, with her back against the wall, staring at a small plastic bag that contained some of the remaining parts of Rene’s hair that she had just delivered to Icel. The strands looked very innocent under the desk lamp, like if one saw, there'd never imagine that anything nefarious would have been done with them, or that the hair belonged to a super model. But guilt clawed at Amelia's chest, almost like it was something alive. Perhaps it was alive in her.She banged her head gently against the wall behind her. Once, twice, and then harder for a third time. “Stupid,” she whispered. “So fucking stupid.”She felt so irredeemably stupid. She had literally just sold a piece of another woman to a deranged prisoner for information she didn’t even need, or would ever even need in this lifetime. Icel had given her nothing concrete to hold on, or to satiate her curiousity. Nothing but just rumors and half-truths about Nathan and DodgerCoi

Michael’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking on the steering wheel as the Lamborghini’s engine buzzed beneath him. But every muscle in his body felt wound tight enough, to the point that it seemed as if at any point it was going to snap. The Streetlights of the city blurred past as he drove toward the trap house with the city’s glittering skyline seemingly mocking him from a distance. This city had been his home. Infact he had once ruled over it with his family. But right now, he did not feel like a ruler, he felt like a fugitive on the run.His shirt clung to his back with cold sweat. He had not thought of changing into anything else, and so now he wore the same shirt from when he was threatened with a gun placed on his head. It reeked of the fear he had felt then. He smelled of nausea and blood, even though he had neither vomited or bled. But he was close to doing both.He kept checking the rearview mirror, half-expecting headlights to appear out of nowhere; perhaps the police, maybe eve