Renayo Ezraphor hadn't slept a wink. Not because of the vice president or the murder at the court, though that had left its mark. What kept him up was the idea it sparked.
A whiteboard now stood in his apartment, covered with rough sketches, names, and arrows crisscrossing like veins of a living scheme. At the center was Daniel, his contract target. The man's faith level had climbed to 70%, and with it, Renayo's job had only grown harder.
If Leila kept her word and handed him a demon seed, the first layer of his plan was to plant it in Samantha, Daniel's wife. With the seed gnawing at her, she would press Daniel to adopt a child. He couldn't touch her soul key yet, the family soul guard still lingered, but a seed was subtle enough to slip through.
The problem lay elsewhere: the orphanage. To force urgency, he needed pressure from that side as well. But the owner was untouchable. Her soul was intact, shielded by a soul guard, and going after her would be like binding himself to two contracts at once.
That's when the memory of the court hit him. A different angle.
Not the orphanage itself, but the benefactors. They held sway over the children, the funding, the future of the place. People like that were easier prey, wealthy, indulgent, sometimes careless with their faith. If one of them lacked a guard, or had already been targeted, their key would be his entry point.
And with that key, he could twist the benefactor into launching a special sponsorship program. Selected kids would be pulled from the orphanage, Eli among them. Daniel's bond with the boy would make him desperate to act, and desperate men were easier to break.
The true weight of the plan, though, lay in what Daniel would believe. If Renayo fed him the right false leads, the adoption wouldn't look like charity at all but trafficking. A corrupt program stealing children. And if Daniel, a police officer with his own sense of duty, realized he was powerless to protect Eli? If the boy vanished into the hands of slimy hustler and Daniel could do nothing? That guilt would crush him, faith and all.
He had mapped it all out on the board. The false information would come through Daniel's co-worker, Detective Marcus Hale. Renny's plan was to plant fabricated evidence, something subtle but damning, on Hale's desk, enough to suggest a benefactor's involvement in shady dealings. With Daniel's personal connection to Eli, he wouldn't be able to ignore it. False or not, it would be enough to drag him into the storm.
With that in motion, Renny turned his attention to the benefactors themselves. At the library the next day, he combed through records. Most of them still had their soul keys intact, each shielded behind sturdy soul guards, untouchable, for now. But one name stood out: Charles Whitmore, Founder and CEO of Strategic Holdings, a mid-sized investment firm dabbling in real estate and renewable energy. Unlike the others, Whitmore's soul had already been marked. A beast in the Pit, Druvash, held his key.
Renny's chest tightened at the realization. This was the worst-case scenario, using Whitmore meant crossing paths with Druvash. It would mean stepping into the Pit, and with the meager resources he had at his disposal, it was suicide on paper. Still, he couldn't ignore it. If he wanted leverage over Daniel, Whitmore's key was his only real shot. And considering it was already June, he had little time to spare, the contract had begun back in January and would only last till November.