Location: Fenwick Highway — Night
The car lay on its side like a dying animal.
Glass sparkled across the asphalt—thousands of fragments catching the orange glow of the streetlights. The undercarriage was exposed, a tangle of pipes and wires and dark, wet patches that spread slowly across the ground. One of the tires still spun—lazy, aimless, like a heart that hadn't realized it had stopped.
Inside, the driver hung from his seatbelt.
His head was bent at an angle that angles were not meant to bend. His eyes were open. His mouth was open. His chest rose and fell in shallow, wet gasps. Beside him, the man with the tablet—his glasses gone, his face pressed against the shattered window—mumbled words that didn't form sentences.
Frederick was pinned.
His leg—his left leg—was caught between the door frame and the floor of the car. Something metal had pierced through his calf. Not drilled. Not stabbed. Pressed. The weight of the car, the force of the impact, had driven a shard of the chassis into his flesh like a nail through wood.
He screamed.
His hands clawed at the seat, at the door, at the air. Blood soaked his pant leg, dark and wet, spreading across the leather.
"Get me out! Get me out of here!"
The driver didn't respond.
The man with the tablet didn't respond.
Frederick's eyes found the growing puddle beneath the car. The smell of gasoline filled the cabin—sweet, sharp, cloying. It dripped from somewhere above him. It pooled around his trapped leg. It spread across the asphalt in lazy, hungry fingers.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
---
Cecil walked to the car.
Her boots crunched on the glass. The whip hung from her hand—segmented, dark, still pulsing with that faint, unsteady glow. The aetherflux conflux had calmed, but it hadn't left. It clung to the metal like frost on a winter window.
She stopped beside the overturned vehicle.
Her head tilted.
Through the shattered window, she could see him. Frederick. His face was pale. His eyes were wide. His hands were still clawing at the door, at the seat, at anything that might give him purchase.
"Help me," he gasped. "Please—I'll give you anything—"
Cecil raised her phone.
The screen glowed.
---
The video call connected.
Sylvia's face filled the screen—not her whole face, just the part above the mask. The mask itself was pale yellow, delicate, etched with patterns that caught the light. Butterflies. Dozens of them, their wings spread, their bodies thin and intricate, carved into the material with a precision that spoke of hours and money and people who had nothing better to do.
She was cross-legged on a velvet couch.
Behind her, standing with her hands clasped behind her back, Madam Lynne. Her face was neutral. Her eyes were not.
"Cecil," Sylvia said. "Show me."
Cecil turned the phone.
The camera panned across the wreckage—the glass, the gasoline, the spinning tire. Then it settled on Frederick's face.
He squinted at the screen.
"Who—who are you?"
Sylvia's lips curved.
She didn't answer.
Madam Lynne stepped forward. Her voice was cold. Flat. The voice of someone who had delivered ultimatums before and had never been ignored.
"Of all the antics you mere mortals have committed, this must be the dumbest. To dare collude against the Saiyan's businesses?"
Frederick's brow furrowed.
"What—what are you talking about? I don't—"
"You have outdone yourself, Frederick Morrecca." Lynne's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "No begging will get you out of your sins."
"I don't understand! I didn't—"
"Your errand stuge," Lynne snapped, "Commy. He destroyed our facility. He left incriminating evidence everywhere. Evidence that ties back to you."
Frederick's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"Commy? That's—that's not—I didn't order—"
Sylvia's eyes lit up.
Not literally. But something behind them shifted. A spark of interest. A flicker of recognition.
"He doesn't know," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Almost amused.
"Lynne. He doesn't know what his own people did."
Madam Lynne's jaw tightened.
"It doesn't matter. Miss Sylvia has spoken with your superior in the Wycliffe family. They have decided that your actions—whether you ordered them or not—have turned you and the entire Morrecca brand into a compromised asset. You are a liability. And liabilities are removed."
Frederick's face contorted.
"No!" His voice cracked. "No, it can't be! I didn't do anything! I didn't—"
He stared at the screen.
His eyes went wide.
"Nathan," he said. "Nathan Drayke. He's behind this. He must be—"
Sylvia's eyes lit up again.
Brighter this time.
"Nathan Drayke," she repeated.
Frederick saw her expression. Saw the hunger behind it. His mouth snapped shut.
"Enough," Madam Lynne said. "Cecil. Send him on his merry way."
---
The video call ended.
The screen went dark.
Cecil pocketed the phone. She turned. Her boots crunched on the glass—once, twice, three times—as she walked away from the overturned car.
The whip hung from her hand.
She didn't look back.
Behind her, Frederick screamed.
"You old witch! You'll rot in the abyss! I'll be waiting for you there!"
His voice cracked.
"Nathan Drayke! Damn you! Damn you to the worst ends! This is your fault—all your fault—"
Cecil stopped.
She raised the whip.
The segments glowed—not bright, not steady, just... present. The aetherflux conflux pulsed along the length of the whip, slow and hungry, like a heart that had learned to beat on its own.
She brought the whip down.
Not at Frederick. At the puddle.
The tip touched the gasoline.
The aetherflux conflux sparked.
---
The fire didn't roar.
It bloomed.
The gasoline caught—not with an explosion, with a sigh. A wave of orange and blue that spread across the asphalt in seconds, licking at the undercarriage, curling around the tires, climbing the windows. The heat came after—a wall of it, pressing outward, making the air shimmer.
Cecil walked.
Her pace was unhurried. The whip was behind her back now, its segments clinking softly with each step. The fire reflected in her eyes—orange, yellow, orange—but she didn't flinch. Didn't turn.
Behind her, the car groaned.
Then it screamed.
Metal twisted. Glass shattered. The gasoline tank ignited—not a sigh this time, a roar. A column of flame rose into the night sky, visible for blocks, for miles, for anyone who cared to look.
The driver didn't scream.
The man with the tablet didn't scream.
Frederick did.
For a moment.
Then the fire found him.
---
The mounted screen flickered to life.
It was on the side of a building—one of those old brick structures that had been converted into something modern, something glass and steel and pretentious. The screen was massive, visible from the street, from the sidewalk, from the coffee shop across the road where people sat with lattes and laptops and no idea what they were about to see.
A woman appeared on the screen.
Janet. Her hair was blond, her suit was red, her expression was the carefully calibrated mask of someone who had delivered bad news before and would deliver it again.
"We interrupt your usual broadcasting with breaking news."
Her voice was measured. Professional. But there was something beneath it—a tremor, a curiosity, a hunger for the story.
"Hours after Nico Morrecca allegedly declared himself the new godfather of the Morrecca fortune, tragedy has struck."
The screen split.
On one side, Janet. On the other, a photograph of Frederick—older, jowlier, his eyes squinting against a sun that had long since set.
"Frederick Morrecca, 62, has been confirmed dead after a suspicious road accident on the Fenwick Highway."
Another image appeared. The car—or what was left of it. A burned-out shell, its windows gone, its paint blistered, its frame twisted into a shape that no longer resembled anything that had ever been driven.
"The vehicle—a 2000s sedan, black, with tinted windows—was discovered in flames late this evening. Witnesses reported hearing an explosion. The Crestwood PD has not released an official cause, but sources indicate that the circumstances surrounding the accident are... unusual."
Janet leaned forward.
"Fenwick has long been known for its illegal drug trade—a trade that the Crestwood PD has been allegedly investigating for over a decade. And now, just as connections between the Morrecca family and that trade were coming to light, Frederick Morrecca dies."
She paused.
"The question everyone is asking: who are the competitors that Nico Morrecca claimed his godfather wanted him to sabotage? Are they rival criminal organizations? And where is Nico Morrecca now? Is he alive? Or has he taken the same bizarre route as his godfather?"
The image on the screen shifted to a photograph of Nico—drunk, disheveled, his eyes wild from the video that had gone viral.
"I'm Janet. This is WELB 7 News."
---
On the sidewalk, a figure watched.
His face was not his own.
The mask—pale, sharp-jawed, hollow-cheeked—covered his features. The same mask that had worn Nico's face. The same mask that had staggered through the queue, that had sung and danced and declared himself the new godfather.
He reached up.
His fingers found the edge of the mask.
He pulled.
The mask came away.
The face beneath was not Nico's. It was younger, sharper, with dark circles under its eyes and a single silver-white streak in its hair. The face of someone who had seen too much and slept too little.
Elijah Marcus Isley.
He stared at the burning image on the screen—at the photograph of Frederick, at the wreckage of the car, at the headline that would be remembered for years.
His lips curved.
Not a smile. The shadow of one.
"All according to plan," he said.
He turned.
The mask dangled from his fingers. The night air was cool. The city hummed around him—traffic, sirens, the distant sound of someone laughing.
He walked away.
Behind him, the screen flickered.
And the news continued to spread.
---