2026-01-28 03:27:58Chapter 8
Finn’s phone buzzed.
His chest tightened the moment he saw the sender.
School General Group — Principal.
That alone was enough to turn his palms cold. The man barely touched his phone. Half the time he forgot it existed.
It was a voice note.
“Hey, chaps,” the principal’s voice crackled through. “I’ve done my best for those of you aiming for the Ivy League. I already mentioned my old friend to you. Last minute, he was able to make it here tonight.”
Finn’s fingers curled around the phone.
“This is the only — and last — favour I can do for you all,” the principal continued. “The ball is in your court. He’ll only be selecting two students.”
Two.
Finn’s hand started shaking. Badly.
The presentations began almost immediately. Two of the ten selected students from his school had already gone up.
They were good. Too good. Polished slides. Perfect diction. Buzzwords stacked on buzzwords like some horrible word Jenga.
And the man at the high table?
Bored.
Painfully, visibly bored. He didn’t even try to hide it — barely nodding, fingers tapping, eyes drifting around the hall like he was shopping for an exit.
Finn swallowed hard.
“Honey,” Abigail said gently, leaning closer when she noticed how pale he’d gone. “Are you okay?”
“What if I don’t get this?” he whispered. “My shot at the University of Pennsylvania—”
“There are other schools,” Lombard offered, with all the warmth of a parking ticket.
Abigail patted Finn’s hand gently, worry all over her face — pointedly ignoring whatever Lombard thought he had just contributed.
But something was off.
For reasons nobody could explain, the students from other schools were being called up first. Finn and the rest from his school sat frozen, watching time betray them, one presentation at a time.
Even the principal had leaned over to speak to his “old friend” — and the man had waved him off without a second glance.
Finn’s fingers dug into his knees.
“By the time it’s our turn,” he whispered hoarsely to Abigail, “he’ll already be tired. And I’m… number nine.”
His voice cracked on the number.
Abigail squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, dear,” she murmured, then shot a look at Lombard — a clear, silent instruction: say something reassuring.
He didn’t.
He didn’t even pretend to consider it.
He sat there, calm and unreadable, like this entire hall of desperate teenagers was elevator music. And that — more than anything — made Abigail genuinely curious.
Was he heartless?
Or was he sitting so far above this world that none of it registered?
“We’re going to take a short break now,” the MC announced, clapping his hands. “I suggest you all grab some water, stretch your legs, relax — while our VIP, uh… goes to take a leak.”
Nervous chuckles rippled through the hall.
Everyone knew the truth, though. One nod from that man could tilt the doors of any Ivy League open. And so far, he’d been staring at students like they were presentations he never ordered.
Whatever heart the man once had?
It hadn’t come with him tonight.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the hall — while anxiety sat heavy on every chest in the room — Cassian and the family he’d come with were relaxed.
Almost celebratory.
Cassian had already made his move. A message to the important man’s PA:
“Tell your boss I’d like to have coffee with him before the kids start presenting.”
He’d added the name of the school the boy was from.
And just like that, the order had changed. His power had quietly rearranged the room.
And tonight, that same power was going to cost Finn everything.
All because of that bastard Lombard.
Cassian sipped his drink and smiled. He did love a productive evening.
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Chapter 310
For the next several hours, Lombard and Barrett went over the plan and over it again, the whole Cataract team funneling in every scrap of intel they had until the shape of the thing was solid. The bones of it were simple, which was the only kind of plan Lombard trusted. The patriarch wanted a confession delivered to Lombard’s living face — that was the one appetite the old man could not talk himself out of, the vanity that had kept Lombard breathing when a smarter enemy would have had him shot in his sleep weeks ago. So the plan would feed that appetite. Lombard would let himself be taken. Quietly, without a struggle, exactly the way a broken man goes. Because the whole arrangement the trio had built their empire on ran on one belief — that grief makes men fold, that a Lombard with his Clara taken would crawl into his shell and stay there. He would give them precisely that man. He would walk into the room they prepared, wearing the defeat they’d ordered off a menu. And every step
Chapter 309
Vivienne genuinely believed she was orchestrating a beautiful reunion.Lombard’s instructions had been vague and urgent, so she’d improvised with her whole heart. She’d called Julian first — told her, half-whispering like it was a delicious secret, that Drake had come by earlier in a state, saying things about not being good enough for her, and that if Julian wanted to catch him while his guard was down and his heart was open, she should come now, this exact morning, before he talked himself back into hiding. It was the kind of story that questioned no logic: it explained why Drake was already there, it flattered Julian’s role as the one who could reach him, and it was urgent enough to override the strangeness of the hour. Julian had been in a car within fifteen minutes.Then Vivienne had called Drake — and, knowing exactly the condition the man was in, she had not led with anything dumb. She’d told him Julian had turned up at her door in tears, frightened after everything at her pa
Chapter 308
Toby had been forced to call her guardian — her uncle — because she could not bring herself to fully trust anyone from the Cataract team. They weren’t people you trusted on sight. And in a night like this one, the devil you knew felt safer than the angel you didn’t.Not that she knew, for certain, that her uncle wasn’t quietly aligned with her grandfather. She didn’t. But he was the one risk she was actually able to take right now, so she took it — and now the two of them were here, at what Barrett kept calling Lombard’s house.“Sir,” Barrett called as he stepped inside — and that, too, was something Toby found herself turning over: that this enormous man knew Lombard’s home well enough to walk into it freely, panel codes and all.“I’m in the bedroom,” Lombard called back, his voice still laced thick with sleep.“I’ve got company. Toby, of the C&R Consortium, and her uncle. You want me to bring them in?”“No, silly. I’ll come out.” A groan, the sound of a man leaving a bed he’d only j
Chapter 307
Back in the car, the rest of the Belmont family had just gotten a clear look at the other man climbing out of Barrett’s vehicle behind Toby — and their blood turned to water.They recognized him immediately. The heir of the C&R Consortium. The same man Riley had tried to lock up and, in a fit of her own temper, tried to kill some days ago — the man she’d assumed was still safely contained, without ever confirming it. And the moment he clocked that Riley was standing free in the open air, casually threatening a member of the Cataract team, it was going to become a disaster for all of them.Riley, of course, had absolutely no idea of any of this. She was still at the gate, still building her charge, still operating under the belief that this was a morning about Mireya and an apology and a doorbell.The C&R heir stepped fully out of the car, saw Riley, and stopped short — genuinely shocked. Wasn’t this the same person who was supposed to be locked away? Who had, in his own home, come at
Chapter 306
It was only five in the morning, but not a single member of the Belmont family had slept a wink.The first problem was that they’d spent half the night trying to pin down Lombard’s location. The other half had gone to drilling Mireya on exactly what she would say — because it was decided now that nearly the whole family would be going with her to deliver the apology.But the biggest problem was the tracking itself. All those hours spent trying to fix Lombard’s position on a screen, and they simply could not hold it. It was the first time any of them had encountered a person who could be somewhere one minute and, the next, be gone off the map entirely — as if he stepped out of the world between refreshes. And there was no point going after a man you couldn’t find. If they couldn’t figure out where he was, there was no operation to run.Then, thirty minutes ago, a new location surfaced. And it had held — no movement for the better part of an hour.Which told them everything they needed.
Chapter 305
“Get my phone. Find out who those bastards are,” Lombard snapped under his breath, threading the car through a corner that had not been designed for this speed.Drake grabbed the phone, took pictures out the back window between bursts, and fired them off to the number Lombard barked at him. In less than two seconds, a name came back in the chat.Drake’s eyes widened.“Who the fuck is it?” Lombard demanded, zigzagging through another sharp turn.“Hearse,” Drake read out. “It says — it’s Hearse.”Lombard slowly brought the car to a halt.“Why the fuck did you stop?!” Drake exploded. “Continue driving!”“He just announced his presence to us,” Lombard said, almost thoughtful. “It’s the dance you do before you take your prey. You have to make a show of it first.”“This is no time for poetic talks!” Drake snapped, trying to shake the man out of whatever trance he’d dropped into.And at the corner of his eye, he watched it happen: the car that had been raining bullets simply drove past them.
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