Night returned to London like a slow exhale long, heavy, and brimming with things better left unseen. The city glowed in fractured pieces: neon dripping over puddles, headlights slicing through fog, club lights blinking like anxious heartbeats. Prince moved through it like someone walking into a dream that had been whispering his name all day.
His Hellcat growled along the back roads of Deptford, the engine's deep rumble echoing off damp brick walls. The streets were narrower here, the shadows thicker, the silence charged. Prince knew this sensation he'd felt it before big fights, before life-altering moments, before something irreversible.
Tonight the air carried that same weight.
But heavier.
He turned onto a small industrial road where streetlights flickered like they were afraid to stay lit. A warehouse loomed at the end silent, hulking, abandoned to anyone who didn't know better.
Prince parked the Hellcat. Cut the engine. The sudden silence pressed against his ears.
Something was waiting for him inside.
He could feel it the way animals feel storms before they break.
Prince stepped out, boots hitting concrete with a low thud. The fog crawled around him as if trying to hold him back, wrap him in hesitation. But he walked forward, shoulders squared, breath steady.
He didn't knock.
He didn't call out.
He simply pushed open the metal door.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Not the kind of darkness found in rooms without lights. This was a curated darkness. Designed. Intentional. The type that wanted him to feel watched without showing any watchers.
Prince let his eyes adjust, inhaling deeply. Dust. Cold metal. Old machinery. But beneath that the faint trace of cologne. Something sharp, expensive. Something foreign.
He wasn't alone.
A single strip of lights buzzed to life overhead, flickering like an old film projector. The warehouse unfolded around him: crates stacked like crooked towers, scaffolding leading nowhere, ropes dangling from steel beams like forgotten nooses.
And in the center, a chair.
Not empty.
A man sat in it lean, clean-cut, wearing a tailored suit that didn't belong in a place like this. His hands were bound behind him. Duct tape sealed his mouth. His eyes wide, frantic, pleading.
Prince recognized him instantly.
One of Navarro's shadows.
Not the one from the gym. Not the biker. One of the ghosts he'd seen tailing him. The man was trembling.
A message.
Or bait.
Prince took one step closer and the darkness behind the crates shifted.
A figure stepped out.
Smooth.
Controlled.
Tall enough to project authority without forcing it.
Dressed in a dark coat that glimmered slightly fabric too fine for this world, but built for shadows.
He clapped slowly.
A mocking applause that echoed in the cavernous room.
"Prince." His voice was silk on steel. "Finally."
Prince squared his stance subtly, weight on the balls of his feet. Not a threat. A readiness.
"You're Navarro's rival," Prince said.
The man smiled. "Navarro?" He waved a hand dismissively, as though brushing dust off a sleeve. "He is a businessman. An ambitious one, yes, but limited. He sees the fight in front of him." The man stepped closer. "I see the war ahead."
Prince didn't move. Didn't blink. "What do you want?"
The smile sharpened. "Power respects power. You've shown… potential."
Prince said nothing. Potential was a word that meant ownership in disguise.
The man continued circling, like an art critic studying a sculpture.
"You've become the only unpredictable force in this city," he said. "Navarro plans around you. The media orbits you. Even the underground takes cues from your presence."
He stopped in front of Prince.
"You're not a fighter anymore. You're a symbol."
Prince kept his voice low. "Symbols don't bleed on cue for anyone."
A faint laugh escaped the man. "Good. I prefer a lion to a lamb."
The tied-up man in the chair thrashed violently, trying to say something through the tape. His eyes begged Prince for help.
Prince's jaw clenched. "Why bring him here?"
"Because loyalty deserves rewards…" The rival stepped behind the chair. "And betrayal deserves lessons."
Before Prince could react, the rival grabbed the man's jaw and yanked his head back. The motion was precise not torture, but control.
"Navarro's network has become sloppy," he said. "Weak men pretending to be shadows. I needed you to see that."
Prince stepped forward instinct, not logic but another figure materialized from the dark before him. A guard. Face hidden. Body armored. Prince didn't retreat.
The rival lifted a knife.
Small.
Elegant.
Sharp enough to slice light.
Prince's heart hammered once hard, loud, then silent again.
He kept his voice steady. "This isn't my fight."
"Oh, but it is," the rival whispered. "You stepped onto the board the moment Navarro sent men to watch you."
The blade pressed lightly against the captive's neck. Just enough for a bead of blood to appear.
Prince's muscles tightened not fear. Calculation.
"You're trying to pull me to your side," Prince said. "By making me hate Navarro."
The rival's eyes gleamed. "Sides? No. I am offering you clarity."
Prince inhaled slowly. "And what if I don't want it?"
The rival smiled like he'd been waiting for that.
"Then we escalate."
The blade flashed
cutting the ropes instead of the man.
The captive collapsed forward, gasping, sobbing through the tape.
Prince tensed in surprise.
The rival leaned in close, voice like poison wrapped in velvet.
"I do not kill to impress," he said. "Navarro kills to protect ego. I kill when it shifts the world." He let the knife fall to the floor with a metallic ring. "This man failed Navarro. He did not fail me."
He turned to Prince.
"I don't want to threaten you."
A pause.
"Not yet."
Prince stepped between the rival and the freed man. Protective. Instinctive. A line drawn.
The rival's smile widened faintly.
"I see why this city is drawn to you," he murmured. "You make even mercy look dangerous."
A door on the far end of the warehouse opened on its own. The rival began walking toward it.
As he reached the threshold, he paused and glanced back, eyes cold and gleaming.
"You will see more signs. More pieces moving. More shadows climbing out of the cracks." His voice dropped lower. "When you are ready for truth, Prince… I will find you again."
He disappeared into the night like he had stepped through a curtain of smoke.
The door closed softly behind him.
Silence poured over the room, thick and suffocating.
Prince knelt beside the freed man, ripping the tape off his mouth.
The man gasped, coughing, tears streaking his face. "He he he's not human," he stammered. "He knows things. Knows everything. Navarro is terrified of him. Everyone is."
Prince gripped the man's shoulder. "Why did he show you to me?"
The man swallowed hard. "Because he wants you to choose."
Prince's voice hardened. "Choose what?"
The man's next words crawled into Prince's bones:
"Which king you're willing to survive."
Prince helped the man to his feet, but something inside him had already shifted something irreversible. The warehouse smelled of cold metal and the birth of war.
Two kings.
Two empires.
Two shadows growing taller.
And him
the storm neither one could predict.
As Prince led the shaken man out of the warehouse, the night air hit him like a warning.
He didn't know whose side he was on.
But for the first time…
He understood exactly how dangerous his place on the board truly was.