The compound was exactly as Day remembered it.
Stone walls tall enough to keep out bullets. Windows that didn't exist unless you were standing inside. Guards in tailored suits. Cameras angled to catch you at your weakest.
And silence. The kind that hummed just beneath your skin.
They didn't frisk Day at the gates. They didn't need to.
He was blood.
He walked past men who had once raised him with bruises and drills. Through halls that smelled like power and expensive fear. Past the piano he'd been forced to play as a boy, not for joy, but for poise. Past the steel room where his uncle had been "retired."
No one smiled.
They just nodded.
Like a wolf returning to the pack.
Finally, he reached the main chamber—long marble table, dim gold lights, old portraits of dead men with sharp eyes.
And at the head of it all, his father.
Lucien Daewon.
Still dressed like a monarch from another era: dark three-piece suit, blood-red pocket square, and a cane he didn't need. Power was his limp.
"Day," he said smoothly, not looking up from the documents he was signing. "What an unexpected show of obedience."
"I got your message."
Lucien glanced up now. His eyes were like frost on steel.
"Which one?" he asked. "The photograph, or the lesson wrapped in it?"
Day said nothing.
Lucien gestured to the chair across from him. "Sit. If I wanted you dead, you'd already be bleeding."
Day sat, slowly. Every movement here was a performance.
"You've been busy," Lucien said. "Café boys. Civilian routines. Playing house while my empire frays at the seams."
"You built your empire on fear," Day replied. "Forgive me if I wanted to breathe for once."
Lucien laughed. Quiet and cold.
"You sound like your mother," he said. "Right before she ran."
That hit.
Lucien leaned forward. "I let you play human for long enough. But now you've made mistakes. Sloppy ones. You let the boy live. You led them straight to your heart."
Day's fists clenched under the table.
Lucien smirked. "And now you have a weakness. An Achilles."
"Touch him," Day said, voice sharp, "and I burn every name in your ledger. I will take this family down brick by brick and bury you in its ashes."
Lucien's eyes gleamed. "There he is. The heir."
Silence.
"You always thought your heart made you weak," Lucien said. "It doesn't. But pretending you don't have one? That's the mistake."
He stood, slow and deliberate.
"You want to protect your boy?" Lucien asked. "Then stop pretending you're not already in the game. Choose a side. Before someone chooses for you."
He walked to the door, stopped, and looked back.
"Forty-eight hours," he said. "Then I clean up the mess myself."
And then he was gone.
Leaving Day alone at the table.
And for the first time in years, Day wasn't sure if the walls around him were keeping enemies out—or trapping him in.
~~~~
The old war room hadn't changed.
Still smelled like expensive cigars and colder deaths.
Screens lined one wall, blue-lit maps of territories, ledgers, weapons flows. Each blinking dot a deal, a debt, or a dead man walking.
Day stood at the center of it, jaw clenched, coat slung over the back of a chair. He'd been staring at the board for over an hour.
The others filtered in quietly—men in suits, faces carved from stone, all older than him. All watching.
And yet they waited.
Because Day wasn't a boy here.
He was the heir.
When he finally spoke, it was with steel.
"We have leaks in Sector Six. Double agents selling info on our exports."
One of the lieutenants raised an eyebrow. "That's not your sector to manage."
Day looked at him. Once.
The man shut up.
Day turned back to the board. "I want eyes on every courier we use from now on. No names, only codenames. Any shipment that moves without clearance from me gets burned. No exceptions."
Another man frowned. "That'll slow us down."
"It'll keep us alive."
Day moved to the next screen. Clicked something. A photo of a man appeared—grizzled, sunglasses, smug.
"Who is he?" someone asked.
Day's voice was ice. "The one who took the photo of Sky."
A flicker ran through the room.
"You've IDed him already?"
Day didn't answer. He just moved to another screen. Pulled up files. Audio. Calls. Location pings. Surveillance.
He'd already mapped the man's life.
He'd done it before breakfast.
Day turned to the group. "I don't want a body on the news. I want him erased quietly. Make it look like defection."
"But he's one of ours," another voice said carefully.
"No," Day said. "He was one of my father's. There's a difference."
Silence.
This wasn't the boy who ran from violence. This was someone who learned to aim first.
One of the older men—Kwon, a family fixer—leaned forward. "You're playing a dangerous hand, Day."
Day looked him in the eye.
"I've never played safe."
Kwon nodded, a slow grin forming. "You're starting to sound like a leader."
Day didn't smile back.
Because this wasn't about ambition.
This was survival.
Every move he made now was about Sky.
If his father was going to use Sky as a weapon against him, Day would build a shield out of fire and fear—and wield the empire from within.
He'd be the heir, the strategist, the devil in a nicer suit.
Until he had enough power to end it all.