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.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 282
The council chamber was completely silent. The large glass walls showed the dark city outside. The lights in the room were dim and cold.Kai stood at the center of the room. He looked at the faces around him. There were men and women from all over the world. They were smart, powerful, and rich. They were chosen to be on the new Inheritance Council. They thought they were here to be kings and queens. They thought they were here to rule.They were wrong.Kai took a deep breath. He pressed a button on the glass table. A large picture appeared in the air. It was a picture of the human brain. Next to it was a picture of a small, silver wire. The wire looked like a tiny metal spider."This is the final step," Kai said. His voice was calm, but it filled the whole room. "You have all agreed to serve on the council. You have agreed to watch the Grid. But the Grid must also watch you."A man named Silas frowned. He was an older man with gray hair. He had once been a president of a large country
Chapter 281
Kai stepped onto the polished obsidian floor of the council chamber, the room’s lighting low but precise, each panel of glass reflecting the faint lines of activity within. Screens hovered mid-air, displaying live feeds from global nodes: financial centers, military outposts, and autonomous Grid cores, all synchronized to his oversight. He paused at the center of the chamber, feeling the faint hum beneath his feet, a rhythm not of machinery but of decision-making, pulsing through circuits and protocols that responded to his presence as instinctively as a heartbeat.Rhea stood across from him, her eyes narrowing at the flares of data cascading along the walls. The human restoration analyst had not spoken since entering; she had observed this ritual many times before, but the scale was new. This wasn’t a broadcast, a tactical maneuver, or even a demonstration, it was institutionalization. Kai had decided that his influence, the system’s autonomy, and the fragile balance of human ov
Chapter 280
Kai stepped through the council chamber doors before dawn. The building was empty, though every surface reflected faint blue glows from the embedded sensors, from the panels under the glass floors to the monolithic walls. The city beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows slept, or thought it did. Kai’s reflection merged with the digital overlays projected across the glass, showing markets, power grids, sensor networks, and human flows. Every pulse of data hummed faintly against the hum of the building’s core systems.He didn’t speak. His presence alone seemed to compress the air. Each monitor flickered as he passed, displaying fragments of activity.A consortium meeting paused mid-vote, a shipping lane rerouted without notice, a minor financial anomaly in a remote hedge fund. All of it converged silently, threading a map of influence and control across the world.Kai stopped at the center of the chamber, where the council’s dark glass stretched from floor to ceiling. In it, his image sta
Chapter 279
The seastead was quiet, a low hum of generators and the distant creak of steel in the waves. Kai leaned against the observation bulkhead, staring at the shifting ocean. His reflection in the glass was fractured, broken by condensation and the dim glow of consoles. Nothing stirred beyond the predictable rhythm of the platform, but the monitors inside the operations room were anything but ordinary.Rhea’s voice came over the secure comm, clipped and precise. “Kai, you need to see this. Now.”He turned, noting the weight in her tone. She didn’t usually call him with urgency unless the matter required more than a routine assessment. Her holographic form flickered into focus in front of him, fingers hovering over projected data streams.“What is it?” Kai asked, voice steady. He didn’t move closer; he didn’t need to. The Grid could already account for his position, for his attention, for the microsecond delay in his heartbeat.“The Grid, it’s modeling you,” she said. Her words were delib
Chapter 278
The council room was silent before the glitch began. Screens lined the walls in every direction, a patchwork of feeds from satellites, financial monitors, and digital surveillance nodes. Each display glimmered with data streams, graphs, and charts. A low hum filled the room, the sound of processors working tirelessly to maintain order in a world still trying to reconcile the illusion of peace with the underlying instability Kai had orchestrated.It was just past midnight. Most council members had slouched in their chairs, waiting for the next briefing, their eyes half-closed behind the glare of the monitors. Outside, storm clouds pressed against the glass walls, faintly illuminated by lightning. The wind rattled the panes, a reminder that the world beyond the room still obeyed physics, unlike the signals within.Then, without warning, the monitors flickered. A brief stutter, as if someone had tapped a cable, but the hum continued uninterrupted. The councilors straightened in unison
Chapter 277
The terminal lights in the Seastead flickered unevenly, casting long shadows across Kai’s workspace. The hum of Project Eden vibrated faintly through the reinforced floor panels, a constant heartbeat beneath the quiet. Outside, the waves slammed against the platform’s stilts, carrying a rhythm that seemed almost synchronized with the digital pulse beneath his feet. He didn’t move from his position at the central console; he didn’t need to. The information was already there, streaming in from encrypted channels, open-source feeds, and intercepted communications.A name appeared on the holographic display: Eren Kahl. It was flagged with the highest priority, Class Omega. Intelligence nodes had confirmed his survival. The man who was supposed to have been dead, eradicated in the chaos of the last Vault eruption, had resurfaced. But he wasn’t the same operative who had moved alongside Kai during the early reconstructions. His movements were precise, calculated, and public only when
You may also like
I Made $900 Trillion In 24 Hours
Jericho Chase145.7K viewsUnexpected Trillionaire.
Max Luthor91.6K viewsThe Legendary Conglomerate
Lord MOH121.4K viewsThe Rise of the Son-in-law After Divorce
Enigma Stone245.3K viewsThe Healer of Hollow Street
Ibechi326 viewsSaintess’s Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander
Universeleap5.4K viewsThe Triple-D Failure Rises To Power
Twynkl400 viewsFrom Prisoner To God Of War
Bitter Sugar365 views