The black envelope sat on the cracked, yellowing linoleum like a dark stain. The gold wax seal caught the flickering overhead light, its embossed wolf-and-dragon crest looking like it was breathing in the dim room.
Joey's hand reached down, her fingers trembling slightly. Just as her skin was about to brush the heavy cardstock, Xingcheng lunged.
*SMACK.*
He grabbed her wrist. He didn't squeeze with the practiced cruelty of a Syndicate interrogator; he held her with the raw, frantic desperation of a man pulling someone back from the edge of a cliff.
"Whoa! Relax, Cheng!" Joey gasped, her breath hitching. "It's just mail. What's with the jumpiness? You're acting like it's a live grenade!"
Xingcheng's eyes were blown wide, his nostrils flared. To Joey, it looked like panic. To the world he came from, it was a tactical lockdown.
He knew that envelope wasn't just paper—it was a mark of death.
"Don't," he rasped, his voice tight. "It's… a debt collector. Very dangerous people, Joey. High-interest, 'off-the-books' types. If you touch their correspondence, you become part of the contract."
"A debt collector? For a 'background actor'?" Joey blinked, trying to pull her wrist back.
"Cheng, what did you do? Did you lease a private jet for a rehearsal?"
"I'll 'dispose' of it. It's my mess." He snatched the envelope with a violent snap. "You stay away from the door."
As he pulled the envelope into the shadows of his body, his thumb brushed the wax. His heart stopped. It wasn't his own Syndicate's seal.
It was the Ghost Clan—his most sadistic rivals. The gold plating wasn't just an aesthetic; it was a signature. They hadn't just found his warehouse; they had found his sanctuary.
"You're shaking, Cheng," Joey said, crossing her arms. One blue sock and one polka-dot sock peeked out from her hem.
"I've seen you face down a guy with a knife in the park, but a piece of paper makes your hands tremble? How much do you actually owe them?"
Xingcheng looked at her. She stood there in a faded sweatshirt with a hole in the elbow, in a kitchen that smelled like cheap lavender and old wood.
She had nothing, yet she was looking at him like she was ready to fight a bank for him.
"More than I can ever pay, Peppercorn," he whispered, the lie tasting like ash. "More than this whole city is worth."
Joey didn't flinch. She stepped forward and gently patted the back of his hand—the hand still clutching the death warrant.
"Well… then we'll just have to work more shifts at the Shiny Bucket," she said with a sincere, terrifyingly kind smile.
"I'll talk to the manager. I'll take the night rotations. We'll figure it out, okay? We're a team."
Xingcheng flinched at the word. In the Syndicate, a "team" was a hit squad. Here, it was a girl offering to wash cars in the rain so he didn't have to be afraid of a letter.
"A team," he repeated quietly.
"Exactly. Now, let go of that scary paper. I'm making tea. You look like you've seen a ghost."
She turned to the kitchenette, hum-singing a melody that mimicked the whistling kettle.
Xingcheng retreated to the dark corner of the room. With a steady, cold hand, he ripped the gold wax seal. It snapped like a bone.
He pulled out a single, high-gloss photograph. It wasn't a letter. It was a sniper's viewfinder shot.
The image showed Joey on the park bench from earlier today. She was laughing, a piece of hot dog halfway to her mouth.
The red crosshairs of a long-range scope were centered perfectly between her eyes.
The "Cheng" mask shattered completely.
His eyes filled with a dark, primal rage. He looked at the back of Joey's head as she poured the tea, her ponytail swaying innocently.
You sent me a picture of my heart in a crosshair, he thought, his voice a tectonic growl in his mind.
He crushed the photo in his fist, the gloss paper shrieking. He reached into his waistband, feeling the cold steel of the suppressed pistol.
You wanted a war, Ghost Clan. I'll give you an apocalypse.
Joey turned around, holding two mismatched mugs of steaming tea.
"Tea's ready! Did you throw that bill away?"
Xingcheng tucked the crushed photo into his pocket and forced a calm, terrifyingly hollow smile.
"Yes," he said. "It's handled. Completely."