2025-06-30 20:54:32The Everhart boardroom felt colder than usual. Not physically, spiritually.
Thorne stood to Kai’s right like a shadow given form, while Dr. Vael watched silently from the corner, pen already dancing across her notepad.
Twelve chairs surrounded the obsidian table. One now belonged to Kai. Eleven others were occupied by the Board , a collection of power brokers, empire-builders, and apex predators.
Most of them were old. Well they were all together dangerous. Each held just enough power to be useful… and just enough ambition to be fatal.
Valencia Calderón entered last. She wore red, always red, with lips to match. Her eyes flicked across the room, then landed on Kai.
She smiled like someone who had tried to slit your throat and now wanted to toast to it. “Mr. Everhart,” she purred. “So glad to see you... intact.”
Kai said nothing. Thorne slid a sleek black box in front of him. The chip recovered from the attacker.
Kai pressed a button. Valencia’s own voice filled the room, “Strike before he roots. Do it quietly… Burn him too.”
Silence fell like a guillotine. Even the oldest board members shifted uncomfortably.
Kai stood. “This,” he said, “is what you’ve built. A family where murder is the greeting card.”
Valencia leaned back in her chair, unbothered. “Oh please, Kai. We all make moves. Yours just happened to be louder.”
“You sent people to kill me.”
“I sent people to test you. If you died, you weren’t worthy. If you survived, congratulations, you passed.”
One of the board members, an older man named Gerrit Duvall, whispered, “She’s not wrong. The throne is never given. It’s defended.”
Kai’s hand clenched. “I’m not here to play chess with snakes.”
He turned to the board. “You all think this is business as usual. But it’s not. Lucian is dead. And I’m not him.”
One of the women, Eleanor Zhao, cybernetics queen of Singapore, raised an eyebrow. “Then who are you, boy?”
Kai stepped forward. “I’m the mistake you made when you left me alive.”
Gasps. A few murmurs. Valencia clapped softly. “Finally, some spine. Now let’s see if you can use it.”
Kai’s voice dropped. “From this day forward, I don’t just hold the Everhart seal, I wield it.”
“I will audit every shell company. Reopen every classified vault. Shred every lie you’ve built to feed your own coffers. And if you think for one second you can buy me, blackmail me, or bury me…”
He pointed directly at Valencia. “Try again. But next time, I’ll send your own assassins back gift-wrapped in gold.”
A pause. Then Gerrit laughed. “Ha! The pup has teeth.”
Valencia’s eyes sparkled, dangerous and amused. “You’ve made your first enemy, Kai.”
Kai didn’t blink. “Good. Now I know where to start.”
After the meeting, as the room emptied, Dr. Vael approached.
“You threw blood into the water,” she warned.
Kai didn’t turn around. “I didn’t throw it. I bled for it.”
That night, a new name was etched onto the Everhart vault logs, "Black Protocol: Phase Zero - Authorized by: K. Everhart"
The system asked: Confirm activation of Project Lazarus protocols?
Kai hovered his finger over the screen. Paused. Then pressed: YES.
...
The invitation wasn’t sent. It was delivered, in the form of a charred envelope, sealed with Everhart gold.
Inside: a single card. Black. Embossed. THE HUNTER’S GALA. For ghosts, kings, and those who can’t afford to be seen.
Venue: Undisclosed. Dress code: Fear or Fortune. Host: K. Everhart.
Twelve hours later. The underworld gathered, arms dealers, oil princes, exiled warlords, rogue CEOs. The kind of crowd where a smile was a weapon and a handshake might end in a bodybag.
The gala was held at an unlisted fortress in Montenegro, guarded by private drones and facial DNA gates. Only one person held the kill-switch to the event. Kai Everhart.
Thorne stood beside him on the upper balcony, watching the wolves mingle. “Do you really think this will work?” Thorne asked.
“No,” Kai replied. “I know it’ll burn.”
Below, Valencia Calderón arrived late, always the queen. Her eyes locked with Kai’s. She raised a glass. Mocking. Daring.
He nodded once. Let her wonder. Kai stepped up to the mic. “You all know my last name. But from tonight onward, you’ll know my rules. I don’t forgive attacks. I don’t forget betrayals, and I don’t negotiate with those who can’t look me in the eye. So if you’re thinking about taking a slice out of Everhart now that Lucian’s dead, don’t. Because I’m not building a business. I’m building an empire that feeds on the bones of those who tried to kill me, and if you try again, I won’t kill you…I’ll erase you.”
He raised a glass. “Cheers.”
Then the lights cut out. A gasp. Security systems jammed. The Everhart sigil on the wall flickered.
An intruder had breached the gala. Screams. The windows shattered inward. A sleek drone zipped through the crowd, then self-detonated in mid-air, not to kill, but to blind.
In the smoke, a voice rang out over the speakers, “Nice speech, heir. But real power isn’t inherited…It’s stolen.”
Gunfire erupted. Guards moved. Thorne pulled Kai behind cover. But in the chaos, one thing was clear. This wasn’t Valencia. This was someone else.
Someone who had just declared war on the entire Everhart bloodline. By dawn, the gala was empty. Bodies covered. Contracts broken. Alliances shaken, and on the wall, spray-painted in silver, "LONG LIVE THE FIRSTBORN."
Back at the estate, Kai watched drone footage in silence. Thorne spoke. “We don’t know who they are yet. No face. No signature.”
Kai’s eyes never left the screen. “They weren’t after me.”
“Then who?”
Kai turned to him. “They were after Lazarus.”
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The morning began with a storm that refused to move. Heavy clouds clung low over Crest Tower, gray and unmoving, as if the sky itself wanted to trap everything inside the building.Wind hit the windows in harsh bursts, like fists pounding to be let in. Inside, the halls were quiet, not peaceful, but tense, like a breath held too long.Rhea Caulder walked quickly toward Kai’s private command floor, her footsteps sharp against the polished ground. She held three datapads against her chest, filled with proofs, counter-proofs, system logs, and desperate explanations she had repeated a thousand times to herself since dawn.She rehearsed the words again: “It’s not me. I was framed. Kai, you know me. You KNOW me.”But fear twisted inside her. Ever since the Whisper Grid showed her name. Ever since the blackout that erased the signature. Ever since the satellites were traced back to her access…Nothing had been the same.Eren hardly looked at her. Security watched her every step. And Kai, Ka
CHAPTER 176. THE SHADOW IN HER SIGNALS
The night after Kai dissolved the board felt too quiet, unnaturally quiet, the sort of silence that made the walls of Crest Tower feel alive. It was the silence before a break, before something whispered from the dark.Eren Vale stood alone in the lower data vault, a place few people ever entered willingly. The cold metal walls rose like cliffs on all sides, humming with faint energy. Hundreds of sealed storage columns lined the chamber, each holding archives of Crest’s deepest secrets, logs, encrypted keys, forgotten experiments.Tonight, something in this room was wrong. Terribly wrong. He felt it before he saw it.A pull. A disturbance in the hum. Like someone breathing behind a closed door.Eren tightened his grip on the datapad in his hand. The Whisper Grid’s message from earlier still glowed on the screen: “ORIGIN: RHEA SOLD THE SYSTEM KEYS.”He didn’t believe it. He didn’t want to. But Kai’s face after reading that message… the fear in his eyes… the confusion… the trembling p
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CHAPTER 174. THE SILENCE BEFORE THE SCREAM
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