Ethan was leaving the Meridian building when someone shouted his old name across the street, the one nobody but a handful of people from before had ever used. "Cross! You tightfisted bastard! You walked right past me!"He turned, and a second his whole chest went tight, because he knew that voice before he even saw the face that belonged to it. Keisha Owens was standing outside a phone repair shop with her arms crossed, looking exactly like she used to be sixteen, just older and a little more tired around the eyes. Beside her, stood a much bigger man, arms folded, grinning like he already knew this was going to be funny. "Keisha," Ethan said, and the word came out rougher than he meant it to."Don't 'Keisha' me," she said, crossing the street fast enough that a car had to slow down for her. "You go and become the richest man on the East Side and you don't even send a text? I had to hear it from my cousin's boyfriend's mother, Ethan. Your face was in three different group chats bef

The video hit every screen on the East Side before Ethan heard about it from Naomi. It showed a man in a plain black mask standing over a landlord Ethan didn't recognize, someone who'd apparently been shutting off heat to force out tenants who couldn't pay a sudden rent hike. The masked man had broken two of his fingers on camera, calm as anything, while a voice underneath the video, clearly changed with some kind of app, said the landlord would keep breaking until he agreed to fix every unit in the building. "They're calling him the Ledger," Naomi said, turning her laptop around so Ethan could see the comments underneath the video, thousands of them, most of them cheering. "Because he leaves a written list behind every time. What the person did wrong. What they owe. Like a bill.""That's not me," Ethan said. "I know that. You know that." Naomi tapped the screen. "But look at the comments. Half the city already thinks it is you. Or thinks you inspired it, at least. Somebody's been

The message arrived on a burner phone Halloway had set up weeks ago for exactly this kind of situation, a number nobody outside Cross Holdings should have had."You're doing this wrong. You forgive people who don't deserve it. I finish what you start. Watch the news tonight."Ethan read it twice, then called Naomi and Halloway both before he even finished reading it a third time. "He's got the burner number," Ethan said. "That means he knows more about how we operate than a random copycat should.""Or he's just good at getting numbers he shouldn't have," Naomi said, though she didn't sound convinced by her own suggestion. "Either way, we need to see what he means by 'watch the news tonight' before it happens instead of after."It took Halloway's contacts less than an hour to find out. A tip had gone out to three different stations, all pointing toward an address in the same part of town where Everett Vance kept a smaller, less guarded office than the main headquarters. Someone was pl

Warren Averill lived on a quiet street off Corrow Avenue, the kind of block where nothing bad was supposed to happen, which was exactly why the porch light took so long to come on after Ethan knocked. "Mr. Cross." Averill opened the door, in a robe, older and smaller than he looked in his robes on the bench. "Do you have any idea what time it is?""I do," Ethan said. "I thought you'd want privacy for this conversation more than you'd want sleep."Averill's eyes moved past him to Lily, standing a step back, and something In his face tightened. "This isn't appropriate. Whatever you think you're here for, we can discuss it through counsel, during business hours, like —""National Pacific Trust," Ethan said. Averill went very still. "Eight years," Ethan said. "Six deposits I can already put dates to. One the day you stalled my compliance review. One the day you denied Naomi Reyes's request to unseal the Inspection complaints. I don't have the full account yet. I will.""You're bluffing

Halloway moved first, before the sun was even up. He had spent the night on the phone with contacts at two of the three banks carrying Vance Realty's loans, quietly walking them through the published inspection reports, the twelve names, the falsified digital records now sitting next to the real physical ones In a story half the city had already read. By eight in the morning, Blackhaven Commerce Bank had triggered an automatic default review on every loan tied to a falsified inspection, a clause buried in boilerplate language nobody ever expected to actually use. "They're not doing this because they believe in justice," Halloway told Ethan over the phone, driving between meetings he'd booked with barely an hour's notice. "They're doing it because Naomi's story just made continuity to lend to Everett Vance a liability their own shareholders will ask about. I didn't have to convince anyone of anything. I just had to made sure they saw it before their competitors did.""How much did th