“These,” I say to Renn and my captains. “We seize first.”
Renn nods, eyes sharp. “Strike teams?”
“Quiet,” I confirm. “No spectacle. No civilian harm. We take the nodes and we lock them.”
I shift the map to armory overlays—two armories, one central, one satellite.
“And these,” I add. “We secure the weapons. Inventory locks. Dual authorization. Anyone moving arms without my approval gets detained.”
A captain lifts a hand. “Boss, comms are already hot. If fighting starts, the Nine will jam channels.”
I nod. “That’s why we run a blackout drill.”
The room stills.
“Comms go dark when it starts,” I say. “No open channels. No casual chatter. Only my encrypted line. If you can’t hear me, you hold your position and you protect civilians. You don’t freelance.”
Heads nod.
Renn asks quietly, “And Kel?”
My jaw tightens.
“Kel stays in his chair until I’m ready,” I say. “And when I’m ready, the whole house learns the truth.”
I look around the room at faces I’ve known since I was young—some loyal, some frightened, some calculating.
“The Nine think they can buy us,” I say, voice low and carrying. “They think they can turn us into a tool. They think they can scare us into selling our own people.”
I let the silence sharpen.
“We are not for sale,” I say. “And anyone who decides otherwise… is my enemy.”
The room answers with a quiet, dangerous unanimity.
Outside, Gur burns in little pockets—skirmishes flaring like infections.
Jordan is gone, flying through the dark with truth in her hands.
And I’m here, standing in the heart of my family’s empire, staring at a map that looks more and more like a battlefield every second.
I breathe in the scent of electronics and old money and fear.
Then I make the next move—because hesitation is how you lose, and I didn’t survive Yatori just to become someone’s puppet in a nicer suit.
“Move,” I tell them.
And the house begins to shift.
CHAPTER 13
JORDAN
Sterile space smells like nothing and somehow that’s the worst part.
No spice. No exhaust. No Gur-smog or casino perfume trying to seduce you into forgetting you’re being watched. Just filtered air and disinfectant so sharp it feels like it scrapes the inside of my nose clean. The covert corridor hub looks like every medical transit junction I’ve ever seen in IHC space—smooth white panels, soft lighting calibrated to keep people calm, floor strips marking lanes for cargo drones and stretchers and the occasional bored medic who hates their life.
Low traffic. On purpose.
