Friday, 7:15 p.m.
Giulano pushed open the door to his single 12-by-12 room and wasn't surprised to find the black leather bag sitting on his mattress. Of course Danny had paid him—honor among thieves, even teenage ones. How he'd gotten inside wasn't a question worth asking. A person with Giulano's knowledge understood that locks were suggestions, not commandments.
The real question was the contents. He sat cross-legged on his mattress, unzipped the bag, and began counting. The bills were mostly twenties and fifties, worn but legitimate. Danny's crew had been careful about that—nothing too crisp, nothing sequential. Street money, clean enough to spend without raising questions.
"Fifty thousand dollars," he murmured to himself, stacking the final bills. "Not bad for a start in West Antiok."
The irony wasn't lost on him. But his dreams stretched far beyond this forgotten corner of the city. Beyond West Antioch, beyond Antioch proper, beyond even the Capital. His ultimate target was Gulac.
But Giulano González hadn't built a shadow government by skipping steps, and Marcus Chen wouldn't either. First, he had to establish himself here, among the broken streetlights and boarded windows. Then maybe—maybe—he could think about reclaiming what had once been his. The García family now controlled greater Antiok. A task that seemed next to impossible from where he sat now.
A phone started ringing. Giulano froze. As far as he remembered, he didn't own a phone. The sound was coming from inside his room, tinny and insistent. He traced it to one of the smaller compartments in the money bag—a basic flip phone, the kind that couldn't be traced easily.
Unknown number. Unknown phone. But the former head of a shadow empire knew this game intimately.
He answered. "Marcus."
"Marcus." The voice was familiar, carrying that mix of street swagger and genuine respect that Danny had developed since their first meeting.
"Received, thank you."
"Yeah, this is my number. You call me in case you need anything," Danny said, but there was something else in his voice. Relief, maybe. Or the satisfaction of a job well done.
"Actually, I need your help," Guilano said, then hung up before Danny could respond.
Now he desperately wanted a bath. The fake blood from the pizza shop had washed off easily enough, but he could still feel the grime of the day clinging to his skin. He stripped off his shirt and headed to the small bathroom that Saint Mary's orphanage would have considered luxurious—at least it was private.
"Holy shit," he muttered, turning the faucet handle. Nothing. Water was off again—a common occurrence in this part of town, where utility bills went unpaid and infrastructure crumbled like everything else. Another reminder of how far he'd fallen from climate-controlled offices and presidential suites.
It was still early. Lulu Supermarket would be open for another hour, and he had enough money now to buy a hundred liters of purified drinking water without thinking twice about the cost.
"I have my money," he said to himself, pulling his shirt back on. Pain shot through his ribs—real pain, not the theatrical kind from earlier.
He locked his door with the three deadbolts Wesley had installed and stepped onto the streets of the city he once ruled from above.
Friday, 8:12 p.m.
Lulu Supermarket occupied the ground floor of the same building as Tony's Pizza, and walking past the scene of today's theater felt surreal. Police tape still fluttered across Tony's entrance, but life went on in the floors above and below. That was West Antiok—violence was just another part of the landscape.
Maria was behind the counter when he entered, and something in her smile made him pause. She wasn't Giulano's age—he'd been in his early fifties—but she was certainly Marcus's.
For the first time since inhabiting this body, Giulano found himself genuinely attracted to someone. Not the calculated desire he'd felt for the senator's daughters and politicians who'd decorated his old life, but something simpler. More honest. Something Marcus Chen's teenage hormones amplified beyond his control.
"Hey, Marcus," she said, and her voice carried warmth that had nothing to do with commerce.
"Hey, Maria. How are you?"
"I'm doing well." She studied his face with the kind of attention that made him self-conscious. "You're not fine, Marcus. Are you?"
"Actually, my ribs hurt. Just a little." He moved toward the water aisle, hoping she wouldn't press the issue. The orphanage had taught him to hide pain—weakness invited predators.
The bottled water was stacked in neat pyramids, each case labeled with prices that would have been laughable when he controlled government budgets. One hundred dollars for enough water to last a week. Expensive for West Antiok, but money was no longer the limiting factor it had been.
As he loaded cases into a shopping cart, he heard boots on the linoleum floor—heavy, deliberate steps that spoke of authority and violence. Giulano went still, pressing himself against the shelving to listen. In his old life, he would have been the one sending collectors. Now he was witnessing the system from the bottom.
The footsteps approached Maria's counter, and a voice spoke a single word: "My money."
Maria didn't respond verbally, but Giulano could hear the rustle of bills being counted, the familiar sound of tribute being paid. The same system that had funded the Belar Empire, just smaller in scale. West Antiok had its own collector, its own informal tax bleeding the poor dry. Probably paying up the chain to someone who paid up the chain to someone who once answered to him.
After the man left—boots echoing importantly toward the door—Giulano emerged from the aisle with his water. He set the cases on the counter, watching Maria's face carefully.
"Who was that?" he asked.
"Trust me, you don't need to know," she replied, but her hands shook slightly as she scanned the barcodes. Then, clearly trying to change the subject: "People were killed at Tony's Pizza today. Heard about it?"
"Yeah, yeah." Giulano nodded, handing her the cash. News traveled fast in small buildings, especially violent news. He wondered if she knew how close she'd been to the action.
"Buying water by the case—you're rich now, Marcus," she said, but the joke fell flat. Her mind was clearly elsewhere, still processing the collector's visit.
Giulano picked up his water, balancing the cases carefully. As he reached the door, he turned back. For a moment, he let her see something beyond the seventeen-year-old orphan from Saint Mary's. Something that had once commanded armies and toppled governments.
"Maria."
She looked up, and in that instant, she was looking at the ghost of the Belar Empire.
"That man will never come back to this place again."
She didn't reply, but he could see the war in her expression—wanting to believe, afraid to hope. The collectors had been bleeding businesses like hers dry since before she was born. They were part of the system he'd once controlled from the very top.
A homeless orphan's promise couldn't change that reality. But the word of Gulac's former shadow ruler was a different matter entirely.
As he walked back to his room, water cases balanced in his arms, he was already planning. The collector would return next week, same time, same routine. Predators were creatures of habit, and habits could be exploited.
Fifty thousand dollars was a good start. But respect—real respect—couldn't be bought. It had to be taken, just like he'd taken an entire region once before.