2025-07-03 13:10:34Lena kicked a crate in the warehouse. “Marcus, you let Crane walk all over us!” she shouted.
Marcus just shrugged and shot a glare at Elias. “This rookie is the one who messed everything up.”
“I can help,” Elias said, stepping forward.
Lena gave him a doubtful look. “After everything that went wrong because of you, what could you possibly do now?”
Marcus scoffed. “You’re not a fixer, Kane.”
Just then, Elias’s scar tingled, and he heard his mother’s voice in his mind: “Keep going.”He clenched his fists, feeling a spark of determination.
Lena tossed him a silver, worn-out keycard. “Your mom left this. It’s connected to her past work.”
Elias caught it, turning it over in his hand. His heart was pounding. “What kind of work?”
Lena’s expression softened. “She owned KaneTech, the biggest tech company in Chicago.”
Mara’s penthouse was bright with lights, the Voss gala in full swing. Trent stood with Carla, grinning. “Elias is trash,” he said loudly. Mara frowned slightly, sipping her wine. Her new suitor, Victor Dray, rich and full of himself, laughed. “Your ex? A janitor dog?”
Elias stood at the edge of the gala, invited by Lena to listen in on the Voss family's plans. Dray’s words stung. “Mara’s moved up,” he said with a sneer, holding her close.
Mara looked at Elias, her face blank. “He’s nothing,” she said coldly.
Elias’s chest tightened, his scar itching. He wanted to speak up, but he stayed quiet, and listened to them.”
Dray went on, “Janitors don’t belong here, Mara.” The crowd laughed, their eyes turning to Elias, cutting him down with every glance.
Mara turned away, her heels clicking against the floor. Elias felt worthless, like nothing more than the dirt she saw him as. But then, his mom’s voice echoed in his mind: “You’re more.”
He tightened his grip on the keycard, determined to find out the truth. Lena gave him a quick nudge. “Let’s get out of here!”
Later, at a bank in Chicago, Elias handed the keycard to a teller. “Can you check this?” he asked.
The teller typed a few things, then suddenly gasped. “This account belongs to Amelia Kane. There’s $1.5 trillion dollars in it.”
He blinked, trying to process it. Wait... how much is the Prince of Saudi worth? Wasn’t it around $1.4 trillion?
His eyes widened. Does that mean… I’m richer than the Prince of Saudi? Overnight?
He shook his head, almost laughing. Nah… my ears must be messing with me.
Lena leaned in close and whispered, “Your mom built KaneTech into a huge company. This is all hers.”
Elias’s head spun. His mom… a trillionaire? He still felt like a nobody, but this changed everything. “Why me?” he asked.
“You’re her son,” Lena said. “Crane’s working with the Voss family, covering up their crimes. We need your help.”
Elias slowly nodded, feeling the weight of it all. The money wasn’t really his yet—but just knowing it existed gave him a spark of purpose. He had to find a way to use it.
Back at the gala, Mara sipped her drink, Dray at her side.
Carla leaned in and whispered, “Crane’s crew just hit our partner.”
Mara frowned. “It was Elias, wasn’t it?”
Dray laughed. “He’s a loser, Mara. Forget him.”
Mara stared down at her glass, the look in Elias’s eyes still stuck in her mind. He had looked hurt. “He wasn’t always like that,” she said quietly.
Dray rolled his eyes. “You’re too soft.”
Mara’s jaw tightened. Guilt crept in. “Maybe I judged him too quickly…”
Meanwhile, at the safehouse, Elias sat across from Lena, the keycard lying on the table between them.
“This account… it’s massive,” Elias said.
Lena nodded. “Your mom beat the Voss family at their own game. Crane’s just helping them cover it all up.”
Elias’s expression hardened. “Then I’ll expose them, and claim what's mine in the eyes of everyone.”
Lena leaned in. “What’s the plan?”
Elias tapped the keycard. “Track Crane’s deals. Find proof of the Voss bribes—whatever they’re hiding.”
Lena gave a small smirk. “You’re starting to think like her now.”
From the corner, Marcus scoffed. “Just don’t screw it up again.”
Elias ignored Marcus, his mom’s voice clear in his mind: “They don’t get to decide who you are.”
“I need proof,” he said.
Lena handed him a laptop. “Start with Crane’s bank records. They’re connected to the Voss family. Any huge illegal transaction could be a lead.”
Elias nodded, his fingers already moving as he began to search.
Meanwhile, Mara paced around her office while Carla sat at the desk.
“Crane’s dangerous,” Carla said. “If Elias is working with him…”
Mara cut her off quickly. “He’s not,” she said, her voice shaky. “He’s not that kind of person.”
Carla raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
Back at the safehouse, Elias stared at the screen as Crane’s records loaded.
“This transfer from a Voss front company—same week KaneTech lost it's biggest software contract,” Lena muttered. “Not proof, but it smells dirty.”
Elias’s scar burned. His mom’s company—ruined by them.
He had been embarrassed and cast aside, but now he had a purpose.
“I’ll make them pay,” he said.
Lena placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not doing this alone, Elias.”
He looked up at her, and for the first time, he felt her trust.
From the side, Marcus muttered, “Just don’t mess it up, rookie.”
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Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Nine
The morning air was sharp, cutting through the stillness like an uninvited question. Elias had been awake for hours, reviewing incident reports and community feedback from the past week. The city had not quieted; it never did. Every success seemed to attract new scrutiny, every flaw became fodder for critics. Yet, beneath the surface chaos, patterns were emerging, threads of stability weaving through the disorder.He entered the operations room, finding Mara already at the central console, scrolling through live feeds from across the districts. “Early start?” she asked without looking up.“I couldn’t sleep,” Elias admitted. “Too many variables to track, too many moving parts to anticipate.”Mara didn’t comment, simply pointed to a cluster of alerts. “District Seven. Energy grid anomalies. Sensors suggest potential overload in multiple substations. Could cascade if not addressed quickly.”Elias leaned forward, scanning the data. “Do we know the cause?”“Preliminary analysis: unexpected
Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Eight
The message arrived just before dawn, blinking into Elias’s private channel with a priority tag so high it bypassed every filter he had left in place. He had fallen asleep with his tablet still glowing on the desk beside him, a half-finished report on distributed authority performance metrics slowly dimming as exhaustion finally claimed him. When the alert pulsed through the room, it felt like a physical jolt, dragging him back into consciousness with the kind of urgency that only real danger could produce.The words were brief and deliberately vague.System irregularities detected across three civic networks. Possible coordinated interference. Stand by for escalation.Elias sat up, rubbing his face, the familiar weight of responsibility settling onto his shoulders before his feet even touched the floor. It had been months since the city had experienced anything that could truly be called a crisis. There had been friction, of course, and political maneuvering, and the steady hum of in
Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Seven
Elias sat at his desk long after the office lights had dimmed, the glow from his laptop screen casting a pale reflection in his glasses. Outside, the city was alive with the muted hum of late-night traffic, the occasional siren, the distant chatter of pedestrians who had not yet surrendered to sleep. Inside, he was listening to the quieter sounds: the soft tapping of keyboards from the few late-shift staff, the occasional shuffle of papers, the whir of the air conditioning, a constant reminder that everything here was running on multiple levels of coordination, some visible, some hidden.The issue that had pulled him into the office so late was not dramatic. No fire. No scandal. No media cameras flashing in the hallways. It was a simple error in scheduling—an overlap in critical personnel assignments across two high-priority projects that could cascade into serious inefficiency if mishandled. On paper, the system could handle it. In practice, Elias knew that people would feel the ripp
Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Six
The first sign of trouble came from a place no one had been watching.It was not a crisis report, not a leak, not a headline shaped like accusation. It was a resignation letter, uploaded quietly into the system at 04:17 in the morning, flagged only because the sender was someone who never acted without calculation.Director Halvorsen. Infrastructure Coordination.Elias read the letter twice before the weight of it settled.It was polite. Measured. Almost apologetic. It praised the direction of reform, acknowledged the necessity of distributed authority, and then, in a single understated paragraph, explained why the author could no longer serve under it.“I no longer recognize the boundaries of my mandate,” the letter read. “Without those boundaries, I cannot act with the clarity required of this office.”No accusations. No threats.Just withdrawal.By sunrise, three more resignations followed. All similar. Different departments. Same phrasing. Same concern, expressed with professional
Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Five
The summons did not arrive with urgency. No red banners, no escalating alerts. Just a short message marked informal briefing, sent through a channel that existed specifically so nothing said inside it could be quoted later.That alone told Elias everything he needed to know.By the time he reached the council annex the following morning, the city was already awake in the way it only became when something invisible was shifting underneath it. Traffic moved, but more cautiously. People read their phones longer at crossings. The noise level felt the same, yet the attention beneath it had sharpened.Inside the annex, the room chosen for the briefing was deliberately unremarkable. No seal on the wall. No cameras. A table large enough to signal seriousness but small enough to suggest deniability. Seven council staffers were already seated, spread unevenly, each with a tablet or notepad placed in front of them like a defensive measure.No one stood when Elias entered.That was also new.“Than
Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Four
The meeting was already heated by the time Elias arrived.Voices leaked through the glass walls of the conference room, sharp and layered, the sound of people arguing who were accustomed to being listened to. Someone had drawn a crude diagram on the whiteboard, arrows crossing over each other in a way that suggested less clarity than intention.Elias paused outside long enough to understand the shape of it. This wasn’t panic. It was ownership colliding with disagreement.When he stepped in, no one stopped talking. That, too, was new.“We’re treating this like a theoretical failure,” a woman near the board said, tapping the marker against her palm. “But the vendors are already adjusting behavior. They’re gaming the discretion window.”“Which means they always were,” someone else replied. “We just didn’t see it because the incentives were centralized.”“That doesn’t help us now.”Elias took a seat without announcing himself. He listened.The issue was procurement again. Not corruption,
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