CHAPTER 26: THE QUIET WAR.

Louis’ POV

The pressure was high — too high.

Government officials breathing down my neck.

Agents, officers, informants — everywhere I turned, eyes were watching.

It wasn’t the first time things had gotten messy, but this... this was different. Someone had slipped. Someone had talked.

Michael’s voice still echoed in my ear, low but steady.

"They’ve already connected three of the shipments to our route."

I clenched my jaw. "And the source?"

"Unknown. But whoever’s feeding them information knows enough to be dangerous."

I leaned back in my chair, exhaling through my nose. My pulse was steady, but my mind was racing. If this got out, if the investigation reached the wrong people, everything I’d built would collapse.

No—we’d collapse.

I thought of Charles again, of his soft smile, the way he used to look at me with unshaken faith. He saw me as something worth believing in. I couldn’t let that version of me die — not yet.

"Shut everything down," I said finally. "Routes, deliveries, contacts. I want silence for seventy-two hours."

Michael hesitated. "That’s going to raise suspicion."

"So will blood on the streets," I snapped, sharper than intended. Then quieter: "Just... do it."

There was a pause before he responded, "Understood."

The line went dead.

I sat there, staring at the blank wall across from me.

The silence in the office was heavy — almost suffocating.

It used to be easier. I used to tell myself I was doing this for family, for survival. But somewhere along the line, I stopped believing that.

Now, it was just noise.

Noise and fear.

And the ghosts that came with both.

"Bill, updates." I sighed, adjusting my tie as if the motion would anchor me. I needed the ritual of order — a steadying thing in a room that felt otherwise poised to collapse.

Bill set a thin file down on my desk with the quiet confidence of someone who’d memorized the terrain of my emergencies.

"The foreign investors — only one of them’s not involved," he said, flipping the top page.

"The rest have fingers in every barrel we sniffed out. But we’ve got leverage. Offshore holdings tied to shell accounts, secret money that’s hidden in foreign accounts under fake companies, a couple of private properties registered under nominees. Nothing that’ll put them in prison tomorrow, but enough to make them sweat."

I let it hang, tasting the options like a promise."Prepare dossiers. Clean, concise. One-line damages and the receipts. If anyone asks, we hand the files to the press and call it whistleblower material. Make it look like charity, like civic duty. Nobody will blame the messenger."

"Make short secret reports about those investors — with evidence or information we can use against them — and release it secretly to the public or media to shift attention away from us."

Bill’s eyes flicked up. "You want me to leak? Make it public?"

"Yes." My voice was flat, a blade wrapped in silk. "But not from us. We’ll plant it through a proxy — a paper with a conscience and an editor who likes scandal. Make sure there’s plausible deniability. If they trace back — they find a story, not a plan."

He nodded and started listing off names, contact points, times. He always loved the logistics of damage control as much as I loved the damage. There was a kind of perverse artistry in it: the right leak, at the right moment, and the world tilted in the direction you wanted.

Bill’s mouth went thin. "If we do this, we fall into their trap," he repeated, quieter this time. "They’ll use it to justify a deeper raid. They’ll pull in courts, auditors — people who don’t sleep. We don’t have that kind of wiggle room right now."

I let the heat in the room sit on him for a beat, then smiled — the slow, easy kind that never meant comfort. "Good," I said. "Then make it look like a trap."

Bill blinked. "What—"

"Not expose them directly," I corrected. "Create a smear that points to them, yes, but framed so their response hands us leverage. We push one scandal that they can’t ignore, and while they’re busy cleaning up, we bury what actually matters. Move pressure to their weakest link — the one with the biggest political reach, the one who will overreact."

He swallowed. "That’s risky."

"Everything worth doing is," I said. I stood and walked to the window, palms flat on glass, watching Elhurst breathe below. "We don’t attack by force. We bend the battlefield. Files, yes — but doctored, selectively true, undeniably scandalous. Leaks that force them to appoint a public investigator. Let them bring in the horses; we’ll already own the stable."

Bill ran a hand through his hair. "And the shipment? The officials already have bodies and product. If they trace it—"

"They won’t trace it to us." I turned, cold and precise. "Michael secures the lab. No one leaves, except those we choose. We move the remaining subjects offline — safe houses, medical teams ready. Pay whoever needs paying to buy us time. And you — you’ll draft the reports. Clean language. No fingerprints. Make it ugly enough they can’t ignore, clean enough their lawyers can’t use it to pin us right away."

He hesitated, then nodded. "Who do we leak to?"

"A proxy," I said. "A low-profile outlet hungry for clicks that won’t ask too many questions. Slip them the profile, let them run. Then let the politicians scramble. While they scramble, we call in favors, tighten the purchase trail, and neutralize the inspectors who aren’t on any ledger. Quietly."

Bill’s eyes searched my face. "This is escalating."

"It already has," I said. "We either control how it escalates, or we burn with it. I prefer we burn everything around us until only ashes remain — and from those ashes, we pick the pieces we want to keep."

He shivered, half in fear, half in recognition. "I’ll get Michael on moving the lab. I’ll have the files ready by morning, anonymized and formatted."

"Make sure there are no loose ends," I told him. "And Bill — if any of those officials start asking awkward questions about family, you tell me first. We don’t let them play god with our people."

He nodded again, more certain this time. "Understood."

I sat back down, folding my hands. The city lights outside looked indifferent, like a million witnesses who would blink and keep walking. "Do it quietly," I said. "No mistakes. No heroics. And for God’s sake, Bill — if anyone asks, you look surprised and ignorant. Play the straight man. Leave the carnage to me."

Bill hesitated, then said, "There’s a safety detail I can ramp up — discreet chauffeurs, a nurse on call, a private line to the clinic." He didn’t ask permission; he offered options. That was why he was my right hand.

"Do it," I said. "And get Michael in the room. I want a list of scapegoats and a timeline. If they push, we push harder. We make the story theirs, not ours."

As Bill gathered the file and left, the office felt emptier and louder in the same breath. The lights above hummed. My reflection in the glassed-in wall looked smaller than usual: two eyes, an expensive suit, a mouth that had learned to tell the city whatever it needed to hear.

The phone buzzed on the desk — unfamiliar number. For a second I almost let it go to voicemail. Then I thought of the ships, the bodies, the manifest, and the way a single mistake could fold everything into ruin.

I picked up.

"Louis," the voice on the line said without preamble. "You wanted silence. We don’t have seventy-two hours."

"Michael," I said, voice low. "Talk."

He didn’t waste a second. "Shutting everything down won’t work. Seventy-two hours — that’s all we have. They’re planning to frame us."

My grip on the phone tightened. "Who?"

"Some of the people in your Alvara household," he said quietly. "They’re planning to sell you out."

Michael continued, his tone steady but urgent. "Distant aunts and uncles — the ones with knowledge of the company’s dealings over the years. They’ve been talking. Someone’s paying them to leak information."

I leaned back in my chair, jaw tight. Of course. Family.

The bloodline that built everything now wanted to tear it apart.

For a second, I didn’t say anything. Just silence — heavy and cold.

Of course it would come to this. Betrayal never came from the outside; it always started within the walls you trusted most."Names," I said finally.

He laughed, low and rough. "I’ll have to tell you that in person. A lot of them were always envious," he said.

"Well, they shouldn’t be," I replied, leaning forward. "They can’t do what we do. They judge from a distance but still want to be in our shoes."

Michael went quiet for a moment, and I could almost hear the smirk in his silence — the kind that said he knew I was right, but it wouldn’t save us this time. I laughed a bit, I could finally put my anger somewhere.