The Hidden Verdict

Chapter 1 Adrian's Point Of View: My hands were shaking. I don't know if it was the ninth cup of coffee or the weight of everything I was trying to unsee. Maybe both. Sleep had become a luxury I could no longer afford. I hadn't slept in... what, 48 hours? Maybe more. The time blur was part of it now—a side effect of knowledge too big for a human mind to carry without shattering somewhere in the middle. I leaned against the glass wall of my penthouse—eleventh floor, top of the building, all mine, built above a city that never asked the right questions. New Orleans stretched beneath like a lover who smiles while hiding a knife. Like me, myself ! I could see the Mississippi shimmering under the moon like a river of blood turned black, its surface calm, hiding the bones and whispers of everyone it's ever swallowed. No one warns you how deafening silence becomes when it's soaked in truth. Not ordinary truth—the kind that festers. It screams, not in words, but in a frequency that drills into your skull, one only you can hear. People dismiss it as nonsense—paranoid chatters buried in forum threads no one takes seriously. Whispers about bloodlines, hidden power structures that control everything in this world, the kind of stories you scroll past at 2AM and forget by morning and something which stoners whisper about in basements after too much cheap whiskey. Those who believe it spend their lives trying to find the men pulling the strings. Funny thing is, they always search in the dark—never noticing the light's been coming from us. Never realizing that the strings are tied to their own f*****g throats. And those who try to question it, they never realize the answers are older than their questions. They dig, they speculate, they build whole religions around half-truths. But it doesn't matter. The system doesn't hide. It breathes. It lives in the laws they follow, the gods they pray to and the stories they tell their children to make the dark feel smaller. Because control isn't about secrecy. It's about belief. And they still believe they're free. And we let them live in delusion cause delusion is the best solution. I might have been one of them — drowned in the same lies, wrapped tight in the same illusions. but I'm not just a pawn—I'm the damn game. The legacy they fear, the shadow they can't outrun. Because when the truth finally sank in—I stopped being part of the audience. I became the architect of the play. I was born into this. Inherited it like both a curse and a crown. Power so absolute, it stops feeling real. While they scramble in the dark, I walk in the light they refuse to see—because this isn't something you earn. It's something you're born into. I am Adrian Delacroix, the next in line for the bloodline that rules the judiciary from the shadows. The scales of justice aren't blind—they're obedient. They tilt at the weight of my desire. I don't just influence verdicts. I dictate them. I don't seek justice. I own it. Judges, juries, lawmakers—they all answer to me. All of them. From The Hague to the Supreme Court to constitutional benches in countries most people can't even pronounce—my family has its grip wrapped around them like an invisible noose. We don't argue the law. We write it. My great-grandfather had a hand in drafting constitutions. My grandfather ensured certain verdicts never saw the light of day. My father? He's the reason three prime ministers died of "sudden heart attacks" the week before trials that might've cracked our secrecy wide open. You want to know what real power is? It's not owning weapons. It's owning the people who decide what a crime even is. We're the reason some murderers walk free. We're the reason some innocents never see the light again. We are the hidden clause in every constitution.We're not in the history books. We're the reason they get rewritten. We are the architect of silence between headlines. The missing names in the body count of dead people every minute. Laws bend. Courts kneel. Truth gets erased even before it reaches the light. When justice knocks, it doesn't come for us—it waits at the door, head bowed, asking for permission to speak. We don't fear exposure. We script it—release what serves us, erase what doesn't, and leave just enough chaos to keep them obedient. You think truth is pure? It's been bleeding for decades, and we're the ones holding the blade. But some fools just can't help themselves—digging, questioning, chasing shadows like they're clever or something. They think they're uncovering secrets. Cute. Here's the joke: by the time they figure out the rules were never theirs to break or bend... It's already too late. They vanish like glitches in a system—deleted, overwritten, and swiftly forgotten. We're not alone—and we never will be. "THE 13 FAMILIES" bleed power into every corner of this broken planet, pulling the strings that suffocate the world. People still believe democracy was some kind of divine awakening. That freedom is a right, not a product. That governments work for them. That capitalism plays fair. Delusional little creatures. They cling to their flags and ballots like sacred tokens, convinced they hold power over the gods that ignore them, never realizing they were handed the illusion of choice to keep them quiet. Bread. Shelter. Wi-Fi. Give them just enough to think they're free, and they'll build their own cages. But the truth? The world's never changed—it's always belonged to the ones who figured out the rules before anyone knew there was a game. Control the resources? You own their hunger. Control the courts? You rewrite guilt and innocence. Control the media, and you don't have to lie—you just have to flood the airwaves until truth drowns. And once you control everything? You don't hide. You don't run. You sit in plain sight. Because you don't need to silence the masses— Just keep them entertained long enough to forget what questions feel like. Let them post. Let them scream. Let them vote. We built the stage. We wrote the script. We own the applause. And while they scroll, shout, march, and sleep— We move. We communicate through encrypted networks most governments don't even know exist. Orders are passed through a centuries-old system of silent signals, invisible ink, satellite cues, and coded language embedded in ancient dialects. The families don't need to meet. They don't speak on the phone. We don't have meetings. We have rituals. When markets crash, we already made our money. When viruses spread, we've already printed the cure — just... not for the public. There's no profit in healing. There's only profit in fear. You think it sounds insane. But tell me, then: Why is it that cancer still doesn't have a public cure? Why is AIDS still "managed" and not eradicated? Why do epidemics come in waves? Why do they only affect the populations no one can profit from? We have the cures. Of course, we do. You think we'd allow our own to die from these petty things? Labs in Switzerland and Russian house treatments are so advanced, they look like science fiction. Nanotech solutions that dissolve tumors in seconds. Vaccines that end HIV in a month. Anti-viral structures that could neutralize bioengineered plagues. But here's the thing: a cure isn't profitable. You kill the disease, and you kill the cash flow. No more chemotherapy raking in billions while patients rot. No more bloated insurance claims filed with deliberate loopholes. No more glossy pharmaceutical ads selling hope with side effects longer than the script. Because healing doesn't pay. Treatment does. Prolonging pain is more marketable than ending it. We don't want you dead—but we'll never let you get better. A cured patient is a lost customer. And in this game, you're not a life. You're not a patient—you're inventory. You're just meat on a subscription plan. You're a number we keep alive just long enough to bill again. I know this. All of it. The corruption, the lies, the numbers dressed as people. I've lived in it, helped build it, benefited from every broken piece. But none of that has kept me up tonight. It's her. She shouldn't matter. Not to someone like me. Not in a world like this—where attachment is a liability, and love is a weakness sold to the masses like cheap perfume. She doesn't know who I am. Not really. Not the bloodline. Not the power. She believes that I am just the quiet guy who lives in the penthouse above her rented apartment. And I want to keep it that way only. Not to protect her—but to protect me. Because if she knows— She wouldn't run. She'd fall. And that's the problem. She believes good in me. And belief is dangerous. Because I might believe her back. And that? That's how monsters become vulnerable. That's how kingdoms burn—from the inside out. But she's the one thing I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Seven months. Seven months of silence, of pretending, of fighting the urge to look her up, to hear her voice just once more. And now the thought of her—it isn't a flicker anymore. It's a fire. And I know now—this isn't the beginning of something. This is the point of no return. The line I swore I'd never cross. I feel guilty remembering the day my father gave me Brooch with the Delacroix family crest. The curtain was trembling. That thin velvet lie between the world they know and the one I've bled for was about to get blur. And someone—maybe her, maybe me—was about to tear it wide open. And when that happens? There's no going back. Only blood. And truth. Truth that was punishable for anyone to know. Even for her.