They Regretted Betraying The Wrong Man

The first move

Chapter 9: The First Move

The phone in Adrian’s hand felt like a live wire. The grainy photo of himself stared back a ghost caught in a snapshot. The text beneath it was worse. Not a threat. An invitation.

Let’s talk.

His first instinct, carved into him by three years of training, was to run. To vanish from this street, burn this identity, and re-emerge somewhere else, deeper in the shadows.

His second instinct was pure, white-hot rage. To call the number. To scream down the line. To tell Victor Hale exactly what was coming for him.

Adrian stood perfectly still, leaning against the cold brick. He let both instincts rise, and then he let them pass through him like wind through a dead tree. He focused on his breathing. In. Out. The glacier reformed, thicker, colder.

He had made a mistake. Sentiment was the backdoor. Victor had predicted the ghost would visit its grave.

Fine. Acknowledge the mistake. Learn from it. Use it.

Victor wanted to talk. That meant Victor didn’t have enough information yet. He had a photo, he had a location, he had a psychological profile. He didn’t have a name, a motive, or a plan. He was probing. This text was his first chess move, putting a pawn in the center of the board.

Adrian’s fingers moved over the screen, cold and steady. He didn’t type a reply. He opened a different app, a custom tool Elias had built. He fed Victor’s message into it. It began tracing the signal, not to a location that would be too easy, probably a burner phone in a dumpster but to a pattern. What kind of encryption? Was it a known Hale security vendor’s signature? The digital equivalent of checking the make and model of the sniper’s rifle.

While it ran, he did something even more important.

He looked up.

His eyes scanned the surrounding buildings. Rooftops. Windows. There. Two buildings down. A small, dark shape on a ledge. Not a camera. A drone. A quiet, professional-grade quadcopter, no bigger than a bird, its lenses like black eyes.

Victor hadn’t just been passing by. He’d set a watch on the old apartment. A silent, robotic sentinel.

Adrian didn’t look directly at it. He pushed off the wall and began to walk, not hurriedly, just a man finishing a late stroll. He turned the corner, out of the drone’s direct line of sight.

His mind was a war room.

Option One: Silence. Don’t reply. Let Victor wonder. It would unnerve him, but it would also make him escalate. He’d send men. He’d dig harder. He’d involve Adrian’s family.

Option Two: Misinformation. Reply from a fake persona. A disgruntled ex-employee. An eco-terrorist. Send Victor chasing phantoms.

Option Three: The Truth. Or a piece of it. The most dangerous play.

He stopped under the awning of a closed bodega. The tracing app pinged. The encryption was military grade, but with a subtle commercial signature. A private security firm. “Aegis Shield.” He knew them. Ex-special forces, expensive, thorough. Victor had hired hunters.

Good. Hunters could be led. They could be tripped.

Adrian made his decision. He opened a secure notepad. He typed a single sentence. Not on the text thread from Victor. He sent it through a different, untraceable channel he knew Aegis would be monitoring a dummy server linked to Hale Capital’s mainframe that he’d left as a digital tripwire.

The message was addressed to Victor’s personal, secure email.

It read:

"You shouldn’t have brought her to the bait. It makes you look scared. - A Friend from the Grave."

He hit send.

It was a face-slap. Not a physical one. A psychological one. It said: I know your move. I know your hired help. And I know your weakness.

It reframed the entire night. Not Victor catching Adrian in a trap. But Adrian observing Victor’s clumsy, emotional use of his own wife as bait.

Two minutes later, his phone buzzed. A new message, from a different number.

V.H.: Clever. But ghosts don’t send emails. Who are you?

Adrian almost smiled. Anger. Good. Victor was engaging. He’d taken the bait of his own pride.

He typed back, using the same secure channel.

"The man you forgot you buried. The one who learned how to dig."

He waited. The pause was longer this time. He could imagine Victor in his penthouse, whiskey forgotten, staring at the screen, trying to place the voice, the threat. Running through a list of old enemies.

The reply came, faster now.

V.H.: Cole. It has to be. The only ghost with a reason to haunt that street. I thought you’d drowned in a bottle somewhere. You’ve improved.

Adrian’s heart was a steady, cold drum. He was seen. The mask was off. The game was truly, personally, on.

"I’m not the one who needs improvement. Eden Heights is just the first brick loose, Victor. I’m here for the whole wall."

He didn’t wait for a reply. He shut down the phone, removed the battery, and dropped both pieces into separate storm drains on different blocks.

He walked for an hour, changing directions, using old tradecraft to check for tails. He saw none. Victor was regrouping. Thinking.

Finally, Adrian slipped into his safe perch. The monitors glowed in the dark. He pulled up the live feed from the camera inside Victor’s office.

Victor was there. Standing at his window again, phone to his ear. He wasn't calm anymore. His free hand was clenched into a fist at his side. He was barking orders.

Adrian leaned forward, the blue light of the monitors painting his face in stark, emotionless lines.

He had done it. He had stepped out of the shadows and whispered his name in Victor’s ear. He had made it personal for both of them.

He was about to switch feeds when Victor’s office door burst open. Not an aide. Two of the Aegis Shield hunters—muscle in tactical gear. They spoke quickly.

Victor’s head snapped up. He listened, then his gaze shifted. Not to the door. Not to his men.

He looked directly at the hidden camera in his ceiling vent.

He couldn’t possibly see it. It was a pinhole lens. But he stared right at it, as if he could feel Adrian’s eyes on him.

A slow, cold smile spread across Victor Hale’s face. He gave a small, deliberate nod to the unseen lens.

Then he turned to his head of security and spoke, his voice clear on the audio feed.

“He’s in the city. And he’s arrogant. He’s watching me right now.” Victor’s eyes flicked back to the camera, the smile turning vicious. “So let’s give him a show. Find my brother-in-law, Mark Cole. Bring him to me. Now.”

Adrian’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

The game had changed again.

Victor’s next move wasn't against the ghost.

It was against the only family the ghost had left.