2026-05-20 01:33:51After breakfast, Erick waited until the last car disappeared down the driveway before slipping out of the Laurent residence. He couldn’t risk any of the servants noticing he was gone.
A black sedan idled in the alley behind the mansion. The rear window rolled down.
Ivan looked the same. The scar across the back of his left hand hadn’t faded in eight years.
Erick climbed into the back seat. The sedan pulled away before the door had fully closed.
“You look like trash,” Ivan said in Russian.
“English only,” Erick said.
Ivan smirked. “Five years playing house servant, and this is what’s left? Getting bitched at by maids?”
Ivan lit a cigarette. “I know about the baby. Aria told me. Sorry, Boss.”
Erick’s jaw flexed. “Don’t.”
Ivan nodded. “Understood. Won’t mention it again.”
A few minutes later, Erick’s phone buzzed. A message from Dominique:
[Vanessa’s divorce party tonight. Martin will attend despite your behavior. Try acting like an adult for one evening. I am tired of cleaning up your messes.]
He stared at the Gerard Dominion building in the distance. Five years ago, “Quade” was a name people feared.
Now, the world moved on like Quade never existed.
The car stopped at a red light. His new phone buzzed.
Unknown number:
Unknown Number
Emergency Board Meeting by Order of Quade.
Victor Hale Will Announce Quade’s Death Today.
Erick’s grip tightened. “In that case… I’m done hiding.”
***
Ivan parked in the underground garage, wiping grease off his hands. “I’ll wait here.”
“Get upstairs.”
“Boss, it’s boring as hell up there.”
“You’re coming. I need backup.”
Ivan snorted. “Fine. But if I break someone’s jaw, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”
Erick entered the lobby wearing a frayed black windbreaker, faded T-shirt, and worn-out jeans. His sneakers had long lost their white color.
“Sir?” The receptionist (Clara, according to her name tag) looked him up and down. “This area is for authorized personnel only.”
“Board meeting,” Erick said, still walking.
She blinked, then gave a disbelieving laugh. “I’m sorry… who are you?”
Security moved in quickly. A large guard grabbed Erick’s arm. “You need to leave, buddy.”
Before Erick could react, Ivan was beside him. “Get your hand off him.”
The lobby went quiet.
Someone muttered something about calling the police. Another joked that a homeless guy had wandered in looking for free coffee.
Clara’s expression shifted as she typed rapidly on her computer.
By then, people were staring. Someone muttered something about calling the police. Another joked that a homeless guy had wandered in looking for free coffee.
The elevator dinged, and every assistant on the floor froze mid-movement.
“Miss Aria…” Clara started.
“Is this how we treat major shareholders now?” Aria’s voice was calm but carried. “This man is the founder and CEO. Show some respect.”
The guard immediately let go. The whispering stopped.
Aria looked Erick over, her face unreadable to everyone else. Only he noticed the slight tightness in her jaw.
In the elevator, Aria stared straight ahead.
“You could have warned me,” she said.
“And miss the show downstairs?” Erick replied.
She exhaled through her nose, almost a laugh. “Five years later and you’re still difficult.”
They rode up in silence for a few floors.
“You’ve been letting them walk all over you,” she said quietly.
Erick didn’t answer. There would be time for that conversation later.
When the doors opened on the executive floor, assistants froze mid-step. A tablet nearly slipped from someone’s hands.
Victor Hale was stepping out of the boardroom, laughing until he saw Erick. The laugh died instantly.
Erick didn’t slow down. His shoulder crashed into Victor’s.
Victor staggered into the wall.
He pushed open the boardroom doors.
Eight heads turned at once.
Victor’s chair — Erick’s chair — sat empty at the head of the table.
Erick crossed the room slowly, his worn sneakers leaving faint traces of dirt on the polished floor. At the head of the table, he pulled out the chairman’s chair and sat.
The room went completely silent.
“Victor won’t be joining us,” he said. “We’ll start without him.”
Michael, one of the original board members, looked like he might choke. “Quade?”
Erick leaned back. “Still alive, Mike.”
He slowly scanned the faces around the table. Many of them had known him when they were eating instant noodles in a freezing garage almost a decade ago.
“First order,” he continued. “Victor Hale is suspended, effective immediately.”
No one spoke.
Michael swallowed. “There are procedures…”
Erick tossed his phone onto the table. “Second: someone sent me condolences on my death this morning. I’ll be finding out who.”
He let the silence stretch, then gave a small, cold smile. “Bad news, gentlemen. Quade isn’t dead.”
He pulled the thick leather-bound financial report toward him and opened it. The cold smile instantly faded from his face as his eyes locked onto the active acquisition data.
His eyes narrowed. [LAURENT CORP - EMERGENCY CAPITAL INJECTION: $200,000,000 APPROVED BY V. HALE.]
Erick closed the report. The room went silent.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “Who approved transferring two hundred million dollars to Laurent Corp?”
No one answered.
Erick smiled. “Good. Then I’ll assume it was theft.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 124 — First Ripple
The medical node sat inside a quiet two-story clinic on the edge of Long Island City, the kind of place that handled private insurance and asked few questions after hours. Continuity had used it before. The residual pattern matched three earlier short-term holdings from the mirror slice.Erick’s team hit it at 15:41, forty-one minutes after Aria flagged the early movement order.Ivan took the rear service door. Jacqueline covered the street exit. Erick and one additional operator entered through the side stairwell Aria had unlocked with a residual utility pulse that looked like ordinary grid noise. Remi remained at the command site with her mother and Dominique, running the external watch.The two Continuity handlers were already in motion when the team cleared the second-floor corridor. One reached for a compact weapon. Ivan ended the movement without a shot. The second ha
Chapter 123 — New Terms
Kane’s message arrived on the shielded line at 14:07.No greeting. No residual encryption theater. Just a short string of coordinates, a time stamp seventeen minutes out, and a single line of text:Permanent-site breach is circulating. I have a location. New terms. Meet or lose it.Erick read it once. Aria confirmed the coordinates resolved to a decommissioned waterfront warehouse on the Red Hook side, quiet enough for a conversation and exposed enough that neither party could easily trap the other.He did not waste time debating.“Ivan, hold the second courier pursuit at soft distance. Do not engage. Jacqueline, maintain the box on Hale. No movement. Aria, full residual sweep of the warehouse grid. I want every camera and every possible exit marked before I arrive.”Remi stepped closer to the table. “You’re going alone?”“Kane does not deal if the room is full. Ivan will be on the perimeter. You stay here with the residual map and your mother. If Continuity moves on any of the remain
Chapter 122—Closing Files
The command room held the residual tension of a failed intercept.Aria’s screens still showed the second courier vehicle cutting hard through Midtown traffic, now moving with the deliberate unpredictability of a team that knew it was burned. The distribution van on West 28th had gone dark thirty seconds after the dead-man pulse. Continuity had activated the remaining packets remotely and pulled their handlers offline.Erick stood at the main table, issuing short, precise orders. Ivan was already redirecting to cut off possible exit routes. Jacqueline held the box on Victor Hale’s townhouse. The captured courier remained secured and silent in the secondary vehicle.None of that stopped the private fracture opening on the other side of the room.Remi had not moved since Aria confirmed the remote activation. She stared at the legal pad with the three residual names, then at her mother, then at Dominique.When she spoke, her voice was quiet enough that only the four of them could hear it.
Chapter 121—Dead-Man Pulse
Ivan’s team hit the Vermilyea walk-up at 09:17.Soft knock. No answer. Second knock. Still nothing. The heat signature on the third floor had not moved in twelve hours. Aria confirmed the phone was still powered and stationary.Ivan gave the signal. The lock yielded in four seconds. They entered clean.The apartment was small, ordered, and empty of life. A single mug sat on the counter, coffee gone cold. The bed was made. The phone lay face-down on the nightstand, still pinging its location. No signs of struggle. No forced exit.The residual carrier was gone.Ivan’s voice came flat over the channel. “Site is clean. Subject vacated. Phone left behind as decoy. We’re checking residual traces now.”Erick stood in the command room of the secondary site, eyes on the live feed. Remi was beside him. Dominique remained at the far table with her mother’s legal pad. Jacqueline was still boxed on Victor Hale’s townhouse.“How long?” Erick asked.Aria answered. “Last genuine movement on the phone
Chapter 120—The Residuals
Remi’s mother was sitting at the small table in the back room with a legal pad and a black pen. It looked weird having a paper pad in a place full of screens and encrypted feeds, but she wouldn’t use a tablet. She claimed paper didn’t leave a digital trail.Erick stood across from her. Remi sat right next to her mother, just in case her hand started shaking again and she needed help.Dominique stayed by the door with her arms crossed, just listening in since nobody told her to leave. Ivan was guarding the outside. Jacqueline was still watching Victor Hale’s townhouse up on the Upper East Side. Aria was on the line, staying quiet and only chiming in when something important happened.The older woman wrote down three names in neat print. She didn’t look up until she was done with the last one.“These are the ones I am certain still carry active Legacy residual status,” she said. “Not historical. Not closed. Active.”Erick read the names upside down.The first belonged to a woman in her
Chapter 119 — Containment
Aria traced a signal from the Laurent estate node to a discreet Upper East Side townhouse. At 7:19 a.m., the house received the packet, sent a four-second acknowledgment, and both went dark.Erick didn’t rush. After securing the perimeter and having Aria research the house’s history, he entered the side room. The door sealed with a magnetic click, leaving him with Dominique; she looked composed, but her rigid shoulders and twitching fingers betrayed her.“You asked for a private conversation,” he said. “You have it.”She did not sit.“The packet went to a private address.” Her eyes stayed on him. “Who lives there?”“We don’t know yet.”“But you’re already surrounding it.”“Yes.”Her mouth tightened.“You are treating this like another residual trail.”“It is a live link.”“It is under my family’s house.”“I know.”“Then stop talking to me like this is just another piece of data.”Erick said nothing.Dominique’s breath came out slowly through her nose.“That node is connected to the sam
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