Chapter 188: Blood on the Desk
Sterling Manor sat on the hill above the city, a three-story estate of old money and older secrets. Concrete walls surrounded the property, iron gates guarded the entrance, and the gardens were kept perfectly trimmed by servants paid to stay invisible.
Uncle Aldric Sterling ruled what was left of the family from the second-floor study. It was his command center, his sanctuary, the room where he counted money, signed orders, and made phone calls that ruined lives without ever raising his voice.
He walked in at quarter past one in the morning.
He’d been in bed. The servants had reported nothing unusual; the guards were at their posts, the wards were active, everything exactly as it should be. All he wanted was a brandy before sleeping.
Aldric opened the study door and froze.
The desk lamp was on. He hadn’t left it that way. He was certain of it. Before leaving, he’d checked every light in the room, a habit that bordered on compulsion. The lamp had been off when he left.
It was on now.
And sitting on the desk, right where his brandy glass usually sat, was a wooden chest.
He recognized it instantly. He had packed it himself three days earlier, counting out five million credits in gold coins, sealing the lid, signing the courier manifest, and handing the chest to the Crimson Syndicate’s intermediary in the underground parking garage of the Crimson Room.
The lid was open and the interior was bare, not a single coin left. it was also stained with bood.
Aldric’s hands began to shake.
There was a note too, resting on top of it. He didn’t want to touch it. His fingers reached for it anyway.
He unfolded it.
Four words were written in dark ink.
TELL STERLING I’M COMING.
Signed at the bottom with a single name.
Asura.
The note slipped from his fingers and drifted to the floor, landing on the Persian rug. Aldric didn’t pick it up. He couldn’t stop staring at the chest and the blood stains.
"The syndicate failed," he whispered.
His voice was barely audible, more of a mutter than anything else.
"Five million credits. Gone. And the Boss promised me. ’Professional. Discreet. Guaranteed results.’" He let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. "Guaranteed."
His hand found the edge of the desk, and he gripped it tightly, his knuckles turning white.
"The students are back. They’re in the city. They killed the Abyssal General, closed the portal, and now they’re heroes. Heroes." The word came out bitter. "And the Syndicate couldn’t even kill them on a train."
He reached for the brandy decanter on the side table. His hand was shaking so badly that the stopper clinked against the neck three times before he finally pulled it free. He poured himself a drink, spilling half of it across the desk, then swallowed the rest in one gulp.
"Asura. The mask. The underground fighter." His eyes went wide. "No. No, no, no. That’s not possible. Voss is just a student. He can’t be Asura. He CAN’T be."
But the chest was on his desk, the same chest he had packed and delivered to a syndicate that had just been dismantled by someone strong enough to walk through their security and take everything down to the walls.
And someone had carried that chest here. Into his manor. Behind his guards, behind his wards. Nobody had seen or heard anything. The guards reported no breach, the wards had logged no intrusion. The chest had simply appeared.
Asura had been in his house.
While he was sleeping.
Aldric sat down in his chair, still holding the brandy glass. He set it on the desk with a soft clink, but it rattled against the wood because his fingers were still shaking.
tick. tick. tick.
The mantel clock counted out the seconds like it had all the time in the world.
"Move," he muttered. "I need to move. Liquidate everything. Transfer the money. Get it out of the family accounts before he comes back. Before he..."
Aldric pulled the desk terminal closer. His fingers fumbled the password twice before he finally got it right. The screen came to life, displaying account access, transfer logs, and asset management.
He started moving money.
Every liquid asset, every credit in the family’s operational accounts, all of it routed through a chain of shell companies to a holding account he kept at a foreign bank under a false name. The numbers on the screen shrank while he watched, the family treasury bleeding out in real time.
What remained was five million credits in liquid accounts. Everything else House Sterling owned was tied up in land and property he couldn’t sell quickly enough to matter. Five million spendable credits. That was all the family had left that he could actually access.
And Aldric was going to spend every penny of it.
"Rogue guards," he muttered. "Ex-Royal soldiers. The ones who fled when the Emperor fell. They’re mercenaries now, but they care more about money than crowns. I can hire fifty of them. Maybe a hundred if I have to. Enough to storm Vanguard Academy and finish this before Asura reaches me."
His fingers flew across the keyboard, bringing up a dark web contact list filled with names, numbers, and prices.
"A hundred ex-Royal Guards, Rank 2 minimum. Two hundred thousand a head. That’s twenty million." His throat tightened. "I don’t have twenty million. I only have five."
He stopped and recalculated.
"Twenty-five, then. Twenty-five guards, five million credits. That would be enough to breach the academy, take the students, and be gone before the Vanguard military can respond, if I time it right. If I hit them before they expect it."
It was a terrible plan, and he knew it. A man who could slip past his wards while he slept would not be stopped by a wall of hired swords. But it was the only plan he had, and saying it out loud made his hands almost stop shaking.
Aldric picked up the phone on his desk. It was a secure line, the kind that cost fifty thousand credits and couldn’t be traced.
He dialed a number.
The line rang once. Twice. Then a third time.
Finally, a voice answered. Low, rough, and professional.
"You’re calling late."
"Kell. I need twenty-five operators, Rank 2 minimum. Armed assault. The target is the Vanguard Academy."
A pause. "Five million for a military academy assault. That’s light."
"It’s what I have. Take it or leave it."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Payment structure?"
"I’d give you all of it up front. The money will be in the usual account by morning."
That pause stretched. Men like Kell didn’t get paid everything up front by men who weren’t desperate.
"We’ll take it and get the job done within forty-eight hours."
The line went dead.
Aldric set the phone down. His eyes moved to the empty chest, then to the blood, and finally to the note lying on the rug.
TELL STERLING I’M COMING.
"Let him come," Aldric whispered to the empty room. "By the time he gets here, the students will be dead, and dead men don’t come for anyone."
He didn’t fully believe his own words. Not entirely. But saying them out loud made the shaking slow down, and tonight, that was enough.
Aldric sat alone in the study, surrounded by a small island of lamplight, staring at the bloodstained chest as he waited for morning.