Steven left the gathering and drove home without stopping.

He changed out of his jacket the moment he stepped into the apartment, dropping it across the back of the sofa, and called Lena before he had fully settled.

She picked up almost immediately.

"You’re back." Her voice was filled with concern, tired but unmistakably relieved.

"Just got in," he said. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"How did it go?"

Steven dropped onto the sofa and looked at the ceiling for a moment.

"Underwhelming, honestly," he said. "I went in expecting something more. What Drew had arranged was a room and an audience and the assumption that being called out as a nobody in front of people who matter would land differently than it did anywhere else. But too bad for him, it didn’t. He was playing a losing game from the moment I walked through the door."

Steven heard Lena sigh, and it was one filled with relief.

"Tell me everything," she said. "From the beginning."

Steven took Lena through everything that happened, and when he finished, there was a brief silence on her end. Then she laughed softly.

"I would have paid to see his face," she said. "Specifically when Langford said you were welcome back any time."

"It was a good moment," Steven said, and smiled without meaning to.

"I’m sure it was." Lena said, the worry in her voice replaced with warmth. But it didn’t stay there long. "Steven."

"I know," he said, before she could continue.

"He’s lost to you twice now. In two different rooms, in front of two different audiences." She paused. "Whatever comes next won’t look anything like a party. He’s not going to want witnesses for what he tries next."

"I know that too," Steven said. "And I’ll be ready for it. I’m not sitting still between now and whenever he decides to move."

"I believe you," she said. "I just need you to also be careful. Confidence is good. Confidence without caution is something else."

"I’ll be careful," he said. "I promise."

Lena was quiet for a moment, and Steven could feel her turning everything over, weighing the promise against the situation, deciding whether it was enough.

"Okay," she said finally, with the tone that said she had chosen to trust rather than worry.

They talked for another hour after that, the conversation drifting away from the evening and into other things, lighter things. By the time they said goodnight, the gathering felt distant.

Steven also decided to call it a night, as he set his phone down, turned off the lamp, and went to bed.

***

The next morning, Steven had just finished eating breakfast after returning from his gym session.

He picked up his phone and called Hargreaves. While Drew was making his own plan and preparation, he would also be making his.

Hargreaves picked the call after a ring.

"Good morning, Mr. Craig," he said. "How can I help you this morning?"

"Good morning, Hargreaves," Steven said. I need information on someone," Steven said. "Comprehensive. Not just the surface."

"Of course," Hargreaves said. "Who are we looking at?"

"Drew Mercer," Steven said. "And his family. His father specifically — I believe he holds a director position at a WhiteCreak Realty in Houston, though I don’t have the full details. I want everything. Business interests, financial history, legal records, professional reputation. Friends, rivals, anyone who has reason to want them exposed or anyone they’ve wronged along the way." He paused. "Good and bad. I want the complete picture."

There was a brief silence on Hargreaves’s end, as he constructed the scope of what had just been asked of him.

"This is investigative due diligence," Hargreaves said. "We have a dedicated team for exactly this kind of work. They operate discreetly and they’re thorough. When you say comprehensive, I want to confirm — you mean beyond public record. Corporate filings, litigation history, that kind of thing is straightforward. You’re asking us to go further than that."

"Yes," Steven said simply.

"Understood," Hargreaves said. "To do this properly, we’ll need a few days minimum. Anything returned faster than that tends to be incomplete, and incomplete information on something like this is worse than no information at all."

"Take the time you need," Steven said. "I’d rather have it done properly than quickly."

"Good," Hargreaves said. "One thing worth knowing going in — when we do this kind of work, we sometimes find things that change the shape of a situation considerably. Financial irregularities, relationships that aren’t publicly known, disputes that were settled quietly. If that happens, I’ll bring it to you directly before anything else moves. You’ll have everything we find, in the order we find it."

"That’s exactly what I want," Steven said.

"And the purpose," Hargreaves said, his tone remaining even and entirely professional, "is to understand the landscape before a potential conflict escalates further. Correct?"

Steven recognised the framing for what it was. He understood that Hargreaves was giving him the cleanest possible version of the answer to put on record, without asking him to confirm anything more specific than that.

"Correct," Steven said.

"Then we’ll begin today," Hargreaves said. "I’ll assign the team this morning. You’ll hear from me when we have something worth bringing to you — I won’t call with fragments. You’ll receive a full picture when the picture is full."

"I appreciate that," Steven said.

"Is there anything else?"

"That’s everything for now," Steven said. "Thank you, Hargreaves."

"Of course, Mr. Craig."

The call ended.

Steven set the phone down on the coffee table and leaned back into the cushions.

Drew was somewhere in the city at this very moment, constructing whatever he had decided came next. He had been careful enough to hire an investigator before the gathering, patient enough to wait for the right moment and setting, and angry enough that two public losses hadn’t cooled him. That combination of patience and anger together was the most dangerous version of an opponent.

But Drew had been building from incomplete information from the beginning. He had run a background check and found out that he was a waiter. He had found the Aston Martin and the River Oaks address and concluded new money with no foundation. Which wasn’t wrong but there was something more.

He had found the surface and mistaken it for the whole.

By the time Drew made his next move, Steven intended to know considerably more about the man he was dealing with than Drew had ever thought to find out about him.

"Like Sun Tzu said, ’if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’," Steven muttered.

But there won’t be a hundred battle because Steven intends to end everything once and for all this time around.

***

Meanwhile, inside an abandoned uncompleted building somewhere on Fourth Ward, Drew was unleashing a part of his rage on the cause.