The morning sun was shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Cross family estate, reflecting off surfaces of polished marble and metal.
It was a sterile kind of light, illuminating a room that felt more like a corporate boardroom than a place where a family lived.
Silas Cross sat at the head of a long, black table, a tablet in his hand displaying the morning's stock market data.
He took a slow, deliberate sip from a porcelain cup of coffee that probably cost more than most people's weekly groceries. He didn't enjoy it; he consumed it, like a machine taking on fuel.
Opposite him, his son Julian pushed his plate of untouched eggs and bread. He wasn't admiring the view or the luxury.
He was replaying his own personal highlight reel of humiliation: the debate, the decathlon, Clara's cold, dismissive rejection.
He was a prince fuming in his castle, and he found the scenery profoundly boring.
A man in a sharp, tailored suit entered the room, his footsteps silent on the expensive rug. He was a senior aide, a man whose entire job was to be invisible until he was needed, and to deliver bad news as if it were a weather report.
"Sir," the aide said, his voice a low, respectful murmur. "There was an incident last night."
Silas didn't look up from his tablet. "Define 'incident.' Did one of our shipping containers fall into the ocean? Did a politician forget who signs his checks?"
"No, sir," the aide replied, his face impassive. "It's a local matter. Warehouse 7."
That got Silas's attention. He slowly lowered his tablet, his eyes, cold and gray as a winter sky, fixing on the man. Warehouse 7 was a minor asset, a place for one of his street-level crews to kennel. It was insignificant. But Silas Cross hated loose ends, no matter how small.
"Go on," he commanded.
"There appears to have been an internal conflict," the aide reported, his tone never wavering. "The police are calling it a gang hit. The Crimson Serpents. The leader, a man named Spike, and two of his subordinates were found dead."
Julian looked up from his eggs, a flicker of interest in his eyes. The Crimson Serpents. Weren't those the low-level thugs his father sometimes used? The ones he'd sicced on that vending-machine-breaking freak, Vane? A strange, unidentifiable feeling coiled in his gut.
"Casualties?" Silas asked, his voice devoid of any emotion.
"All three hostiles, sir," the aide confirmed.
Silas waved a dismissive hand. "And the financial impact?"
"Minimal," the aide said. "The asset itself is a write-off. The operational loss is negligible. We've already cut their digital funding."
Silas picked up his coffee cup again. The news, it seemed, was little more than a mild annoyance, like finding a fly in his soup. He had already moved on. "Incompetence is expensive," he stated calmly. "Spike was a dog with a short leash and an even shorter lifespan. He let his own men turn on him. Pathetic."
To Silas, it was that simple. A flawed asset had liquidated itself. It was a problem that had conveniently solved its own equation. There was no mystery, no intrigue. Just the predictable outcome of dealing with inferior products.
"What about the target?" Julian asked suddenly, his voice sharp.
Silas raised an eyebrow at his son's unexpected contribution.
"The shop owner," Julian clarified, a strange intensity in his eyes. "The one Spike was supposed to be… negotiating with."
The aide glanced at his own tablet. "He's alive. Gave a statement to the police. Said he heard shouting, hid in the bathroom, and found the bodies after the perpetrators had fled. He's being treated as a witness, not a suspect."
Julian leaned back, a sneer forming on his lips. "So the idiots killed each other and didn't even finish the job. What a bunch of losers."
He felt a strange sense of unease he couldn't quite place. The timing of it all. It felt… connected, somehow, to the series of unfortunate events that had been his life for the past few weeks. It was probably nothing. Just the universe continuing its grand conspiracy to personally annoy him. Still, the feeling lingered.
Silas, however, was focused on the larger picture. The grand, cold mathematics of his empire.
"This creates a power vacuum in that district," Silas mused, his eyes distant. "The Diamondbacks will likely try to move in." He looked at the aide. "Have our people plant whispers on the street. Pin this mess firmly on them. Let the police chase their tails investigating a gang war that we invented. It will keep them busy."
"Yes, sir," the aide said with a slight bow, already typing the instructions into his device.
Silas then turned his cold gaze to his head of security, a large, silent man who had been standing by the door the entire time.
"And you," Silas said. "I want a full audit of all our street-level assets. I want to know who is loyal, who is competent, and who is a liability waiting to happen." His voice was like a surgeon's scalpel, precise and without feeling. "Clean house. I don't care what it costs. I want our foundation to be stable. No more cracks."
The security chief gave a single, curt nod and exited the room.
Silas stood up, placing his napkin neatly on the table. For him, the conversation was over. The problem was handled. He had already mentally moved on to a billion-dollar merger he was planning.
He walked out of the room without another word, leaving Julian alone with his thoughts.
Julian stared at his plate. He should be happy. Three less scumbags in the world. But the unease remained, a faint, dissonant hum in the back of his mind.
A bunch of thugs killing each other in a warehouse.
It shouldn't matter.
It had nothing to do with him.
It certainly had nothing to do with that quiet, pathetic freak, Miles Vane.
And yet…
He couldn't shake the feeling that a single, almost invisible thread connected all of his recent humiliations. He just couldn't see it yet.
Miles's plan, born in the bloody aftermath of his first kill, was working perfectly.
The ripples of his actions were spreading, but they were invisible, undetectable.
The Cross family, the most powerful and dangerous entity in his world, was looking in the exact wrong direction.
They were preparing for a gang war.
They had no idea that a ghost was already inside their walls, and that he was just getting started.
Their multi-million-dollar security apparatus was hunting for snakes in the grass, completely unaware of the hidden danger growing stronger.
The net wasn't tightening.
It was being torn apart from the inside, one thread at a time.
And Silas Cross, the master manipulator, the corporate predator, had just sent his forces on the biggest, most expensive wild goose chase of his entire career.
He thought he was cleaning house.
He had no idea the house itself was haunted.