The King in the Dark.

Chapter 20 – Empire in Bloom

The city had changed its face but not its soul. From the rusted cranes of the southern ports to the neon veins running through the nightlife districts, every street hummed beneath the banner of Los Reyes del Barrio.

And at the center of it all sat Diego Flinch, the man everyone called El Rey.

He looked at the part now - tailored suits, dark silk shirts, a watch that cost more than the block he grew up on. He moved through meetings like a man who owned the room but never raised his voice to prove it. Politicians shook his hand. Businessmen called him a “private investor.”

The same man who once slept in an abandoned car now signed contracts with million-dollar smiles.

But Diego’s empire was built on ‘ghost architecture’s plans and projections that appeared, as always, without origin.

Every month, an unmarked envelope slid beneath his office door or appeared in a briefcase delivered by some courier who swore they didn’t know the sender. Inside: maps, trade route diagrams, coded expense sheets.

“Whoever’s sending this stuff,” his lieutenant Luis said one afternoon, “they’ve got a brain like a damn accountant and a general rolled into one.”

Diego leaned back, lit a cigarette, eyes on the paper. The handwriting was different now - neater, colder, stripped of its old boyish scrawl-but the rhythm… the rhythm was unmistakable. Each line was a puzzle with a soul.

He exhaled smoke slowly. “He’s watching,” he said.

Luis frowned. “You think….”

“I know.”

Outside, the port hummed with industry that wasn’t in any city record. Shipping containers marked with foreign insignias came and went, carrying liquor, engines, weapons-everything worth buying or killing for.

The docks men worked in silence, afraid to ask too many questions. Even the corrupt inspectors looked the other way, nodding respectfully when El Rey passed by.

Yet the most powerful man in the southside still spoke, every night before bed, to the ghost of a boy who burned.

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That evening, Diego stood on the balcony of his penthouse overlooking the city. The skyline shimmered like molten glass. He sipped dark rum and spoke softly into the wind.

“You built this, Hermano,” he said. “You and your damn notebooks.”

Down below, life pulsed. Men loaded trucks in organized silence, music drifted from nightclubs he owned but never entered, and the sound of laughter - real or bought - echoed across the streets.

He smiled faintly, but his eyes betrayed the fatigue of a man who’d won too much, too fast. Power brought luxury, yes - but also ghosts. Always ghosts.

Behind him, the clock struck midnight.

And somewhere, far from the lights, in an apartment so bare it might have been mistaken for abandonment, Harold Flinch sat before a table scattered with papers and photographs. A single lamp burned low.

He wore gloves as he wrote, his handwriting now sharp and surgical. In the corner of one page, he sketched a small crown and closed the book. Then he folded the paper neatly, slipped it into a plain envelope, and stamped it with a wax seal bearing no mark at all.

“Empire in bloom,” he murmured. “But roots rot fastest when unseen.”

He glanced at a faded photograph pinned to the wall-two boys in ragged clothes, grinning through soot and dust, their eyes burning brighter than any skyline.

“Keep building, Diego,” he said quietly. “I’ll keep watching.”