It began on a Wednesday.
The kind of Wednesday that smells like betrayal and stale espresso.
Alec woke to the sound of his phone exploding with notifications. Messages. Missed calls. Emails flagged in red. His assistant was screaming through the intercom in five languages, trying to explain the unexplainable.
“Sir, the Texas ranch is gone. We tried to access it yesterday and—”
“Gone?” he barked, shoving away his silk sheets. “What do you mean gone?!”
“It’s sold. Entirely liquidated. And the Greece villa too. The sale went through three ghost lawyers in thirty-six hours and was routed through—well, sir, no one can trace it.”
Alec rubbed his eyes, tension digging into his temples. “What about the Tokyo shipment?”
“Missing,” she whispered. “Yakuza are furious.”
He was panicking. He wa
