The Office
3335 Words
Magnus Marlowe’s private office was a sanctuary designed to intimidate anyone who crossed its threshold. The room was vast and paneled in Brazilian rosewood that had been harvested illegally from protected rainforests. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the city he believed he owned, while the walls were lined with golden frames holding awards that were mostly purchased rather than earned. Businessman of the Year, Humanitarian of the Decade, and Innovator in Healthcare sat in perfect alignment behind his massive desk.
Kaelen stood in the center of the room with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. He waited with the patience of a man who controlled the flow of time. Magnus sat behind the desk with his fingers steepled and a vein throbbing in his temple. Cassius leaned against a bookshelf filled with unread first editions, his arms crossed and a sneer plastered on his face. Two security guards flanked the heavy oak doors, their hands hovering near their holsters.
Nobody spoke for a full minute. The silence stretched until it was thin enough to snap.
Finally, Magnus leaned forward into the pool of light cast by his desk lamp.
"What the hell was that?"
"A conversation," Kaelen replied.
"A conversation?" Cassius pushed himself off the bookshelf and walked into the light. "You just threatened Damien Holt in front of three hundred people. Do you have any idea who he is? His family provides the steel for the cages you will end up in."
"Yes," Kaelen said. "I know exactly who he is.”
"Then you know his family could erase you from existence," Magnus said. His voice was measured and dangerous. "One phone call, Kaelen. That is all it would take for you to disappear. You are a guest in this world, and guests can be removed."
Kaelen met his eyes and said nothing. The lack of fear seemed to unsettle Magnus more than any shout could have.
"What is this Jakarta nonsense?" Cassius circled him. "Is this some desperate bluff you pulled from the internet? Did you read a conspiracy forum and decide to try your luck?"
"It is not a bluff.”
Magnus stood up and walked to the window. He looked down at Obsidian Bay, watching the headlights of cars move like blood through the arteries of the city.
"Let me explain something to you," Magnus said without turning around. "You married my daughter through some combination of luck and her temporary insanity. I have tolerated you because Seraphina asked me to. I gave you a roof, a stipend, and a place at my table. But tonight, you crossed a line."
"Did I?”
"You embarrassed this family," Magnus turned, his face flushed with suppressed rage. "You threatened a man worth forty billion dollars. You made a scene at our most important event of the year. Give me one reason I shouldn't have security throw you off this balcony right now."
The guards shifted, their hands tightening on their weapons. They were waiting for the signal.
Kaelen smiled. It was not a submissive smile. "Because you are curious."
"Excuse me?”
"You are curious about Jakarta. You are curious about how I know. And you are terrified about what else I might know." Kaelen took a single step forward. "You are wondering if I am insane or if I actually have leverage. You cannot afford to guess wrong."
Cassius laughed, a harsh sound that bounced off the hard surfaces. "You are delusional. You are a waiter in a rented suit."
"Am I? Then call Damien. Ask him why he left the ballroom so quickly. Ask him why his hands were shaking when he made that phone call."
Magnus’s eyes narrowed. "You are bluffing.”
"Then call his bluff, Father," Cassius said, pulling out his own phone. "Let's end this right now."
"Wait." Magnus held up a hand. He studied Kaelen with a new intensity, analyzing the posture, the lack of fidgeting, the absolute stillness. "Who are you? Really?"
"Your son-in-law."
"No," Magnus shook his head. "Nobody plays a three-year con just to humiliate themselves daily. Nobody endures the insults and the mockery without a reason. What do you want?"
"Nothing you can give me.”
"Everyone wants something. Money? Power? A seat on the board?"
Kaelen’s smile vanished. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "Justice."
The word hung in the air like a blade. Magnus’s expression did not change, but something flickered behind his eyes. It was recognition followed immediately by fear.
"For what?" Magnus asked.
"You know what."
"I have no idea what you are talking about.”
"Ten years ago," Kaelen said softly. "Bangkok. The clinical trial your company ran off the books. Subject 247. Seventeen years old. You administered your experimental compound without consent because you needed results before the fiscal year ended. She died in forty-eight hours from organ failure and internal bleeding. She died alone in a hospital bed while your people destroyed the records and paid the local police to cremate the body."
The room went cold. Cassius looked between his father and Kaelen, confusion warring with arrogance.
"That is a serious accusation," Magnus said. His voice was steady, but his jaw was tight enough to crack teeth. "One that could be considered slander."
"Her name was Aria," Kaelen said. "Aria Voss."
Cassius froze. "Voss?"
"My sister."
The silence was absolute. Magnus stared at him, recalculating everything. Every interaction over the last three years, every moment he had dismissed Kaelen as a fool, every time he had spoken openly in front of him.
"That trial was sanctioned by the local authorities," Magnus said, his defense automatic.
"By no one," Kaelen corrected. "You paid officials to look away. You used homeless kids and runaways as test subjects because no one would miss them. You buried the failures in unmarked graves. Forty-seven people died in that trial, Magnus. Forty-seven. My sister was just one more body in your quest for a miracle drug."
"You cannot prove any of this."
"Can't I?”
Magnus’s phone buzzed on the desk. Then it buzzed again. And again. A continuous vibration that sounded like an angry hornet. He looked at the screen and his face went white.
"What is it?" Cassius moved closer to the desk.
Magnus turned the phone so the screen faced the room. A breaking news alert flashed in bold red letters: MARLOWE INDUSTRIES STOCK CRASHES 23% IN AFTER-HOURS TRADING - ANONYMOUS WHISTLEBLOWER ALLEGES ILLEGAL OFFSHORE TESTING.
"No," Magnus whispered. He looked at Kaelen. "You did this?"
"Forty-eight hours, Magnus. Same deal I gave Damien." Kaelen turned toward the door. "You can keep your company. Your wealth. Your freedom. All you have to do is confess. Publicly. Name every official you bribed. Name every family you destroyed. Name every body you buried."
"You are insane," Magnus whispered.
"Or you can fight me. Deny everything. Use your lawyers and your money and your connections." Kaelen paused at the door. The guards looked at Magnus for orders, unsure of what to do. "But if you choose that path, I will not stop at exposing you. I will destroy everything you have ever built. I will take your company. Your reputation. Your family’s legacy. And when I am done, the Marlowe name will be synonymous with murder."
"Get out," Magnus said. His voice shook with rage. "Get out before I kill you myself.”
"Before you what?" Kaelen looked back over his shoulder. "You should know, Magnus, if I die under suspicious circumstances, everything goes public automatically. Every document. Every video. Every transaction. I have spent three years building a dead man's switch, and it is aimed directly at your throat."
Cassius lunged. It was a fast, angry movement born of desperation. He crossed the room in two strides, reaching for Kaelen’s jacket.
He got two steps before Kaelen moved. It was a pivot and a shift of weight. Kaelen caught Cassius's wrist, twisted, and drove him to the floor in under a second. Cassius landed face-down with a heavy thud, his arm twisted at an angle that promised a break with one more inch of pressure.
"Do not," Kaelen said. His voice was ice.
The guards reached for their weapons.
"Touch those guns and I snap his arm in three places."
Magnus held up a hand immediately. "Stand down!”
Kaelen released Cassius and stepped back. He adjusted his cuffs, turned, and walked out the door without looking back.
The hallway was empty except for one person. Seraphina stood twenty feet away, still in her black dress, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were freezing. Her eyes were red.
"How long have you been standing there?" Kaelen asked.
"Long enough," she said. Her voice cracked. "Is it true? About your sister?”
Kaelen stopped. For the first time that night, his mask slipped. The cold calculator vanished, replaced by a flicker of pain.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Would you have believed me?" Kaelen asked. "Three years ago when we met, if I had told you your father was a murderer, would you have believed me?"
Seraphina’s hands trembled. "I don't know."
"Exactly."
"So you married me for revenge." It was not a question. It was a statement of fact.
Kaelen looked at her. He really looked at her. This was the woman he had shared a bed with for three years. This was the woman who barely spoke to him at dinner, who looked at him with shame at every family gathering, but who also defended him when the insults became too sharp.
"I married you because your father destroyed my family. Yes." He paused, his voice softening. "But I stayed because somewhere in the middle of this nightmare, I fell in love with you."
Seraphina’s breath caught in her throat. "You are lying.”
"I have lied about many things, Seraphina. That is not one of them."
"I don't even know who you are," she whispered.
"No. You don't." Kaelen turned away. "But you are about to find out."
He walked toward the elevator.
"Kaelen, wait," she called out.
The elevator doors closed, severing the connection between them. Seraphina stood alone in the hallway while her world fractured into pieces.
Behind her, in the office, Magnus made a call on a burner phone.
"It is me. We have a problem. The son-in-law is not what we thought." He paused, listening to the voice on the other end. "Yes. Terminate him. Make it clean. Make it tonight."
Kaelen stepped out of the Marlowe Estate into the cool night air. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked the screen.
ZAIRE: Phase One complete. Eighteen countries. Seventeen shell companies exposed. Media has the documents. Holt's Jakarta files went to Interpol. The board is in chaos.
LYRIC: Stock manipulation successful. Marlowe Industries down 31% now. SEC will investigate by morning.
RONAN: Heard you made an entrance. Impressive. Also stupid. Magnus just put a hit out on you. Price: $50 million. It's already on three networks.
Kaelen typed back: Let them come.
A black sedan pulled up to the curb. The tinted window rolled down to reveal a woman with sharp features and tactical gear under a leather jacket. A tablet glowed in her lap.
"You really pissed them off," Lyric Chen said without looking up from her screen. "I am tracking sixteen separate contractors heading to Obsidian Bay. They will be here by dawn."
"Good," Kaelen said.
"Good?" She finally looked at him. "They are coming to kill you."
"I know." Kaelen slid into the back seat. "That is the point. You cannot identify every snake until they come out of their holes."
"You are insane."
"That is what everyone keeps saying." Kaelen closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "Take me to The Underbelly. We have work to do.”
The car pulled away from the estate, disappearing into the night. Behind them, the lights blazed in Magnus's office as the empire began to burn.
Across the city, in a penthouse suite, Damien Holt stared at his phone with shaking hands. An encrypted message had bypassed his firewall.
THE ARCHITECT KNOWS. RUN.
Damien threw the phone across the room. It smashed against the wall, but it was too late. The game had already begun.
- Writer
