Liam got home later that night, his mind busted with so much information and questions he knew he couldn't answer.
All he could do now was leave the rest for Jin to help him figure out. While he waited, he knew he wasn't the type to dig into these types of things, and Sera wouldn't do it cleanly either.
Jin was the perfect person suitable to get this done, and she was partly helping herself in the process since she wanted to know what happened to her workplace.
Liam took a cup of coffee and sat on the couch, thinking about everything that had happened up till that moment.
He couldn't believe how far he had went with the plan. It started out small and now he's slowly going large—he's even being known by some people.
"Well, the whole point is to get revenge and get popular at the same time," he sighed, staring at the ceiling.
"Kieran has run deep and mom probably knew about this," he said, briefly recalling his mom was at that moment when he was being beaten to death.
"So they're all probably in this together, huh. I'll take you all out slowly, just give me enough time," he said as he drifted off to sleep, the effect of the coffee not doing its job.
■■■■■■■■■■■■
The morning light didn't wake him up this time around—it was the noise of the TV in the background playing a commercial.
He glanced at his surroundings and noticed the coffee dripping on the ground from the cup.
"Ah shit! I slept off," he cursed, dropping the coffee on the table and cleaning his shorts.
Then he heard a ding at the gate. He stood up and walked toward the door, staring at the security camera.
Normally, he'd see his usual delivery man waving at the camera, but there wasn't anyone at the gate.
He grunted and opened the door, walking out the gate to check properly, but all he saw was a mail on the ground.
He took it in and went back inside the house, and opened the mail. There was an envelope inside.
The envelope was cream-colored, heavy stock, and unmarked. Liam found it slipped beneath his door—no postage, no return address.
He opened it without hesitation.
The letter inside was printed in elegant serif typeface, perfectly centered and coldly impersonal:
—To Mr. Liam Maddox,
{You are hereby notified to cease and desist all investigative actions and disclosures related to the entities formerly registered under the corporate umbrellas of Maddox Industries.
Failure to comply will result in swift legal and financial retaliation.
Sincerely,
Echelon Holdings Legal Department}
There was no logo, no signature, no physical address.
Liam stared at the paper for a long moment, then carefully folded it and dropped it into the trash.
Echelon Holdings didn't exist—not publicly. But he knew what this was, a warning.
He wasn't surprised. What did surprise him was how fast they responded. Less than twenty-four hours since he sat down with Malcolm Brand, and someone had already tried to put a leash on him.
The system phone chimed.
[New Task: Reactive Counterstrike
Objective: Identify Echelon's operational shell. Reward tier: Unknown.]
"Guess they're scared now," Liam muttered.
He grabbed his coat and left the apartment, moving quickly out the door without even having his bath. He knew who he'd meet to explain things to him—even if he had to do it the hard way.
The crooked compliance lawyer's office was in a quiet building near the city's financial district—on the 9th floor of a place where no one asked questions, and the walls smelled faintly of ink and desperation.
His name was Grant Mercer.
A man with thinning hair, a jittery pulse, and too many NDAs buried under his couch cushions.
Liam stood in front of him, calm as glass, the system noise humming in his pocket.
"You're not supposed to be here," Grant said, sweat already visible at his collar.
"You've funneled offshore transfers through no less than seven of Maddox's shells," Liam replied. "That includes Gantner and Yurei, and a dozen fake subsidiaries you thought no one would dig through."
"I'm protected by attorney–client privilege—"
"No, you're protected by obscurity," Liam interrupted. "And that's already failed."
He slid a printed photo across the desk—an old capture of Grant at a corporate gala, handshaking a man currently flagged for fraud by Interpol.
Grant's lips pressed into a thin line. His eyes flicked toward the drawer.
"Don't," Liam said.
Silence pulsed between them, the tension rising per every minute that passed.
"You give me names," Liam said softly. "Or I feed every file Jin has on you to the Financial Bureau. And you know they're eager to burn someone for all this."
Grant broke—not with a scream, but with a sigh.
He pulled a dusty file from the bottom of his cabinet and scribbled out a list of names—half of them aliases, all connected to dead accounts and frozen wire paths. But it was a start. He handed it over with trembling fingers.
"You didn't get this from me," Grant whispered.
"You did a good thing," Liam responded before he left.
Jin came back online that night.
Her signal bounced from a burner laptop Liam kept powered off and unplugged in the back of his closet. The screen lit up with green code before stabilizing into her usual command line interface.
JIN: You've stirred the hive. I traced the legal notice. It came from a redirected proxy in Malta. Backed by someone calling themselves Harker.
LIAM: You sound nervous.
JIN: Not nervous. We can't stop this machine, but we can crash it.
Liam leaned back in his chair, staring at her words.
LIAM: How?
A pause, then:
JIN: You break the shell chain, burn the false fronts. Make them surface—if you break enough of their toys, someone steps out to stop you. That's when we strike.
The system buzzed as if listening to their conversation.
[System Update: Task Expansion
Objective: Cripple Maddox's shell chain before Day 21
Progress: 2/5 compromised entities identified
Next Target: AvantLoop | Status: Obscured]
Liam exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand down his face. It was giving him less than a week now—the system's pacing was tightening.
He stared at the city through his window, the skyline framed by storm clouds and blinking towers.
Beneath the glass and steel, a war was being waged.
Not with guns or armies—but with ghost companies, forged names, and paper trails buried under digital sand.
And at the center of it all, his father's empire—tainted, but not broken.
Liam cracked his knuckles, then typed a new message to Jin:
"Let's crash this stuff."
He closed the laptop.
The wind outside howled faintly through the window frame.