Chapter 8 #2
I lean closer, my breath warm against his face, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Say it again.”
He coughs. “Morazin Valeer. He lives. He coordinated the ground-side. He’s… not who you think he is.”
“What do I think he is?” I ask, almost amused despite the rage curling in my gut.
“A foreman,” the merc rasps. “A little prison rat with a badge. But he’s… funded. Protected. He’s got external backers.”
“Who,” I say, each syllable like a nail.
He shakes his head frantically. “I don’t know names. Only routing tags. Only that the money comes in—clean, big—like someone wants him alive.”
I stare at him, letting the implication bloom.
Morazin alive means Yatori wasn’t just a one-time spectacle.
It’s part of a pipeline.
A system.
A strategy.
Behind me, boots thunder on the mezzanine stairs—Renn and two enforcers in night-vision visors, weapons drawn, faces tight.
Renn sees the merc pinned under my hand. “You got one.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And he’s talking.”
Jordan’s voice crackles in my ear again, breathless. “Lonari, the lights—do you want partial restoration? Emergency strips only? People are—there’s panic, it’s getting ugly.”
I glance down through the mezzanine rail. In the darkness, civilians are trampling each other, screams turning into sobs. My own men are holding lines, but chaos has teeth.
“Emergency strips,” I say. “Not full grid. Keep it messy for them, but give civilians a path.”
“Copy.”
A moment later, faint red strips glow along floor edges and exit routes, like veins lighting up under skin. The crowd begins to funnel, still frantic but less blind.
Renn crouches beside me, voice low. “Boss… Godfather’s asking if this is connected to Yatori.”
I feel my mouth curl into something cold. “Tell him to stop asking questions he doesn’t want answered.”
Renn hesitates. “The Nine—”
“Yeah,” I snap. “I’m aware of the Nine. I’m also aware somebody just tried to turn my house into a graveyard.”
The merc under my hand wheezes, eyes darting between us.
I lean back down. “You said shells. You said Baragon-linked. Give me a tag. Anything I can trace.”
He coughs and spits, then forces out, “K-String… KZ-443… and… and a routing hub called ‘Cinder Vault.’ That’s what the contract header said.”
Cinder Vault.
It sounds like a joke. Like a fake name someone uses when they think they’re clever.
But the merc says it with the certainty of someone who’s seen it on a screen a dozen times.
I release his throat just enough for him to breathe. He sucks air in like he’s been reborn.
“Good,” I murmur. “Now you’re going to help me.”
He stares, terrified. “Help you how?”
“You’re going to walk,” I say, standing and hauling him up by his collar.
“And you’re going to show me every dead drop you’ve ever used on Gur.
You’re going to open every account you’ve been paid through.
And if you try anything cute, I’ll put your head through the nearest table and feed your teeth to the slot machines. ”
His eyes widen. “Okay—okay.”
Renn looks at me, grim. “We got two more mercs pinned in the bulkhead corridor. Jordan locked them in. What do you want?”
“Alive if you can,” I say, because now I want answers, not corpses.
Renn nods and moves, barking orders.
I drag the merc toward the VIP corridor, because I want him secured somewhere quiet before the casino returns to full roar and the story gets rewritten in real time like it did on Yatori.
As we move, the smell of smoke thickens, mixing with spilled alcohol and fear sweat. The Nun’s music starts again, softer, warped, as if the building is trying to pretend everything is normal.
Jordan appears at the corridor intersection, hair messy, face pale, eyes blazing with furious focus. She’s holding a compad and a maintenance tool like she’s ready to stab someone with it.
She sees the merc and stops.
“You caught one,” she says, breathless.
“Yeah,” I reply.
Her gaze flicks over the merc’s face, then back to mine. “Talk.”
I watch her for a beat—this human woman who should’ve been dead on a prison moon, now standing in my empire’s hallways turning infrastructure into a weapon.
“He says Morazin is alive,” I tell her.
Jordan goes very still.
Then her face hardens like steel. “Of course he is.”
The merc flinches at her tone, like her anger is more frightening than mine.
Jordan steps closer, voice low. “Who’s funding him?”
The merc swallows. “Shells. Tags. Baragon-linked. I don’t know names.”
Jordan’s eyes narrow. “But you know the routing.”
He nods quickly. “KZ-443. Cinder Vault.”
Jordan’s gaze snaps to me, and in her eyes I see the same realization that’s sitting like a stone in my gut: this isn’t just Kaijen drama.
This isn’t just the Nine squeezing tribute.
This is a network reaching beyond Gur, beyond the Alliance, beyond the Coalition—something old and patient and wealthy enough to buy massacres like they’re advertisements.
I exhale slowly, tasting smoke and rage.
“This is bigger,” Jordan says quietly.
“Yeah,” I answer, voice rough. “It is.”
She looks at the corridor behind me, toward Kel’s office, toward the seat of power that’s been compromised. “So what now?”
I tighten my grip on the merc’s collar.
Now?
Now I do what I should’ve done the moment I stepped back into the Nun: I stop thinking like a convict who wants to survive and start thinking like a goddamn Kaijen who wants to win.
“We trace the money,” I say. “We break the shells. We find who’s pulling strings. And if Kel’s too scared to let me chase Yatori, then I’ll chase the thing that scares him.”
Jordan’s mouth tightens. “You’re going to start a war in your own house.”
I glance at her. “Honey, the war already started. They just fired the first shot through my window.”
Jordan’s eyes flick, and for the first time since Yatori I see something shift inside her—not trust, not yet, but recognition.
The understanding that the world isn’t divided into neat columns labeled “good” and “bad,” “Alliance” and “Coalition,” “law” and “crime.” It’s divided into predators and prey, and someone out there is trying to turn the whole galaxy into a feeding ground.
I drag the merc onward, toward a secure room where screams can’t reach and cameras can’t lie.
Behind us, the Nun’s lights pulse faint red along exit routes as civilians flee, and above us, in the penthouse levels, tribute accounts keep scrolling upward like the price of silence.
And in my chest, beneath the anger, something colder and sharper settles into place.
Purpose.
Because this is no longer about family politics.
This is about whoever thinks they can buy reality—and get away with it.
Not in my house.
Not with her standing beside me, carrying proof like a weapon, eyes bright with fury and intelligence and a stubborn refusal to shut up.
I’m going to pull this whole rotten machine apart.