The rain in Brooklyn didn't wash things clean; it just turned the grit into a slick, black sludge.
I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other still buzzing with the phantom vibration of the silenced pistol I'd fired hours ago. Beside me, the passenger seat was empty, but the scent of Emily's clinical soap lingered—a reminder of the world I was supposed to belong to, a world I had just set on fire by telling her the truth.
I didn't head home. I couldn't. Not with the adrenaline of Mikhail Volkov's death still coiling in my gut like a serpent. Instead, I navigated the labyrinth of the industrial waterfront until I reached a row of derelict shipping containers near the mouth of the Gowanus Canal.
This was Ethan's "Black Site." An old cold-storage facility that smelled of rusted iron and ancient salt.
As I stepped out of the car, I felt the weight of the night pressing down on me. I wasn't Andrew Parker, the Sepak Takraw player with a promising future. I was the reaper of the Thompson dynasty. I pulled my hood low, adjusted the hidden mic pinned to the inside of my collar, and tapped the earpiece.
"Ethan. I'm outside," I muttered.
"Door's open. Be quick, Oliver. The Navy Yard is crawling with feds, and Park Ji-hoon's heart rate is spiking. If he has a stroke before we get what we need, this whole thing dies with him."
I pushed through the heavy steel door. The interior was lit by a single, harsh halogen lamp suspended over a metal chair. Park Ji-hoon, the pristine representative of Shin-Hwa Tech, looked pathetic. His silk suit was torn, his glasses were gone, and his leg was crudely bandaged where I'd shot him.
Ethan stood in the corner, his face illuminated by the blue glow of three different monitors. He didn't look at me; his fingers were flying across a keyboard, likely scrubbing my digital footprint from the Navy Yard's servers.
I walked into the circle of light. Park flinched as if I had hit him.
"You..." Park rasped, his voice sounding like broken glass. "You're the boy. Benjamin said you died. He swore the room was sealed."
I pulled up a crate and sat directly in front of him, leaning forward until our knees touched. I didn't say anything for a long minute. Silence is the best interrogator; it forces a guilty man to fill the void with his own fears.
"I didn't die, Ji-hoon," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "I just waited. Twenty years is a long time to hold a grudge. Imagine what it does to a person's patience."
"What do you want?" he whimpered. "Money? I can transfer millions. Shin-Hwa has offshore accounts that—"
"I don't want your money," I interrupted, reaching into my pocket. I pulled out my phone, but I didn't turn on the screen. I laid it face down on my knee. Unknown to Park, the high-fidelity recording app was already running, synced directly to Ethan's encrypted cloud. "I want the Ledger. The real one. Not the surface-level payouts Zhao had. I want the names of the board members of the Obsidian Circle."
Park laughed, a shaky, hysterical sound. "You think I have that? I am a middleman. A puppet!"
I leaned in closer, my eyes boring into his. "You're the one who handled the 'Digital Blackout' in Shanghai. You're the reason the fire alarms didn't go off. You're the reason my mother couldn't call for help. Don't lie to me about being a puppet. You were the engineer of the silence."
I saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes. The memory of that night was there, buried under layers of corporate greed.
"I need the decryption key for the US-BT folder," I continued, my voice dropping to a whisper. "The one that links Benjamin Thompson to the Vaneech Land Group in Thailand. If I don't get it, I leave you here. And when the Russians find out Mikhail is dead, they'll come here looking for someone to blame. Who do you think they'll pick?"
Park's breathing became erratic. I watched his pulse thrumming in his neck.
"The key..." Park swallowed hard. "It's... it's not a code. It's a sequence of bank routing numbers from the 2006 merger. 44-09-21. That's the header. But the secondary layer... it requires an authorization from Benjamin's private server."
"How do we bypass it?" I pressed, my hand subtly moving the phone closer to him to capture every syllable.
"You can't," Park cried. "Unless you have the 'Phoenix Protocol.' Benjamin kept a physical backup. A golden USB. He keeps it in the safe at the Aegis Global headquarters, behind the portrait of his 'beloved' brother. The irony... he hides the proof of the murder behind the face of the man he killed."
In the corner, Ethan gave me a sharp nod. He had it. The recording was clear. The confession was logged.
I stood up, the chair scraping harshly against the concrete. The 'Hotdog' persona was screaming to rip the truth out of him with force, but the 'Oliver' in me knew that the truth was already caught.
"Why did he do it, Ji-hoon?" I asked, one final question for the record. "My father treated Benjamin like a brother. He gave him everything."
Park looked up, a twisted smile on his face. "Benjamin didn't want 'everything.' He wanted the name. He hated being the shadow. The Obsidian Circle offered him the light, and all it cost him was a match and a few gallons of accelerant. He didn't just kill your parents, Oliver. He enjoyed it. He watched the building burn from the balcony of the Peninsula Hotel with a glass of scotch in his hand."
The world tilted. I felt the old rage—the white-hot fire from Shanghai—rising in my throat. I wanted to wrap my hands around Park's neck until the light left his eyes.
A hand touched my shoulder.
"Easy, Andrew," Ethan whispered. "We have it. Everything he just said is on the server. We have the routing numbers, the location of the physical backup, and the confirmation of premeditated murder. Don't throw it away now."
I closed my eyes, forcing my heart rate to slow. I reached down and picked up my phone.
"You're lucky, Ji-hoon," I said, looking down at the broken man. "You're going to spend the rest of your life in a cell instead of a coffin. Ethan, call the 'Cleaners.' Not the ones from the Circle. The ones from the Bureau you still trust."
I walked out of the circle of light, leaving Park sobbing in the dark.
As I stepped back into the rain, I pulled the 'ice cube' spray from my pocket. My knuckles were split from the fight at the Navy Yard, and my soul felt like it had been dragged through glass. I sprayed the cool mist over my hand, the stinging sensation grounding me.
I looked at the phone in my hand. The recording was 42 minutes long. 42 minutes that would end a twenty-year empire.
I started the car, the engine's roar a low growl in the quiet night. I had the evidence. I had the witness. Now, I just had to go back to the one person I had promised to protect—and tell her that we were going to rob her father's vault.
I drove toward Emily's apartment, the ghost of Oliver Thompson finally taking the driver's seat. The fire was no longer behind me. It was in front of me, and this time, I was the one holding the match.