The God of war They Burned Is Back

Where the Music Died

The leather folio rested against Callum’s chest as he crossed the symphony hall’s parking lot. His operatives had vanished as efficiently as they’d arrived, leaving only the empty gilded frame and the forged score as evidence of his declaration.

A black car waited at the curb. Callum slid into the back seat.

“Mercer Tower,” he said.

The driver nodded and pulled into traffic.

Callum watched the city lights blur past the tinted windows. Sterling City had changed in fourteen years—taller buildings, new construction, different faces. But some things remained constant.

Greed, lies, and the powerful crushing the weak.

Twenty minutes later, the car stopped before a steel-and-glass tower that pierced the night sky. Fifty stories of wealth and excess. At the pinnacle, lights blazed from the penthouse level.

The Maestro’s Ball. Octavia’s annual celebration where she auctioned her compositions to the highest bidders. Millions of dollars changing hands for works she’d stolen.

Callum stepped out of the car and looked up at the tower.

His tower. Built on his family’s grave.

The Reed estate had stood here once—a sprawling property with gardens and a music room where Julian composed until dawn. Where Matthias practiced violin. Where Iris played in the afternoons while their mother painted.

Octavia had bought the land after the fire. Razed everything, and built this monument to her stolen legacy.

Callum entered the lobby. The marble floors looked imported from Italy, and crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A security desk held two guards in expensive suits.

They looked up as he approached.

“The penthouse is private tonight, sir. Invitation only.”

Callum walked past them toward the elevators.

“Sir!” One guard stepped into his path. “You can’t—”

Callum met his eyes, and said nothing. Just looked at him.

The guard’s hand moved toward his radio, then stopped. Something in Callum’s gaze made him step aside.

The elevator doors opened. Callum stepped inside and pressed the button for the penthouse level.

As the elevator rose, he closed his eyes and remembered.

His father’s grand piano had stood in the east corner of the music room. Black lacquer, Steinway and Sons, Julian’s most prized possession. He’d composed at that piano for twenty years.

Callum could still hear the melodies drifting through the house late at night when Julian couldn’t sleep. Complex harmonies that made their mother smile. Music that made the world stop and listen.

Iris’s toy corner had been near the windows—stuffed animals arranged in careful rows, picture books scattered on cushions. She’d sit there for hours, humming along to Matthias’s violin practice.

Now all of it was gone.

Replaced by champagne fountains and sculpture gardens and the obscene wealth of thieves.

The elevator chimed as it reached the fiftieth floor.

The doors opened onto opulence. A massive ballroom sprawled before him—crystal chandeliers, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, tables draped in white silk. The elite of Sterling City mingled in evening wear, champagne flutes in hand, dripping with jewelry and self-importance.

A string quartet played in the corner. One of Octavia’s compositions, no doubt.

Callum stepped into the room, and conversations faltered as heads turned.

He was dressed well enough in a black suit and white shirt, no tie, but something about the way he moved felt off, his walk wrong. His presence was a disruption in their carefully curated world.

Callum ignored the stares and walked to an empty VIP table near the center of the ballroom. He sat down, placed the leather folio beside his wine glass position, and gestured to a passing waiter.

“Your most expensive vintage.”

The waiter blinked. “Sir, do you have—”

“The wine. Now.”

Something in Callum’s tone made the waiter nod and hurry away.

Around him, the elite whispered.

“Who is that?”

“I don’t recognize him.”

“Someone should call security.”

Callum leaned back in his chair and let his gaze wander the room. The champagne fountain stood where his father’s piano once stood. The sculpture garden occupied the space where Iris used to play.

He could almost see them. Ghosts of memory. Julian at his piano, eyes closed in concentration. Iris laughing as she stacked blocks. Matthias tuning his violin.

The waiter returned with a bottle—some French vintage from a year Callum didn’t care about. He poured a glass and retreated quickly.

Callum lifted the glass and took a slow sip.

Not bad. Wasted on these people, but not bad.

The ballroom doors opened. A man entered—tall, broad-shouldered, moving with the aggressive confidence of someone used to being feared. He wore a security chief’s credentials and an expression of barely controlled anger.

Rowan Thorne. Head of Mercer security.

He scanned the room, spotted Callum, and his jaw tightened.

Rowan crossed the ballroom in long strides, security personnel falling in behind him. He stopped at Callum’s table.

“Stand up.”

Callum took another sip of wine.

“I said stand up. You’re trespassing. This is an invitation-only event.”

“Then someone should have better security,” Callum said quietly.

Rowan’s face flushed. “Let me see your invitation.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Then you need to leave. Now.”

Callum set down his wine glass and met Rowan’s eyes. “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said no. I’m staying.”

Rowan’s hand moved to his radio. “Fine. We’ll do this the hard way—”

His eyes caught on the leather folio beside Callum’s glass.

“What’s that?”

“None of your concern.”

Rowan reached for it. “I’ll be the judge of—”

Callum’s hand shot out like a striking snake. His fingers locked around Rowan’s wrist mid-reach and slammed it down onto the table.

Rowan’s eyes widened.

Callum applied pressure. Slowly, deliberately.

The bones in Rowan’s wrist began to grind together—an audible creak that made nearby guests gasp.

“Don’t,” Callum said, his voice eerily calm, “touch my father’s work.”

Rowan’s face went white. He tried to pull free, but couldn’t.

Callum increased the pressure.

The grinding became a crack.

Rowan screamed—a raw, animal sound that cut through the ballroom’s polite murmur. He dropped to his knees beside the table, his wrist pinned, bones shifting under Callum’s grip.

“Please—stop—please—”

Callum released him.

Rowan collapsed backward, clutching his shattered wrist to his chest. Tears streamed down his face. His breath came in ragged gasps.

The ballroom had gone silent. Every conversation stopped. Every eye turned toward them.

Callum picked up his wine glass and took another sip.

“You should ice that,” he said.

Rowan couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe. He stared up at Callum with a mixture of pain and terror.

The security personnel who’d followed Rowan stood frozen, unsure of what to do.

Then something unexpected happened.

Rowan laughed.

It was short, broken, more air than sound—the laugh of a man with a shattered wrist and nothing left to lose. He pressed his ruined arm against his chest and looked up at Callum with wet, red-rimmed eyes.

“You really think it was her,” Rowan said.

Callum’s hand stilled on his wine glass.

“You came here for Octavia.” Rowan’s voice was rough, each word costing him something. “Fourteen years of planning and you’re pointing at the wrong person.”

The ballroom remained frozen. Callum set down his glass.

“Explain that,” he said quietly.

“I worked for Octavia for eleven years.” Rowan’s jaw clenched against the pain radiating from his wrist. “I know what she did. I know she recorded Julian’s work without permission. I know she claimed his catalog.” He paused, gathering breath. “But the explosion—the gas lines—that wasn’t her order.”

The words landed in the silence like stones dropped into still water.

Callum’s expression didn’t change. But something behind his eyes shifted—a calculation being interrupted mid-step.

“You’re lying,” Callum said.

“I have no reason to lie. You just broke my wrist.” Rowan laughed again, that same broken sound. “Octavia wanted Julian discredited. Professionally destroyed. She wanted his work, yes—but she wanted him alive and disgraced, not dead. A dead martyr is harder to erase than a living failure.”

Callum stared at him.

“The explosion wasn’t hers,” Rowan continued, his voice dropping. “Someone else ordered it. Someone who had their own reasons to make sure Julian Reed never conducted that premiere. Someone who needed him gone before the full score could be performed.”

“Who.”

“I don’t know the name. I only know that Octavia spent three years after the fire trying to find out herself. Because whoever it was—they used her. They set the explosion and let her build her empire on top of the ashes, knowing she’d be the obvious suspect if anyone ever came looking.”

Silence.

Callum’s fingers had gone very still on the stem of his wine glass.

Everything he had built for fourteen years—every confirmation, every thread of evidence pointing at Octavia Mercer—had assumed a single, clean line of guilt. She had wanted the work. She had taken the work. She had destroyed the man who created it.

The logic was clean.

But clean logic was sometimes the most dangerous kind.

“Why are you telling me this?” Callum said.

Rowan met his eyes. “Because I’ve worked for that woman for eleven years and I’ve watched her carry something she won’t name. Guilt she didn’t earn and can’t explain away.” His voice went quieter. “And because whoever actually did it is still untouched. Still comfortable. While you’ve been aiming at the wrong target.”

The security personnel behind Rowan had not moved. The ballroom guests had not moved.

Callum sat very still.

Then the ballroom doors burst open.

Guards poured in, thirty of them, maybe more. They wore combat gear, carried weapons, and moved with military precision. They filled the ballroom and formed a perimeter around Callum’s table.

The elite guests scrambled back, champagne glasses forgotten.

Callum remained seated. He swirled his wine slowly, watching the liquid catch the chandelier light.

Rowan dragged himself away, still cradling his ruined wrist. The guards surrounded the table, weapons ready, waiting for orders.

And Callum sat in the center of it all, alone, unmoved, swirling his wine with eerie calm.

But for the first time since he’d walked back into Sterling City, something beneath his certainty had shifted.

Something colder than doubt or hesitation had settled in him, a question he hadn’t planned for.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If Octavia didn’t order the explosion—then who did?

And why had they made sure she would profit from it?