2025-12-12 05:05:11
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Ch. 132 — The Regent’s Warning
The underground base breathed like a living thing.Steel ribs hummed softly as power cycled through hidden conduits. Screens glowed with maps, numbers, shifting routes—drug corridors, casino money flows, shell companies bleeding red under Black Hand pressure. Somewhere above, the world kept turning, unaware that something new and dangerous was carving its name into the bones of the underworld.Adrian stood alone at the central table, hands braced against cold metal, eyes tracking streams of data faster than any human should have been able to read.One ambush. One leak. Predicted—and neutralized.Still, something gnawed at him.A hesitation. A fraction of a second too long during the raid. A man who had looked away when he should have advanced.Not fear.Choice.“You’re watching ghosts again.”The Regent’s voice came from behind him—calm, steady, heavy with experience that stretched far beyond one lifetime of war. Adrian didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. His instincts mapped the room aut
Ch. 131 — First Betrayal Attempt
The signal arrived three minutes too early.Adrian felt it before the alert even bloomed on the tactical display—a tightening in his chest, a subtle misalignment in the rhythm of the room. The underground command bay hummed with quiet efficiency: cooling fans whispering, holo-maps pulsing, operators moving like shadows between stations. Everything was normal.Too normal.He closed his eyes and let the instinct roll forward, not as a thought but as a sensation. Paths unfolded—thin threads of probability stretching into the next ten minutes. Most were clean. One was rotten.“Hold,” Adrian said softly.The room stilled.Zara glanced up from a console. “Hold what?”“Everything.”The Black Hand’s strike team was already en route to Dockyard Nine—an Imperium-linked transshipment hub buried beneath a defunct rail spur. Weapons were moving tonight. Hard numbers. Clean hit. In and out.Except one path kept looping back on itself, ending in muzzle flashes and smoke.Adrian’s gaze slid to the ro
Ch. 130 — Echoes of Fear
Fear never arrived all at once.It leaked.It seeped through cracked conversations, half-finished sentences, men lowering their voices when certain names brushed the air. It crept into bars where deals were usually loud and sloppy, into backrooms where laughter died too quickly, into encrypted channels where messages went unanswered for just a second too long.The Black Hand didn’t announce itself.It echoed.---The first whisper started in a dockside bar on the south coast, the kind of place that reeked of diesel and cheap alcohol. Two smugglers sat across from each other, a crate of weapons delayed somewhere between customs and hell.“You hear what happened to Corso’s convoy?” one asked, voice casual, eyes not.The other shrugged. “Ambush?”“No bodies.”That made the glass pause halfway to his lips.“No bodies?” he repeated.The first man leaned in. “No ransom calls. No warnings. Trucks found empty. Drivers gone. Clean as surgery.”A beat of silence stretched.“…Police?”The first
Ch. 129 — The Ghost Test
The room was silent except for the hum of old generators buried deep beneath concrete and earth. No banners. No symbols. Just a wide table of scarred steel, ringed by men and women who had learned—quickly—that the Black Hand did not waste words.Adrian stood at the head, hands resting flat on the metal. The light above him flickered once, then steadied. His eyes swept the room, calm, unreadable.“This is not a drill,” he said.Some of them straightened. Others tensed. No one spoke.On the far wall, a projection flickered to life: a warehouse by the river, Imperium-linked, lightly guarded on paper but crawling with unseen eyes. A shipment due in thirty minutes. Weapons. Unregistered. Enough firepower to level a district.“The job is simple,” Adrian continued. “Intercept the shipment. Secure the cargo. No civilian casualties.”A pause.“Complication,” he added. “You will be compromised.”Murmurs rippled through the group before dying under the weight of his stare.Selene wasn’t there an
Ch. 128 — Ten Families Take Notice
The meeting did not appear on any calendar.No invitations were written.No phones rang.No messages were sent.Yet, before midnight, ten men and women arrived separately at the same place—an underground chamber buried beneath a shuttered opera house whose name had been erased from city records decades ago.Each arrived with their own security.Each left that security behind at the steel doors.Because what was discussed inside was not meant to survive the walls.---The chamber smelled of old stone, gun oil, and money.A circular table dominated the center, carved from a single slab of black marble. Above it hung a chandelier made from melted-down revolvers—art from a more brutal age. Dim light caught the polished weapons, throwing warped reflections across the faces seated below.Ten families.Ten empires.Ten rulers who rarely shared air.Viktor Malenkov of the Northern Routes sat with his hands folded, bear-like shoulders tense beneath a tailored coat. His empire moved narcotics a
Ch. 127 — Money Bleeds First
Money never screams when it dies.It just stops moving.That was how Adrian knew the strike had worked.The casino rose over the waterfront like a cathedral to greed—glass walls, gold trim, LED lights pulsing in artificial heartbeat rhythms. To the tourists, it was luck and liquor. To the families, it was an artery. Cash flowed through it every night, laundered clean, siphoned into shell companies, then fed back into weapons, bribes, and Imperium-linked operations that never appeared on paper.Tonight, that artery was about to be cut.Adrian watched from the adjacent rooftop, crouched in shadow as rain slicked the concrete. No scope. No binoculars. He didn’t need them. His instincts mapped the building in layers—security rotations, blind spots, camera refresh intervals, the subtle pauses in human movement that revealed where greed had dulled vigilance.Below him, the Black Hand moved.No insignia. No chatter. No wasted motion.They entered through five points at once—service tunnels,
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