2025-07-26 16:39:22The building looked abandoned,its windows boarded, paint peeling, and the fire escape rusted to hell. But Jeffrey didn’t trust appearances. Appearances had gotten him almost killed once.
Victor parked the black SUV two blocks away, killed the lights, and handed Jeffrey a small comms earpiece. “Third floor. You sure you want to go in alone?”
Jeffrey fixed the earpiece and nodded. “No backup. If it’s a trap, I want them to think I took the bait.”
Victor frowned. “I don’t like this. Someone already killed the informant. We’re walking into a nest.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Jeffrey stepped out into the night, coat flaring behind him as the wind picked up again,same wind from the funeral, only colder.
The red brick building stood like a forgotten relic of another life. One of the windows on the third floor was cracked open, just enough to let someone in without breaking it further, Convenient, Too convenient, He climbed the fire escape silently, boots making no sound on the rusted steel. At the top, he paused.
A security tripwire had been placed across the window frame.Sloppy. Rushed. But lethal.He snipped the wire with his blade and slipped inside.
Dust and silence blanketed the apartment like death. A cracked television sat on the floor beside a broken chair. Cigarette butts overflowed from a tin can. Rotting food containers lined the sink.
But no one.Not yet.He moved quickly, heading toward the bedroom. Just like the informant said,closet on the left wall. Jeffrey stepped inside and rapped on the wall three times. Hollow.
He pressed his hand against the back and felt the edge of a false panel.With a tug, the panel popped loose,and behind it, a small fireproof safe.
He pulled it free and laid it on the floor, brushing off years of dust. His fingers hovered over the keypad. The informant hadn’t given a code. “Victor, I’ve got the safe,” he whispered into the mic.
“Copy that. Want me to try cracking it remotely?”
Jeffrey was about to reply when he heard it, the soft creak of a floorboard behind him, He spun, Nothing, But his instincts screamed. Jeffrey stepped back just as the bedroom door exploded inward and a figure lunged from the shadows.
The man was masked, muscular, dressed in tactical gear. A stun baton in one hand. A blade in the other.Jeffrey dodged the first strike, barely missing the arc of electricity aimed for his ribs. The blade came next, a low sweep meant to disable.
He blocked it with his forearm,pain lanced up his elbow, but he didn’t stop moving. Years of underground fights, ambushes, and backroom kills had honed him into more than a businessman.
He was a survivor. A weapon.He caught the man by the arm, slammed him into the wall, and delivered a brutal knee to the gut. The masked attacker dropped the baton.
Jeffrey went for it,but the attacker kicked out his leg, and they both crashed to the floor.The fight turned primal,fists, knees, elbows. The sound of grunts and furniture breaking filled the apartment.
Victor’s voice barked in his ear. “Talk to me!”Jeffrey pinned the attacker’s arm, twisted, and slammed his fist into the side of his head.The mask cracked.He ripped it off.And froze.It was Camilla.
Her nose was bloodied, lip split. But her eyes… her eyes were filled with fury. “Camilla?” he breathed. “What the hell are you?”
She shoved him off with surprising strength and rolled to her feet, grabbing the blade.“I told you not to come back,” she snarled.
Jeffrey stood, breath ragged. “You’ve been following me.”
She wiped the blood from her mouth. “You should’ve stayed dead.”
He didn’t move. “Why are you here?”
“I came for the ledger. The one that can burn every family in Ravenport to the ground,including mine.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re working for them?”
“I’m working to keep people alive, Jeffrey.” Her voice cracked. “You don’t know what’s in that ledger. If it leaks, it won’t just be the Goodmans who fall.”
She pointed the blade at him. “Step away from the safe.”
He didn’t flinch. “You’re not going to stab me, Camilla.”
She shook. Not with fear, but with the conflict behind her eyes. “I already betrayed you once,” she whispered. “Don’t make me do it again.”
Jeffrey stepped forward slowly. “Then tell me the truth. Did you know what they planned? What Eleanor and Zane were doing to my father?”
Silence. He saw it in her face,the guilt. The burden. “Yes,” she said. “But not until it was too late.”
That was all it took.Jeffrey reached down, picked up the safe, and walked past her.She didn’t stop him.But as he reached the hallway, she called out behind him.
“Jeffrey, you don’t understand. You think you’re fighting the Goodman family,but they’re just the front. There’s someone else pulling the strings.”He turned halfway.
“Who?”But her answer was cut off,by the sound of a sniper rifle.
Glass shattered.Camilla screamed.Jeffrey tackled her to the ground just as the bullet embedded itself in the wall where her head had been.Another shot rang out.The lights burst above them.
“Victor!” Jeffrey shouted. “We’re under fire,get the car ready!”
“On my way!”
Jeffrey grabbed Camilla’s hand and yanked her to her feet. “We’re not done,” he growled.
Camilla stared at him, breathing hard, then nodded.They ran.Bullets chased them through the apartment, through the stairwell, down into the alley where Victor screeched the SUV to a halt.
They dove inside.As Victor sped off, tires screeching, Camilla clutched her side, blood stained her fingers. “You’re hit,” Jeffrey said.
“I’ll live.”
He stared at her, chest heaving. “Who wants this ledger so badly they’ll kill both of us?”
She looked at him.And said the name that made Jeffrey’s blood freeze. “Your father’s oldest friend. The one who taught you to fight. The one who was at the funeral today.”
Jeffrey’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me… Henry Vance?”
Camilla nodded and then, his phone buzzed. One new message. ''You’re too close. Walk away or she dies next time.''
Jeffrey looked at Camilla, then the safe in his hands and finally, at the message. he didn’t blink, he typed two words. ''Try me''.
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Chapter 10 – The Hollow Grounds
2:13 A.M. Location: Goodman Estate – War RoomThe air in the war room buzzed with tension. Asher stood at the center, flanked by armed guards and screens pulsing with red alerts. Every remaining branch of the empire was on high alert, bleeding resources.Eleanor sat quietly beside him, her eyes trained on a blinking red dot that represented Jeffrey’s last confirmed location. “Why the Hollow Grounds?” Asher asked.Eleanor smiled faintly. “Because it’s where he was born. Not biologically… but forged. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will go there. The question is, who gets there first: Jeffrey… or the hunter?”Asher tightened his jaw. “Then we bait the trap. Let’s remind him what the Goodman name means.”He turned to his security lead. “Send in The Butcher.”A younger Jeffrey screamed as water flooded into a cold isolation tank, The voice of Henry Goodman echoed over a speaker: “Hold. Do not break. Do not panic.”Each minute, the pressure increased, the oxygen decreased. Children trainees
Chapter 9 – Dead Men Don’t Stay Silent
1:42 A.M. Location: The Vault, Off-Grid Safe HouseThe screen flickered before Jeffrey. Dozens of files filled the air in glowing red light names, faces, locations, all tied to the people who orchestrated his downfall. “Camilla,” he said, voice ice-cold. “Initiate purge protocol.”Camilla hesitated. “You’re sure?”Jeffrey’s eyes never left the file on-screen:Name: Asher Goodman.Status: CEO.Crimes: Fratricide, conspiracy, asset laundering, sanctioned assassination.He nodded once. “Burn everything tied to his empire. I want the world to feel his collapse.”She stepped forward, fingers flying over the console. “Purging… now.”Across the globe, a dozen Goodman accounts blinked out of existence. Satellites went dark. Buildings locked down. Executives lost access to bank vaults as firewalls collapsed and systems imploded.The Goodman Empire had just taken a bullet to the spine, Asher Goodman’s voice echoed through the boardroom like a whip crack. “Who the hell authorized a blackout on o
Chapter 8 – Burn the Bloodline
The wreckage of the downed helicopter still burned behind them, its smoke rising like a beacon into the black sky.Camilla crouched behind a half-toppled marble angel from the old sanitarium graveyard, adrenaline surging as rotors thundered above. Bullets cut the air around her like screaming banshees.Jeffrey stood calmly, his gaze locked on the remaining two helicopters. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes… they burned. “How the hell did you do that?” she gasped. “That chopper just exploded.”Jeffrey didn’t answer, Instead, he raised one hand toward the sky and snapped his fingers.The second chopper suddenly jerked midair, its rotors sputtering unnaturally, Inside, the pilot screamed, yanking the control stick as all systems flashed red. “We’ve lost hydraulics! Nav systems are rebooting on their own!”Then came a voice, not over comms, but in their heads: “You should’ve stayed out of my skies.”The chopper slammed nose-first into a tree line, bursting into orange flame, From the
Chapter 7 – The Lazarus Protocol
00:06… 00:05… 00:04…Camilla’s fingers flew across the ruined control panel, overriding every layer of encryption she could find. Sweat poured down her face, heart hammering. Each second that ticked down was a promise of death.“Come on, come on…” she hissed.00:03… The doors wouldn’t respond, The override was locked. She needed another way.00:02…Then she spotted it: a hardline access cable snaking beneath the console, leading toward the adjacent maintenance room. Manual bypass. Ancient tech, She grabbed her gun, kicked open the side panel, and dove inside.00:01…Too late, The timer hit zero, But instead of an explosion, A thick pulse of electromagnetic force shook the building, The lights died, The cameras shattered, And Jeffrey’s body twitched violently inside the sealed chamber, caught in a silent, invisible wave.Camilla stared at the blackened monitors. “What the hell was that?”Jeffrey convulsed once, twice, then everything stopped, No movement, No sound,Just his body, spraw
Chapter 6 – Echoes From the Grave
The van sped through the backstreets of the city like a hunted animal, headlights off, tires whispering over rain-slick asphalt. Inside, no one spoke.No one breathed too loud. The only sound was the replay of the video, Jeffrey’s father, barely alive, whispering a truth too dangerous to finish, Camilla rewound it again.The old man’s face was sunken. Tubes snaked through his nose, machines blinking behind him. But his eyes, those sharp, calculating Goodman eyes, still burned with fire.“Jeffrey… if you’re watching this… they failed to kill me, but they will come again and the truth, the truth is not what you think.”Then static.No time. No place. Just a digital ghost clinging to life, Jeffrey stared at the screen, jaw clenched, Victor finally broke the silence. “This doesn’t make sense. He died three years ago. Autopsy. Public funeral. I was there.”“So was I,” Camilla said quietly.Jeffrey spoke without looking at them. “What if we were never supposed to see the real body?”Victor
Chapter 5 – Smoke Without a Fire
By dawn, the smoke from the underground vault had reached the streets above. Firetrucks surrounded Goodman Tower, lights flashing red and white like a battlefield wound pulsing through the concrete.Local authorities swarmed the area, trying to contain the damage unaware they were standing on top of a war.Jeffrey watched it all from across the street, cloaked in a black hoodie and a baseball cap pulled low over his face, Camilla leaned on the bench beside him, pale, stitched, and still trembling from the adrenaline of the night before.Victor hadn’t spoken in twenty minutes, he sat across from them, one eye swollen from the beating he took. Bandages covered one side of his jaw. His pistol was tucked under the long coat he wore like a second skin.The city had no idea it was on the edge of collapse. Yet, Jeffrey broke the silence first. “Henry didn’t know it was a decoy. That bought us maybe twelve hours.”Victor gave a dry, blood-flecked cough. “Should’ve let me shoot him when I had
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