The whiteboard in Max's apartment was no longer clean. It was now a war map—crammed with connections, dates, aliases, and encrypted account routes. Ellie returned late that evening, still visibly shaken from her encounter with Gregory, but carrying herself with quiet resolve.
Max greeted her with a grim nod. "You okay?"
"Barely," she admitted, collapsing onto the couch. "He suspects something. He didn't say it outright, but I could see it in his eyes. He's watching me."
Nicholas chimed in, eyes still on the monitors. "Then we'll need to move faster. The evidence we've got will only stay hidden for so long."
Max stepped forward, tapping on the board with the end of a dry-erase marker. "We hit them in three phases. First, we isolate their resources. Then we destroy their reputation. Finally, we expose the truth."
Ellie raised an eyebrow. "Sounds simple when you say it like that."
"It's not," Max said, expression tight. "But it's necessary."
Nicholas turned in his chair, folding his arms. "So how do you want to start?"
Max circled a name on the board: Arden Holdings. "This shell company is the linchpin. It's how they funneled everything—crypto, stocks, real estate. We find out who's behind it legally, and then we rip the veil off publicly."
Ellie leaned forward. "How do we prove who owns Arden if it's a ghost?"
"We don't," Max replied. "We let them do it for us."
He outlined the plan: leak partial information from their own transactions to a rival firm hungry for scandal—someone with enough influence to dig deeper, ask questions, and apply pressure where it hurts. And he already had someone in mind.
Max pulled out an old business card from a dusty drawer. "Lucas Wren. Hedge fund manager, media darling, and Gregory's old nemesis. If anyone would love a scandal tied to him, it's Lucas."
Nicholas gave a low whistle. "That guy plays dirty."
"Exactly," Max said. "Let's feed the fire."
By midnight, they had drafted a digital dossier—a package of redacted documents, decrypted trade histories, and suspicious transfers. All of it pointed toward wrongdoing without revealing their hand. Nicholas sent it from a disposable node buried in a darknet relay.
"Message sent," he confirmed. "Now we wait."
Max looked out the window, the skyline of New York a silent battlefield waiting to ignite. "This isn't revenge," he murmured, more to himself than to the others. "It's justice. And it's just getting started."
The shadows were shifting. The game was now in motion.