CHAPTER 100: AND I AM NOT DYING TONIGHT

Charlie Watkins was a name that had slowed conversations and straightened shoulders for years. Once, long ago, he had been part of the same orbit as Edward Sterling and Elena — a reckless, talented boy who loved fast thrills more than plans. He had wanted Elena in the way young men want what they cannot have. She and Edward were already together. The rejection landed on Charlie like a bruise, and he walked into the dangerous comforts: drugs, alcohol, gambling. Those habits ate away the edges of him until his family washed their hands of him.

There was a night everyone in town remembered in whispers. Charlie showed up at Elena’s door and made a scene, furious and volatile. He and Edward fought. The argument finished with Charlie leaving the city, a ruined friend with nowhere to anchor. People assumed that was the end of the story.

It was not. The sea took him to a different kind of life. On the Crimson Islands, a place that hardly answered to maps and answered to no government, an old man took him in. The islands ran on their own rules: loyalties, debts, and buried power. The old man adopted Charlie in everything but name. When that old man died, his daughter became Charlie’s family — and the island gave Charlie a new title by the force of presence and the cleverness to survive. He rose until the underworld learned a new name for him: Old Master.

The old master has established a formidable reputation in the underworld, and his association with Crimson Island ensures that no one dares to oppose him.

Now, the Old Master was in Star Harbor for one reason. He had come for Miles Sterling. The past that tied Charlie to the Sterlings had become a coming reckoning, and the city held its breath.

Star Harbor — Old Master’s safe house.

The room was the color of a closed eye, thick with the smell of cold metal and damp concrete. A single chair sat under a dangling bulb, and Miles was bound to it with zip ties that chewed at his wrists and ankles. A hood pressed warm breath back into his face. Somewhere beyond the cloth, a door hinge gave a tired sigh. Footsteps approached, deliberate, unhurried.

The hood ripped away. Light slammed into his pupils. Miles blinked once, twice, letting the white flare burn down to shapes. Across from him stood a man whose features carried the ghost of an old photograph: sharp cheekbones, a smile that never reached the eyes, a kind of tidy cruelty. The face Victor had once slid across a table like a card in a rigged game. Charlie Watkins. The Old Master.

"Well, well," the man said, voice silk over wire. "I finally get to see you. You look like Edward."

Miles tilted his head, a small, almost bored grin at the corner of his mouth. "I get that a lot."

"You do not look afraid," the Old Master went on, as if cataloging an insect. "Just like your father. Hot blooded, it seems."

"Get to the point," Miles said. "Why bring me here?"

"What is the hurry?" The Old Master smiled as if tasting a private joke. "I will destroy you slowly."

His eyes brightened with a feverish light. "I killed your father back then." A soft laugh, intimate as a confession. "And I arranged your kidnapping. But you survived somehow. Persistent, like mold."

He took a step closer, the bulb swinging slightly and sending thin shadows across his face. "I even took care of your stepfather, Daniel." The laugh came again, splitting into a ragged edge. "I will take all the happiness from Elena. I will take her son from her now."

Miles felt the flicker of heat climb his spine, but he kept his breathing even, shoulders loose. The Old Master watched him like a cat waiting for the tremor of a mouse.

"You just wait and see," the Old Master said. "Sterling Enterprises will collapse tonight. My men are already in your offices. But it is unfortunate—you will not be able to see the news tomorrow. Your widow mother will be back on the road with the children, and you—"

The chair creaked as Miles shifted, meeting the man’s gaze with something colder than defiance. "Uncle Charlie," he said lightly, "even if I die, you won’t be able to touch my family or Sterling Enterprises . And I’m not dying tonight."

The Old Master’s brow twitched. "So you already know about me. Victor told you, I guess."

He spread his hands, the picture of magnanimous threat. "Can you not see? You are in my cage, Miles. I destroyed Sterling Enterprises once. I will do it again. No one will stop me."

"Really?" Miles asked. "Then why don’t you call and ask your men who went to my office tonight?"

The room listened. The Old Master didn’t move for a heartbeat. He had seen confidence before, fake and bravado-thin. This felt different—an ease that came from someone who had rechecked every angle and cut escape routes into the floorboards.

The Old Master’s eyes narrowed. He slipped a phone from his jacket, the screen lighting his features a cold blue. He turned away a fraction, finger hovering over a contact labeled in a language he preferred his enemies not to read. He pressed the call.

The line clicked alive. A hiss of wind. Somewhere, a voice, low and strained.

"Status," the Old Master said, each syllable clipped.

Static chewed at the reply. The Old Master frowned, pressing the phone tighter to his ear. He paced a short line in front of Miles, the sole of his shoe whispering against concrete. "Speak up."

Miles watched him without blinking. The details around him remained a running checklist—camera nestled high in the corner, old vent above the door, metal shelving with tools, two men posted at the exit pretending to be statues, their nerves a hair too taut. He rolled his wrist against the zip tie, measuring the give. Not yet.

The Old Master’s mouth thinned. "Repeat that," he said.

A crackle, then a voice rising and breaking off, like a transmission under water. The Old Master straightened, anger touching his posture like an electric current. His eyes flicked to Miles with an ugly promise.

"Bad reception?" Miles asked softly, almost sympathetic.

The Old Master ended the call without a goodbye and dialed another number, faster this time. A second line connected, then sagged into dead air, then returned with a burst of noise that did not sound like triumph. Not screaming. Not gunfire. Something else—a chaos of orders colliding.

He tried a third number.

Miles leaned back as far as the restraints allowed, tilting his face toward the bulb’s heat. "You ever notice," he said, conversational, "how the sun sets the same way every night, no matter who thinks they’re running the city?"

The Old Master’s jaw worked. "You think this is clever?"

"I think," Miles said, eyes steady, "you should answer."

The phone finally picked up on the fourth call. The Old Master’s face shifted as he listened, a muscle in his cheek jumping once, twice. His free hand closed into a fist so tight the knuckles blanched.

Miles smiled, slow and certain.

The Old Master lowered the phone an inch, gaze drilling into him. He lifted it again, as if proximity could change the report bleeding through the speaker.

"Explain," he said, voice dropping into a register that made the two guards at the door glance at each other.

A reply came, muffled and breathless.

The Old Master’s eyes went flat.

He turned his head just enough for Miles to see the verdict settle in his expression.

And then he dialed yet another number.

The phone kept scraping the air with unanswered rings. The Old Master’s thumb stabbed at the screen again and again, a metronome beating time over his own certainty.

"Don’t bother, Uncle Charlie," Miles said, voice low and unhurried. "No one will respond to you tonight. Unfortunately, no one is seeing each other anymore."

Another call. Another hiss of dead air. The Old Master’s eyes flicked, the first hairline crack in granite. He tried a different line, then another. Fingers faster, breath shorter.

"What did you think," Miles went on, the faintest curl at the edge of his mouth, "walk into Star Harbor, move around freely for a while, and the city would rearrange itself to your wishes?"

The Old Master spun, ready to spit a retort—and froze.

The chair at center stage was empty.

The zip ties dangled like shed snakeskin. The two men at the door lay folded into themselves, silent and slack, their weapons neatly kicked out of reach. The bulb swayed a fraction, as if the air itself had recently shifted.

"How did you—" he began.

"Practice," Miles said behind him.

The Old Master jerked around. Miles stood close enough to catch the old man’s breath, close enough for the Old Master to see that the calm in his eyes wasn’t bravado; it was the stillness of someone who had already mapped every exit and blocked them.

"You didn’t expect this?" Miles stepped forward and the Old Master stepped back by instinct, heel finding the edge of the concrete’s shallow seam.

A gun flashed into the Old Master’s hand, clean and oiled like a habit. His arm came up fast.

"Uncle Charlie," Miles said, and his voice went winter-cold, "really? Do you think I’m afraid of guns?"

The Old Master’s finger hadn’t touched the trigger when the world snapped. Miles’s hand clamped his wrist, the pressure a precise thunderbolt that bit into tendon and bone. He wrenched, turned, and the weapon peeled away as if it had never belonged there. The Old Master stumbled, off-balance, a gasp breaking loose.

"Sit," Miles said.

He didn’t shove so much as reorient. The Old Master dropped into the very chair he’d reserved for a spectacle, breath gone tight in his chest. In a blink the leftover zip ties kissed his wrists, then his forearms, then his ankles; the plastic sang with a taut little rattle as Miles cinched them down. The Old Master strained, muscles hardening beneath the suit, but the ties bit deeper and held.

"You cannot control things in Star Harbor anymore," Miles said, stepping back to study the knotwork with a soldier’s eye and a craftsman’s satisfaction. "I’ve already uprooted your operations here."

Confusion and anger warred across the Old Master’s face. He tested the binds again, sharper this time, and winced when plastic burned his skin. "You’re bluffing," he spat, but the spit landed dry.