System Activated: Empire Reset Protocol

Chapter 3. The First Slap 2

Kai’s hand hovered at the doorway; Mira’s eyes were wide. Nolan laughed, then barked at a henchman. “Get him out.”

The henchman moved, but Victor stepped forward before the hand could close. “You bully because you’re small. You’re small because you took the easy road. People like you die small.” 

The words were a spark. Nolan lunged; Victor didn’t flinch. He moved like survival dictated, quick, deliberate. 

His wrist flicked. Nolan’s drink sloshed and spilled, hot glass shards cutting his knuckles. 

Laughter turned to silence. “You’ll make him bleed?” Nolan snarled, clutching ruined fingers.

Victor pressed a finger to Nolan’s chest, soft as a threat. “You’ll make him beg,” he said. “You’ll make him talk. And you’ll do it because you like the sound of your own name.”

The room pulsed. Nolan’s men hesitated, enough. Victor gave a small shove and the table crashed. 

Coins scattered. Someone screamed. Mira laughed, delighted and frightened. The crowd surged, and Nolan stumbled, humiliated in his own den.

“You brag too loud,” Victor said quietly. “I’ll trade you the ledger I don’t have for the ledger you think you own. I’ll trade you leverage for leverage.”

Nolan’s face was a mask of rage and wounded pride. “You’ll pay.”

Victor’s eyes were dead calm. “You’ll pay in shame. Right now.”

Nolan barked an order, but the henchman saw the way the room looked at them, the sudden shift from confident predator to exposed fraud. 

They wavered. In that second, someone in the crowd, one of Donovan’s smaller crews, laughed. “Look at this clown trying to bite off a ledger!” he called. Laughter relit the room.

Victor swept his gaze across them. “Tell me where the ledger is,” he said. “Or I tell Donovan about the side deals you took last spring. The ones you thought were clean.”

They froze. The silence was a blade. Nolan’s throat worked. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would. Because you thought you could step on people.” Victor’s voice was a scalpel. “Look at me. I have nothing, but I can make you poorer in pride. I can make you small in front of the men you bought.”

Nolan’s jaw clenched. He swallowed, humiliated, and pointed. “Fourth. The bookie. Back room. Under the third floorboard.”

Victor nodded. “Good. One ledger found. One favor owed.” He patted the silver coin on the table and slid it into his palm like an oath. “Remember this night.”

Outside, Murray, Donovan’s runner, watched from the shadow, face hard. He clicked a line into his communicator: “Rat in Mercer making noise.”

Victor felt the system’s whisper: “Reward granted. +50 credits. Ally interest increased. Enemy flag: Murray (Donovan).”

He told Kai, low: “We go Fourth at dawn. You bring Mira. We move fast.”

Kai’s eyes shone. “We did it.”

Victor’s mouth twitched. “We didn’t. We made them do it. There’s a difference.”

Mira shoved him playfully. “You’re all right for trash, Victor Draven.”

“Trash that talks back,” he said. He scanned the street. He saw a silhouette slip away, Murray heading toward Donovan Tower. 

The system tightened: “Enemy awareness rising. Immediate risk: moderate.”

Victor’s smile thinned. “They’ll notice. They always do.”

Kai swallowed. “Is that bad?”

“It’s the moment when they should have left us alone,” Victor said. “But they didn’t. So we don’t leave them alone.”

He turned to the boy and the woman, voice soft, conspiratorial. “Tonight you sleep. Tomorrow you learn how to move like you belong in the dark. Tomorrow, we will take a ledger. And when we have it, we make those men trip on their own names.”

Mira’s grin was fierce. “I like tripping people.”

Victor’s hand went to the coin again, the tiny weight a promise in his palm. “This is the first of many little slaps,” he said. 

“Not their faces, yet. Their reputations. Their money. Their comforts. We take them apart one stitch at a time. And when we are done, they’ll have nowhere left to stand.”

Kai’s voice was small but steady. “And you? What do you want when it’s over?”

Victor looked up at the tower lights, that cold lattice of glass. For a moment, his expression cracked with something like the old pain, Elara’s smile on a bridal step, the master’s hand in a toast that had a trap in it.

“I want them to feel what I felt,” he said. “Only worse.”

A sound came then, a low chuckle from the shadows. Murray emerged, grin flat as a blade. “You’re clever,” he said. “But clever doesn’t kill a ledger. It just dies slower.”

Victor’s fingers curled. “Then let it die fast.”

Murray’s grin widened. “You don’t get to choose how things die, Victor. You just die.”

The bar fell silent. Victor felt the system pulse hot in his head, “Enemy Murray: bodyguard. Combat probability: low. Risk: high. Suggest retreat? No.”

Victor smiled, small and feral. “Maybe. But I don’t plan on dying tonight.”

Murray laughed, too loud, and the henchmen shifted. The first slap had been aimed at pride; the next would be aimed at a ledger. 

Victor’s throat tightened with anticipation. He tasted revenge and it was sweet. “Then show me,” Murray said. “Prove it.”

Victor’s grin spread to a full, dangerous smile. “Watch.”

Outside, the city breathed on, uncaring. Inside, a small man’s pride had been nudged toward ruin. 

Victor Draven had taken a coin and a secret and, in the process, made enemies notice a gutter rat with teeth.

The system chimed softly in his mind, almost pleased. “Progress acknowledged. Next: ledger acquisition. Risk: elevated. Reward: substantial.”

Victor’s laugh was a low thing, part hunger, part promise. “Let them notice,” he told the empty room. “Let them all notice.”