Askai ran the entire distance back to the dorm, sweat plastering his shirt to his back by the time he reached their floor. He strode down the corridor in long, ground-eating paces, the internal clock screaming that he was running desperately late. They would close the orphanage for visitors soon, and he couldn't bear the thought of missing Kael.

  He turned the knob, hoping to find an empty room. He needed to ditch his academic bag, grab the precious package he had bought for Kael, and be on his way. But these days, things had an unfortunate, brutal tendency to resist going his way.

  To his surprise, he found Jordan sitting on his bed, hunched over his phone, engaged in a heated, low-toned conversation. Askai paused in the doorway, catching his breath and trying to remember if they hadn't decided to meet directly at Kael’s orphanage.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, the suddenness of his question finally snagging Jordan’s attention.

  “I’ll call you later,” Jordan muttered into the phone, his gaze lifting to Askai, a flicker of deep trouble in his eyes. He then gestured for Askai to sit.

  “Are you serious? Aren’t we running late? They will close the door at six sharp. We need at least an hour with him.” Askai said, dropping his bag and frantically beginning to pack a new one with Kael’s gifts. He felt the guilt of hardly seeing the boy lately like a stone in his stomach.

  “Just sit down, Askai! Trust me, you wanna hear this before you walk out that door.” Jordan ordered, his voice tight, his fingers nervously tapping a restless, uneven rhythm on the nightstand.

  Askai was about to launch into a furious argument, but the look on Jordan's face stopped him cold. His friend seemed not just troubled, but genuinely scared—a chilling sight on a man who had survived their shared history.

  “Fine.” He grumbled, dropping onto the stiff desk chair. “What is it?”

  “I went to find Coral this morning, remember? Only he wasn’t there. Barlow told me he was in the East End, along with Moraine. Normally, that’s just a lie to avoid payment, but… This was the third time in the fortnight I was given that exact excuse.” Jordan paused, rubbing the tense line of his jaw. “At first I thought he was simply avoiding me, which I truly wish was the case, but it turned out to be something else entirely…”

  Jordan stared into Askai’s eyes, his silence deeply foreboding.

  “What?” Askai asked, the sudden cold apprehension making his stomach clench.

  “There are words on the street, Askai, that Moraine Valez has succeeded Uncle Tommie.”

  “No fucking way!”

  Askai shot to his feet, the chair behind him clattering violently to the floor. His pulse thundered in his ears, and the room seemed to tilt sickeningly. It felt like someone had yanked the solid floor from beneath him.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not now. Not for another ten years at least!” His voice cracked, raw and furious with betrayal. “He was third in the line of succession, for fuck’s sake, Jordan. Third! Your source has to be wrong. Lying. Spinning shit to stir up panic. This—this doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”

  Jordan didn’t flinch. He didn’t try to calm him, either. He just sat there, arms crossed over his chest, that same haunted look settling into the creases around his eyes like the smoke of an irreversible fire.

  “I wish they were,” he said finally, the words heavy and leaden. “God, I wish they were. But this came straight from the docks. And you know who runs the docks. Valez. No one risks leaking this kind of seismic shift unless it’s already set in stone and moving.”

  Askai’s mind raced, desperate to find a flaw in the logic. There were supposed to be steps—triggers, balances, safeguards of the old regime. Ten years. That was the plan. Ten years to gather power. Ten years to stay under the radar. Ten years to achieve their impossible dream of escape. He knew Moraine Valez's reign was bound to come one day, but not so soon.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He swore again, violently, and dragged a hand through his hair.

  “Do you even realize what this means?” he hissed, dropping his voice to a dangerous, low pitch. “If he’s already been moved up—if the others are out of the picture—then it means someone pulled the strings from the top. Someone powerful enough to eliminate the first and second heirs without a single whisper in the East End.”

  Jordan nodded grimly. “And make it look like an accident, too. Quiet, clean, and irreversible. The work of gods, Askai, not men.” He said exasperated.

  Askai staggered backward, breath catching painfully. “So it’s official, then? He’s next in line?”

  Jordan hesitated, then delivered the final, crushing blow. “He’s not just next. He’s already taken the seat. They’re calling it an emergency coronation. Quiet. Shadow-locked. The outer circle hasn’t even been informed yet.”

  Askai felt a chilling recognition creep into his bones. The person they feared—the one who wasn’t supposed to rise for years, the man who represented the absolute, uncompromising end of their freedom—wasn’t coming.

  He had already arrived.

  “Sit down, Askai. There is more to come.” Jordan said, his tone flat and grim, robbing the words of any mercy.

  Askai gripped the back of the fallen chair and dragged it upright, sinking into it with a heavy, defeated breath. He didn’t even notice his hands were trembling until he rested them on his knees.

  A cold, expanding knot had formed in his stomach. Whatever was coming next, he had a chilling premonition that it would make everything they’d survived so far seem small, like practice for the real catastrophe.

  “What else?” he asked, his eyes glistening with unshed tears, the sudden wave of emotion a physical punch. Jordan had been staring into his lap, his eyes empty and soulless, the raw toll of their life written across his face.

  Askai ran a hand through his hair. He kept forgetting that things would be even worse for Jordan. Always had been.

  “Hey, Jordi,” he said, forcing a steady tone. “We are in it together. Whatever it is. Just say it.”

  “Moraine won't be our only problem from here on,” Jordan continued, his voice barely a rasp. “Last night, nobody showed up at the Motel even after the call, remember?”

  Askai thought back to the moment when he had handed the phone to the Motel Manager, forcing the call for help.

  “I wasn’t expecting those bastards to show up,” Askai admitted. “Even in the past, they ran between their tails every time we had a confrontation.”

  “Things have changed, Askai. They were on their way last night, but they got ambushed. They say the men who hit them were professionals—military precision, full blackout. A couple of them are dead, most in the hospital, and the rest… critical. Those who crawled out fled the city by morning. The whole gang was shattered. Gone. In a single night.”

  “That’s not…” Askai’s voice faltered. He blinked, trying to reboot a mind that suddenly felt too slow for the storm breaking around him. “That’s not possible.”

  But Jordan’s face didn’t shift. No denial. No sarcasm. Just the raw, grim edge of someone who’d seen too much of the truth to sugarcoat anything now.

  “Who would do something this stupid?” Askai asked, reeling back as if physical distance could help the pieces fall into place. “Taking out Zeke’s gang? That’s suicide. There’ll be hell to pay. This isn’t a one-and-done hit. Who were they? Karla’s crew? Qurais’s?”

  Jordan shook his head slowly. “We don’t know. Not yet. But it wasn’t a turf move. It wasn’t loud, Askai. It was clean. Calculated. That’s not Karla’s style—she likes a spectacle. Qurais would’ve left a message—flayed bodies, tagged walls. This? This was silent, surgically precise.”

  Askai felt a deep, profound chill crawl under his skin.

  West Nolan was a breeding ground for every vice the city had tried to bury. A hive of broken men, hollow dreams, and whispered deals. But it wasn’t the wild west. Chaos wore a collar here—and it was owned by three names no one dared to cross: Moraine, Karla, and Qurais.

  They weren’t just gang bosses. They were institutions. And nothing—no mugging, no shipment, no bloodshed—happened without their blessing. The smaller gangs paid tribute, shared turf, and in return, they were allowed to exist. But if this ambush hadn't come from one of the three, then someone was breaking rules that had been carved in blood for decades.

  Someone was shaking the foundations. And that made everything worse.

  “Do you think Moraine’s making a play?” Askai asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  Jordan snorted bitterly. “Moraine doesn’t need to. That man’s buried deeper in East End’s politics than half the damn council. He wouldn’t dirty his hands with an unstable power vacuum unless the war was already won.”

  Askai ran a desperate hand through his hair. “Then who?”

  “Someone who believes he is far above the West End and its hell. But it wouldn’t matter anymore.”

  Jordan looked at him. Really looked at him, his gaze heavy with terrible knowledge.

  “Because you know what truly scares me, Askai? They left no trace. The identity of the shooters is a ghost. It is now completely up to whoever Zeke points to.”

  Askai’s heart plummeted, a silent freefall into something cold and hollow. His fingers, clenched tight until now, slackened against his sides. The grip he thought he had—on his dreams, on his escape, on the paper-thin version of a future he’d dared to imagine—was irrevocably slipping away. Not because he was weak. But because life, the city, and the very gods they ran from, didn’t play fair.

  Zeke wouldn’t play fair.

  This was probably Zeke’s one and only chance in life where, with a single, vicious word, he could turn Askai’s life upside down, make him hunted to the world’s end. And knowing the man, he wouldn’t miss it.

  “Where is Zeke?” Askai asked, finally arriving at a decision that felt utterly inevitable.