“I can’t move that much at once,” he says, his voice breaking. “There are flags, there are systems, it will trigger audits.”
I press the barrel harder under his chin, forcing his head back. His breath stutters.
“Look around you,” I respond. “Does it look like I give a fuck about your audits.”
His eyes flick across the room, landing on the bodies, the blood, the destruction.
“Twenty,” I repeat.
He swallows hard, his throat working against the barrel still pressed to it. “Okay. Okay.”
It takes longer than it should.
There are multiple screens and multiple confirmations, a second account, and a workaround that he has clearly used before.
He knows how to move money like this.
Of course he does.
While he works, I reach into my pocket and pull out a slim drive.
I take his phone from his shaking hand long enough to connect it and start the extraction. Data begins transferring immediately, pulling contacts, accounts, message threads, and routing paths tied to The Collective.
He watches me do it, breathing uneven, but he doesn't say a word. He doesn't dare.
Finally, the transfer goes through.
My burner vibrates in my hand.
I glance down.
The confirmation sits there. Twenty million wired in. The transfer is fast enough for now and temporary in a way that doesn't matter.
It is a start.
When he finishes, I nod once.
“Thanks.”
I pull the trigger.
The blast tears through the ballroom, deafening and absolute. His head disappears in a violent spray that paints the wall behind him. Bone and blood and something soft spatter the marble. His body collapses and goes still, face-first into the mess he helped create.
Luke claps slowly, the sound sharp in the silence.
“Proud of you,” his voice warm. “This is the Seth I knew and loved.”
I lower myself into one of the chairs.
The shotgun rests across my knees, speckled with blood. My hands are still shaking, but my breathing begins to even out in slow, uneven pulls, like my body is trying to remember how to function after forgetting.
I pull the drive free from his phone and slide it into mine.
The transfer starts immediately. Files begin to populate, lines of data stacking over each other as everything copies over. I watch just long enough to catch the structure. Names. Numbers. Threads layered over threads. Patterns start to push through the noise. Routes. Timing. Conversations that cut off too clean or redirect too fast.
The realization hits.
Grant didn’t just disappear from the gala. He could have doubled back. He may not have even been here to begin with.
