Dance With The Devil

The Price of Silence

The morning after the gala, the city didn't wake up to news of a merger. It woke up to a blackout.

Zain sat in a small, windowless room filled with monitors. Mina, his hacker, was typing at a speed that sounded like rain on a tin roof.

"Victor Moretti just held a press conference," Mina said, not turning around. "He called you a 'mentally unstable former employee.' He’s put a ten-million-dollar bounty on your head, Zain. Every hitman from here to the coast is checking their GPS for your coordinates."

Zain didn't look at the screen. He was focused on a small, silver coin, flipping it over his knuckles. Clink. Clink. Clink.

"Ten million?" Zain asked, his voice devoid of emotion. "He’s becoming cheap in his old age. Tell me, Mina, who provides the security for Victor’s private estate?"

"A firm called 'Iron Gate.' Why?"

"Because men who guard gates only care about two things: the key or the price of the lock. Send a

message to the CEO of Iron Gate. Tell him I don't want his loyalty. I just want him to go on a very long,

very expensive vacation for the next twenty-four hours."

"With what money?" Mina asked, finally looking back.

Zain stopped the coin. He pressed it flat against the table. "The money Victor thinks is sitting in his offshore account in Zurich. He hasn't realized yet that I didn't just break into his system... I became his system."

An hour later, Zain was standing on a rooftop overlooking the city. The wind whipped his coat around his legs. Behind him, the door creaked open.

It was Elena. She looked exhausted, her eyes rimmed with red. She held the flash drive he had given her.

"I ran the data," she said, her voice shaking. "It’s real. Every bribe, every murder, every silenced witness. But I can't use it, Zain."

Zain turned slowly. "Why not?"

"Because the judge assigned to the Moretti case is on page five of this drive," she laughed bitterly. "The system is a closed loop. There is no way out."

Zain walked toward her until he was close enough to see the reflection of the city lights in her eyes.

"You're still thinking like a lawyer, Elena," he whispered. "The law is a fence. The powerful build it to keep the poor out, but they always leave a gate for themselves. I’m not here to take Victor to court."

"Then what are we doing?"

Zain looked out at the skyline. At that exact moment, the lights of the city's largest bridge—the one Victor Moretti had built to symbolize his power—flickered and died. One by one, the streetlights followed, plunging the heart of the business district into total darkness.

"I’m not taking him to court," Zain said, his voice echoing in the sudden, eerie silence. "I’m taking him to the beginning. I’m going to remind him what it feels like to be a man with nothing but a name that nobody remembers."

He handed her a small, glass earpiece.

"Put this in. Tomorrow, Victor loses his ships. The day after, he loses his towers. And by Friday... he'll be begging you to put those handcuffs on him, just so he can have a ceiling over his head that I don't own."