The sun shone far too brightly for a day that would end in bloodshed. In the middle of a neatly trimmed field, Chloe stood surrounded by her friends. She flaunted her newest designer bag with a triumphant smile. “This is a limited edition, you know. My dad ordered it straight from Italy,” Chloe said, her voice deliberately loud enough for passing students to hear. “Whoa, that’s insane! It’s so cool, Chlo! It must’ve been super expensive, right?” one of her friends gushed, eyes sparkling. Chloe lifted her chin, savoring the envy. “It’s nothing for my dad. His investment business is booming.” From a distance, inside a black sedan parked in the pickup area, Eduardo watched through dark tinted glass. He wore a driver’s uniform, complete with a cap that shadowed part of his face. The earpiece in his left ear vibrated softly. “Boss, you hear me?” Belerik’s voice crackled through. “I hear you. Report,” Eduardo replied coldly. “Claude’s completely lost it,

The wind howled across the rooftop of Skyview Apartments, trying to unsettle the steel tripod anchored into the concrete. Freya did not move. She lay prone, her body fused with her .50 caliber sniper rifle. In her ear, the static chatter of the comms sounded like the buzz of flies, irritating and constant, but her eyes, once praised as a national asset on the Olympic shooting circuit, remained calm, locked onto a single point 1.5 kilometers away. She chewed her strawberry gum in a steady rhythm. The sweetness was gone, leaving only a dull rubber taste that lingered, much like her life. "Freya! Can you hear me?! The second SUV is closing in on Eduardo’s left! Shoot, damn it! Shoot!" Belerik’s voice screamed hysterically through her earpiece. Freya blew a strand of hair out of her line of sight. "You’re noisy, office rat. I’m calculating the wind." "Calculating your head! The boss is about to die!" "Ten seconds," Freya said flatly. "I need ten seconds to clean up

The basement of the safehouse smelled stale, a mix of concrete dust and burnt wiring. In the center of the room, an old pool table had been repurposed into a makeshift war table. Belerik stood over it, his thin fingers dancing across a laptop connected to a cheap projector. Blue light reflected off his thick glasses, making his face look like an electronic skull. “Claude’s like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold, Ed. If we only clipped his wings on the highway yesterday, he’ll just grow them back with money,” Belerik said without turning around. His voice was hoarse, the kind of rasp that came from three days without sleep and too much caffeine. Eduardo stood in the shadows at the edge of the room, leaning against the cold wall. “I don’t need metaphors, Rik. I need a way to make sure he can’t pay the rest of his mercenaries.” Belerik grinned, revealing a row of slightly yellowed teeth. “That’s exactly the point. Claude’s financial oxygen source is called the Golden Cag

Dark. Dense. Suffocating. Within milliseconds after the ballroom lights went out, the brief silence shattered into a storm of gunfire. The high-society guests who had been dancing so elegantly moments ago were now nothing more than panicked livestock in a slaughterhouse. The smell of gunpowder overpowered the expensive perfume, stabbing into Eduardo’s nose, a scent he knew all too well, the scent of death. Click. The world in Eduardo’s eyes changed color. His specialized contact lenses, linked to his system, flared neon green. Night Vision activated. He could see everything, silhouettes running, dust dancing in the air, and the muzzles of guns spitting fire toward the ceiling. “Ed! Eduardo! Where the hell are you, you bastard?! My dress... someone spilled wine on my dress!” Emily’s voice shrieked through the chaos. Eduardo turned toward ten o’clock. His wife stood frozen near the melting ice sculpture table, her hands groping blindly in the darkness, completely

Cigarette smoke blanketed the emergency meeting room in the basement of Belerik’s logistics warehouse. The space was lit only by the blue glow of three massive monitors displaying digital topographic maps and the blueprints of an old structure. The air felt heavy, as if oxygen itself had been pushed aside by the tension radiating from the four people gathered around a pool table cluttered with weapons and whiskey bottles. Eduardo stood at the head of the table, his red, sunken eyes fixed sharply on the map. The bandage on his temple was gone. The wound had dried into a dark line that only made his face look more vicious. “Claude didn’t run out of the city,” Belerik said, fingers moving quickly over the keyboard. “He pulled back to Fort San Jago. It’s an old colonial military fortress on a rocky cape. The walls are two meters thick, solid concrete. The only way in is through the front gate, guarded by heavy machine guns, or by sea, and that route is full of sharp reefs.”