The Ghost Consigliere

CHAPTER 19: The Ghost’s Signature

The fifth-floor investigation room at Saint-Bastian Central Police Headquarters reeked of stale coffee, thick cigarette smoke, and cheap paper. Inspector Kael Thorne stood silently before a giant bulletin board layered in green cork. His sharp eyes moved across dozens of horrifying Polaroids pinned up at random.

The left side of the board was filled with photos from the crime scene at Club The Apex. Dante Vancroft’s shattered body on the helipad platform, piles of guards with torn ballistic vests on the stairwell, and the ruined faces of other guards who had shot each other at close range.

The right side was covered in much fresher horror, the Obsidian Vault crime scene. Photos of the red-beret commander whose head had been blown apart by his own men, photos of the Vault Master with a combat knife through his throat, and of course, the photo of the vault corridor with its massive door hanging wide open, not a single dollar left inside.

Thorne connected the two massacre sites with strands of red yarn, literally dark red wool string pinned across the board.

"Time synchronization, CQC tactics, zero outside ammunition, and no escape trail from the main roads," Thorne murmured, spinning a red marker in his hand.

He pinned a printed report to the center of the board. It was a preliminary autopsy summary from the medical division.

100% of victims died by bullets or weapons belonging to their own allies.

60% of victims showed microscopic anomalies of neural tissue damage at the base of the brain and blood vessel discoloration turning black (Electrical Necrosis).

Thorne smiled sideways.He had found the pattern. The Ghost only needed close range, and once it gained one corpse, the dominoes of death rolled forward without mercy.

Bang.

The investigation room door slammed open. A heavyset middle-aged man stormed in, face burning red. His uniform was decorated with rank stars. The Chief of Saint-Bastian Police, Captain Briggs.

He was not a cop.

He was Vancroft’s pet dog in a police uniform, paid to look away whenever the syndicate needed cleaning done.

"Inspector Thorne!" Briggs roared, his voice shaking the cramped room. "What the hell is this circus board?! I issued an official order an hour ago. The nightclub case and the meat-packing plant case are closed! Classified as a pure internal faction conflict inside Vancroft. No third-party involvement!"

Thorne did not turn around. He kept staring at the board, slipping the red marker into his suit pocket.

"Faction conflict, Captain?" Thorne’s voice was flat, heavy, calm. He turned slowly. "What kind of faction conflict makes a field commander shoot his own men in the head after slaughtering them? What kind leaves not one eyewitness alive? And since when do rebellious factions empty fifty million dollars in bearer bonds?"

Briggs swallowed, but his ego as a superior officer forced him one step forward.

"To hell with the bonds! Dirty money always grows legs. What matters is we have no visual proof of another entity attacking. The factory CCTV was damaged..."

"The cameras didn’t record them, Captain. But he deliberately left us a signature."

Thorne strolled to his desk, picked up a thick brown folder stamped CONFIDENTIAL in red, and threw it into Briggs’s chest.

Briggs caught it roughly. "What is this?"

"Photos my forensic team hid from your official report, because I knew you’d hand that report straight to your boss, Vancroft," Thorne replied coldly, lighting a cigarette.

Briggs opened the folder.

His heavy face went pale instantly. His hands trembled.

Inside was a high-resolution photo of the wall in the Obsidian Vault corridor, right beside where the Vault Master had died. On the white concrete wall was a message written in broad, heavy smears of blood.

Fresh blood from the one-eyed man’s body, dragged roughly by someone else.

The message was unmistakable, written in uneven block capitals:

THEY BLEED JUST LIKE US.

Thorne exhaled smoke toward the ceiling.

"Faction rebels don’t write poetry in their own comrades’ blood, Captain. That sentence is a declaration of war. Someone out there is proving to every syndicate in this city that the Vancroft Family, the ones rumored to be bulletproof and godlike, bleed just as easily as the rest of us."

Briggs crushed the photo in his fist.

Cold sweat ran down his forehead.

He knew this message would destroy Vancroft’s image of invincibility in the underworld. Other syndicates would begin daring to fight back if they learned Vancroft could bleed.

"Inspector," Briggs threatened, pointing a finger in Thorne’s face. "You’re playing with fire. Shut this case down, or I’ll strip your badge dishonorably tomorrow morning."

Thorne stepped forward, cutting the distance until only inches separated their faces. His towering height made Briggs look small.

"Take my badge tomorrow, Briggs," Thorne whispered, cold as ice, staring into his superior’s panicked eyes. "Then the day after, files about Vancroft bribe money flowing into your young wife’s accounts will land on a federal investigator’s desk. I’m a detective. I hunt serial killers. Mafia or ghost, doesn’t matter. Don’t stand in my way."

Briggs froze. His mouth opened and closed like a fish starving for air. At last he slammed the folder onto the desk and stormed out of the room. Once his superior was gone, Thorne looked back at the blood-written message.

"Death answered with death," Thorne murmured. "The question is, Ghost, how far are you willing to go before you turn to dust too?"

At the same time.

Upper Sector, Saint-Bastian.

Far from the slums, factory smoke, and acid rain of the Lower Sector, a colossal penthouse rose through the night clouds. Three-meter windows displayed the entire city glittering below.

The room was decorated with black marble, classical paintings worth millions, and absolute silence free of electronic music or chaos.

At the center of the room, seated in a high-backed chair wrapped in genuine leather, was an old man in a flawless ivory-white suit. His hair was silver-white, slicked neatly back. The wrinkles on his face did not make him seem weak. They gave him the aura of an ancient predator.

He was Silas Vancroft. The Patriarch. The man who held Saint-Bastian by the throat.

On the mahogany desk before him lay a copy of the blood message from the Obsidian Vault.

Silas stared at the words THEY BLEED JUST LIKE US in total silence. Slowly, he turned the signet ring bearing a golden wolf crest on his right index finger.

His steel-colored eyes showed no explosive rage.

He was too old. Too experienced. But beneath that silence, a lethal aura filled the room so heavily that the four armed guards in the corners barely dared breathe.

"Dante dead. The vault emptied. Fifty million vanished. And now this street-level vandalism." Silas’s deep voice vibrated the crystal glass of bourbon nearby. "Someone is trying to prove Vancroft can be broken. They are attacking our myth."

A young man in a dark blue suit stepped forward from the shadows and bowed deeply.

"Mr. Silas. Police Chief Briggs is trying to cover the trail, but a detective named Kael Thorne has begun to sense this Ghost’s existence. Would you like me to... handle the detective?"

"No. A competent policeman will be useful for driving the Ghost out of its rat hole."

Silas rose slowly, leaning on an ebony cane carved with silver.

He walked toward the window and gazed over the sea of city lights below.

"Grox and his executioners vanished from that cripple boy’s apartment. Soon after, Dante died. Then our vault was breached." Silas exhaled softly. "Either the cripple boy is dead, or he has a very talented protector."

"Mr. Silas, do you believe Elias..."

"Elias is crippled. He cannot hold a gun, much less slaughter an elite Spetsnaz platoon," Silas cut in sharply, his face tightening with disgust at the mention of his own son’s name. "This is the work of a rival syndicate, perhaps the Eastern Cartel, using a high-level assassin and using that bastard child’s apartment as the opening trigger."

Silas turned around. His old eyes were now filled with absolute cruelty.

"Call Gideon," Silas ordered.

The young man immediately paled.

"M-Mr. Silas... Gideon? Must we summon the First Pillar this soon? He... he is difficult to control and..."

"I said call Gideon!" Silas thundered, his voice splitting the silence like lightning. The young man bowed instantly in fear. "I do not care if he burns half the Lower Sector. Tell him to cleanse these streets with fire. Burn every bar, every rat hole, every black market until they hand me the Ghost’s name."

The imaginary camera seemed to zoom slowly into Silas’s old eyes, cold and merciless.

"They want to see us bleed?" Silas hissed.

"Then we will drown them in an ocean of their own blood."