Chapter 293

Vincent

The sound of shattering plastic and glass is deeply unsatisfying. My tablet explodes against the wall, shards skittering across the polished concrete floor of my office.

For months now.

For months, I’ve had this bastard, this ghost going by the alias Panther, nipping at my heels, messing with my operations.

At first, it was minor. Annoyances. A shipment delayed by a "random" traffic accident. A warehouse lock found mysteriously picked, nothing stolen, just a message. I brushed it off as some delusional wannabe trying to make a name for himself.

Because this fucking bastard had the audacity to have a message delivered to me. A single, typewritten line: " Come under me."

Impossible. Laughable.

But it stopped being laughable.

The disturbances grew. Not attacks, but precise, surgical inconveniences. Leaked routes to rival crews. Digital transfers to key accounts glitching, funds vanishing into the ether for hours before reappearing, as if to say, I can touch your money. My men started getting jumpy, paranoid.

And now this.

My most reliable lieutenant.

A man who knew where half the bodies were buried—mine included. Picked up by the feds not in a dark alley, but in broad daylight outside his daughter’s school.

And they had evidence. Video, audio, financial trails—all neat, undeniable, and already in the hands of the major news outlets. It’s a high-profile case now.

The spotlight is white-hot. I can’t bribe a judge, can’t threaten a prosecutor if I don’t want to shoot myself in the fucking foot.

This puts me at a dead stop. If I breathe wrong, they’ll turn that spotlight on me. All my movements are frozen.

I fist my hands, the knuckles bleaching white. The rage is a living thing in my chest, a pressure cooker ready to blow.

"Useless fools!" My roar echoes in the sparse room. "Incompetent idiots! HOW HAVE YOU NOT FOUND THAT BASTARD?!"

Luca, the underling who brought me the news, flinches. It’s that flinch, that visible proof of fear and I’m across the room. My foot connects with his ribs, a solid, brutal kick that sends him sprawling with a grunt of pain.

"He’s a ghost, boss!" Luca wheezes from the floor, holding his side. "No face, no territory, no demands except the first one. It’s like fighting smoke!"

"I don’t care if he’s a fucking poltergeist!" I snarl, looming over him.

"You find him. You find where the smoke is coming from, or you’ll wish the feds had gotten to you first."

As Luca scrambles to his feet and out of the office, a cold, sharp clarity cuts through the red haze of my anger.

My phone vibrates on the desk. An unknown number. A text message. No, an image.

It’s a security camera still, timestamped from last night. It shows the back entrance of the Omega health center Elliot frequents.

The message is clear. Panther isn’t just targeting my business. He’s watching. He knows about Elliot. He’s marking what’s mine.

The cold clarity evaporates, replaced by an ice-cold fury that makes my earlier rage feel warm.

I swear, as I crush the phone in my grip, feeling the screen crack and bite into my palm, I will find this bastard

***

Daphne

The child’s small, sticky hand pats my cheek. "You’re so handsome. Like a prince from fairytales."

A genuine laugh, rough from disuse, escapes me. I scoop him up, settling him on my hip with an ease that feels both alien and instinctive. "Oh, am I?" I ask, tapping his nose.

He nods solemnly, launching into a detailed comparison involving talking horses and shiny armor. I let his chatter wash over me as I survey the bustling main room of the newly opened shelter.

Omega Shelter: Haven. The name is simple, earnest. The need for it is a glaring indictment of this world.

Misogyny is rampant enough, but for Omegas—especially male Omegas—it’s a hundred times worse.

The world sees them as vessels, commodities, or fragile objects to be claimed and controlled. The female Omegas don’t have it easy either, hell even I received some odd gazes and I’m an alpha.

The child in my arms is here because his Omega mother, penniless and abandoned, was unfortunate enough to have her heat in a public place.

The story is sickeningly common.

My gaze drifts to the large window, though I see none of the city beyond. I wonder how Vincent is feeling right now. I did deliver a little gift to him after all.

He is, objectively, a horrible person. I didn’t enter this expecting a moral paragon from a mafia boss. Murder, extortion, intimidation—they’re part of the job description. I’ve taken lives myself in past lives when necessary and some I have to admit I did it just because.

But the sexual violence? The systematic, casual brutality he and his men inflict not as a side effect, but as a perk of power? That’s a different kind of rot.

So I’ve made it my mission. I will ruin him.

I will chip away at his finances, his alliances, his confidence, until there is nothing left but the hollow shell of his pride. Then I’ll shatter that, too.

What does Elliot even see in that bastard? Beyond the conventional, blond-haired, blue-eyed attractiveness, the man offers nothing but possession and disrespect.

Is it some profound Stockholm syndrome woven into the fabric of this world’s fate?

Or just the desperate, chemical pull of an Omega toward the strongest, most dangerous signal?

What would I know?

"Ms. Han? The press is ready for the photo call with Ms. Olga and Miss Vivienne." An assistant materializes at my elbow.

"Of course." I set the child down with a final ruffle of his hair and move to where my mother and Vivienne stand near the entrance, a picture of dignified compassion.

"Ms. Han! A question!" a reporter calls out. "Why an omega shelter?"

I turn, letting my gaze sweep the room before landing on the reporter. My voice is calm, deliberate, carrying without needing to rise.

"Look at this woman here," I say, gently drawing Olga forward. She looks up at me, surprised.

"Had she not been fortunate enough to have her family’s background, her protection, she could have been any of these."

I gesture to the residents, the staff, the children peeking from doorways.

"I’m not doing this for a grand gesture or publicity. I’m simply doing something I hope someone would have done for my mother, had she been born without that shield."

Heartfelt, personal, subtly reinforcing my family’s legacy while distancing myself from my father’s cold political calculus. The reporters eat it up.

All in a days work.