While I was cleaning the boardroom, a different kind of poison was brewing at the edge of the city.
Damien stood in his glass-walled office, looking out at the Flensburg harbor. Unlike my cold, industrial aesthetic, his world was one of polished gold and aggressive luxury. He was the man who had stolen Alice, the man who had triggered the crash that gave me the Agnosia, and he wasn't done yet.
"The government puppets failed," Damien said, his voice smooth and oily. He was speaking to a man in a dark tactical vest. "Lucas is too well-entrenched in the Ministry. We need to hit him where he's truly vulnerable: the supply chain."
"The Mexico shipment?" the mercenary asked.
"The shipment is a distraction," Damien smirked, pouring himself a drink. "I've been coordinating with the cartel dissenters in Star City. We're going to sabotage the ZigLan hardware. If those weapons misfire or the rigs fail, the Cartel won't just blame the company, they'll demand Lucas head on a platter."
Damien had spent years building a back-channel into the government, using his charm and dirty money to create a "solid backup" that Lucas couldn't touch. He didn't want to just compete with ZigLan; he wanted to hollow it out from the inside.
"And what about the girl?" the mercenary asked, holding up a grainy photo of Beatrice Kingston leaving the Elliott Mansion.
Damien's eyes lit up with a dark, predatory spark. He remembered Beatrice from the periphery of his old life.
"She's the perfect trigger," Damien whispered. "Lucas thinks he can hide behind his ice. He thinks he can be a CEO by day and a ghost by night. We're going to show him that even the Ice King can melt if you burn the right things."
...
Lucas POV
The Belarus Twins moved back to the Mangrove District that evening. The Santiago shipment was supposed to be moving, but as we arrived at the docks, the air felt wrong.
"Lucas, look at the crane logs," Tyler said, his voice tight. "Someone accessed the ZigLan Rigs encryption codes from an external server. this was professional."
I walked toward the lead crate, my hand resting on the cold steel. Suddenly, my Agnosia flared. A sharp, icy seizure gripped my right arm, locking my muscles. I stumbled, gasping as the trauma of the accident rushed back in a wave of neurological static.
"Lucas!" Tyler caught me, his eyes scanning the perimeter.
Through the haze of the seizure, I saw a flash movement on the rooftop across the dock. A sniper? I thought.
The shipment had been compromised. The tech I was sending to Mexico had been fixed with a virus that would cause a catastrophic failure the moment it was activated. It was a trick designed to make me look like a traitor to the Cartel.
Damien's signature was all over it.
"He's coming for us, Tyler," I managed to say, the seizure finally receding as I focused on the image of the crimson fabric in my pocket. "He's hitting the business to get to Elian."
"Then we stop being CEOs," Tyler said, his face hardening as he pulled a riffle from the SUV. "If he wants to play dirty, we'll show him how we survived the border."
As we prepped for a night of underworld war, I didn't know that Damien's men were already watching the little fashion shop in Oakhills. The "nasty tricks" were just beginning, and Beatrice Kingston was the next piece on his board.
...
The smell of salt and diesel was heavy in the air as the ZigLan freighter, the North Star, began to pull away from the pier. But on the bridge, the digital readouts were screaming.
"The virus is active," Tyler hissed, his fingers flying across a ruggedized laptop. "Damien's people didn't just skin the crates; they hard-wired a logic bomb into the GPS. The moment this ship hits international waters, it'll broadcast a signal to the German Coast Guard that we're carrying illegal hardware. It's a setup for a public execution of the Elliott name."
"He wants a show," I said, with a cold voice. "Let's give him a ghost story instead. Tyler,take care of the transponder. We're going dark."
"And the guards?" He asked.
"I'll handle the guards."
I moved through the ship like a shadow. This was the work I had learned in the borderlands. Two of Damien's mercenaries disguised as dock workers, were near the engine room. They never saw me coming. I moved with a silent, terrifying efficiency, using their own momentum to take them down before they could trigger their comms. By the time I reached the main deck, I scanned the whole area, noticing that no one else was there, "Clear," I signaled.
"Transponder's dead," Tyler replied. "We're invisible. But Lucas... we can't take this ship to Mexico now. We need to purge the hardware."
"Redirect to the private ZigLan slipway," I commanded. "We'll strip the crates ourselves."
...
The "private slipway" was a hidden fortress carved into a cliffside north of Flensburg. As the North Star slid into the bay, the BelarusTwins' true power became visible.
Fifty men, dressed in charcoal gears, emerged from the hangars. These weren't corporate security, they were the men we had brought back from the East, the "Shadow Army." They operated outside the Elliott ledger, loyal only to the Twins.
"Purge the systems," Tyler shouted as he leapt onto the deck. "I want every line of Damien's code shredded!"
I watched from the catwalk, the wind whipping my coat. I felt a seizure coming on heavy. The tremors started in my legs, a jagged coldness that threatened to drop me to the floor. I reached for the amber vial in my pocket, but my fingers were too numb to unscrew the cap.
I slumped against the railing, gasping. Through the blur of my fading vision, I saw the men working with mechanical precision. We had saved the shipment, but the war with Damien had officially moved from the boardroom to the trenches.
"Lucas!" Tyler was there in an instant, catching me before I hit the steel. He forced the medication into my mouth. "Easy, Ice King. You've pushed too hard. The shipment is safe. Damien thinks we're in federal custody."
"Keep... keep searching for the leak," I managed to whisper as the medicine began to dull the tremors. "Damien didn't do this alone. Someone in the family gave him the codes."