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I remembered how much the organization had made her life difficult in the beginning, even though she had been so passionate about the Ruisangor lifestyle and still was.

For her, as for many Transformed, the DUIO was a romanticized opportunity for social advancement within the Blood Brotherhood.

It should be noted that although the organization bore our name, it had originally been established under the auspices of the YuHua Clan as YUIO, which had been tasked in the 1950s with expanding international influence in the growing intelligence sector.

Yifan YuHua, who at the time, just like Nicolaj, had still been a member of the Tenebris Order, had been responsible for securing the Order’s dominance in the global intelligence sector, as well as in the engineering sector, while the other clan leaders had covered other global power sectors, such as the military, science and finance.

The YuHuas had their own engineering firms, even though no one knew what they were working on, and they were leaders in global IT research, supported by the DLSC. Also secret projects.

Sometime in the 1980s, the YuHua Clan had been forced to leave their home country due to the 1980s Ruisangor Mass Assassinations in China and had to resettle in the United States, which had not only cost the clan influence and followers – after all of Yifan’s cousins and their clan lineages in China had been brutally slaughtered by the Assassins – but also a great deal of wealth, which was why Nicolaj had completely taken over the financial support for building up the organization, and Yifan had left him, as a token of gratitude, the name of the organization as well as shared leadership.

At that time, Nicolaj had left the coordination of the DUIO to Camille until his eldest son, Bastien, had been old enough and sufficiently trained to take over the leadership alongside Yifan in the early 2000s.

Bastien was a serious leader and in charge of external affairs. In other words, he handled resource procurement, public relations, and Blairville’s local issues and ensured that networks with universities, political institutions, the police, businesses, and the military were maintained, while Yifan was responsible for internal affairs like human resource management, internal security, and information control, as well as the strict training programs for new recruits.

Camille, Laurent, and David worked as trained agents in three different areas of the DUIO, but that was pretty much all I knew about their fancy jobs.

The only thing I probably really knew was that Nicolaj kept a low profile within the DUIO, using Camille as an informant, and acted globally as one of the most discreet investors.

For a long time, I had thought that because he had a highly specialized background in medicine, he would be actively involved in the DLSC, but the two skyscrapers of the growing science complex in Blairville and everything that happened there behind tinted glass panes and in underground laboratories were also solely under DeLoughrey funding.

The whole institution had been founded in the 1980s by a group of anonymous Ruisangor scientists about which absolutely nothing could be found on the internet or even in the DUIO database accessible to DUIO employees.

No one in the family seemed thrilled that I wanted to join the DUIO, and no one – not even I – even considered letting me in on the DLSC’s secret science projects, which was why, halfway through last semester, I’d decided to take matters into my own hands and uncover our lovely little family secrets by myself.

And as if fate were playing into my hands, it had sent me not only Larissa, who had befriended all sorts of descendants of our family enemies, but also Quentin, who happened to work at the DLSC, even though he was apparently kept just as much in the dark about his employers and other DLSC research projects.

I would have to dig deeper. However I was going to do that. Maybe Olivia would be of some help to me.

Same Old Sog (S.O.S. Part 1)

Two Feet

Without her, I probably wouldn't even be here, in my family's estate, but would have left this clan behind.

“One of Sacramento's gangs attacked me.” I was about to ask how she had managed to let humans overpower her, but she quickly continued. “People from the Tenebris Order.”

Outraged, I slammed my glass down on the bar, and Olivia flinched when it broke.

The whiskey spread across the dark wood of my bar countertop, mixing with the blood seeping from the stinging cuts on my hand, which were instantly beginning to heal.

“You were attacked by those fuckers and you didn’t tell me?!” Rage spread through me, and I watched Olivia's eyes widen. “Fuck. You should have called me that same day! I would have come to Sacramento and sent every single one of them to hell!”

My anger grew as the image of my father flashed through my mind. He had been one of them, probably still was. But no one would believe me.

He was here, in this house, and now there were several people here whom I never wanted to see near this man.

The alcohol made my wounds sting even more.

“For fuck‘s sake!” I exclaimed, slamming my fist down on the bar next to the glass shards, and some of them dug deeper into my bleeding hand.

Olivia put her hand on my shoulder.

“Miles, calm down…”

I tried, really. Aggression was no longer part of my life, not for a long time.