The party thinned into that velvety exhaustion where joy stopped performing and started telling the truth. Goodbyes stretched longer than etiquette allowed. Champagne-warm kisses bloomed on cheeks. Hands lingered, squeezing like they were trying to memorize bone.

We spilled out of the elevator into the underground garage in a slow river of silk and laughter, thirty-two people drunk on celebration and pretending tomorrow was optional. The air tasted of exhaust and moneyed perfume, gasoline softened by jasmine and oud.

Headlights carved yellow corridors through the concrete gloom. Valets jogged between idling engines, moving with the urgency of men who understood the value of what they were shepherding.

Phantoms. Bentleys. Blacked-out SUVs.

A motorcade that looked like old money and new power had gotten drunk together and decided to reproduce.

Soo-Jin rolled the van forward without a sound. Matte black. Unmarked. Quiet in a way that felt intentional.

She'd left hours earlier to handle Koreatown, exactly as instructed. The gold had moved. Pallets lifted, transported, absorbed into estate vaults like they'd never existed anywhere else. Clean. Professional. Invisible. I liked work that vanished behind itself.

Madison pressed into me one last time, heat through thin fabric, familiarity without softness. Her mouth brushed my ear.

"Don't stay out too late, Emperor."

Then she was gone, sliding into the lead Phantom, her red dress riding high on her thighs like it knew it was being watched.

The kind of sight that made restraint feel like a personal insult. Priya, Amanda, and Patricia followed her in, laughter spilling out with them, already absorbed in whatever conspiracy was glowing on Priya's phone.

Emma and Sarah claimed the next SUV, still loose from tequila and bad decisions. Luna half-dragged Rebecca toward another car while she loudly insisted she was perfectly capable of walking in a straight line, thank you very much.

Reyna, Anya, and Victoria disappeared into the third vehicle, their voices bouncing off concrete and fading into the hum of engines.

The rest scattered across the remaining cars—Lea and Kayla, Charlotte and Catherine, Ms. Chen and Margaret, Sofia and Isabella—splitting off in pairs like practiced choreography. Tommy tugged Mia toward the last Phantom, and even from here I caught the familiar slide of his hands, wandering with the confidence of someone who thought the night still belonged to him.

I guided Jasmine and Linda toward their ride, my arm firm around Mom's shoulders, feeling her lean into me the way she used to when I was small and the world felt too big to survive alone.

"My boy," she whispered, and her voice cracked right down the middle. "Seventeen. God, where did the time go?"

"Love you, Mom. Always."

Jasmine squeezed my hand, her smile carrying that exact mix of pride and worry she'd perfected over the years. "Don't do anything stupid tonight, nephew. Your harem's waiting."

My quantum neural buds engaged the incoming call without me calling them, a reflex deeper than thought, and Ava's voice came through—breathless, urgent in a way that snapped my spine straight.

"Eros, this is emergence! Dmitri's been confirmed back in the country. He surfaced. He's contacted Vincent and Antonio. He's targeting Charlotte and Margaret, and Eros, please—"

ARIA cut in, and for the first time since I'd created her, I heard fear.

Not the cool, calculated risk analysis she usually delivered. Not probabilities or projected outcomes.

Real fear. Human fear.

"Sniper. Rooftop. Southeast corner. Everyone needs to move. Now. Peter, get them in the—"

The first shot cracked the air like God breaking a rib.

Time didn't slow down. That's movie bullshit. Time shattered. It exploded outward into fragments, a thousand events colliding at once, my brain scrambling to catalogue them while my body had already committed.

Concrete detonated where Charlotte had been standing half a second ago. The bullet buried itself in the pillar behind her, and glass cascaded down in glittering sheets, each shard catching headlights as it spun, tiny diamonds falling through chaos.

Screams ripped through the garage—high, raw, animal. The kind of sound that bypasses language and goes straight for the nervous system.

Soo-Jin moved like liquid violence.

She was out of the van before my mind registered the door opening, body low, fast, lethal. Her hand closed around Linda's collar—I saw the fabric strain, heard it tear slightly—and she yanked my mother down so hard Mom's knees buckled.

Jasmine dove after them on instinct alone, heels throwing sparks as they skidded across concrete, and Soo-Jin shoved them both into the Phantom's back seat before slamming the door with enough force to dent the frame.

I was already running.

My boots hammered the concrete in a rhythm that felt wrong—too fast, too heavy, like my legs were operating on a different set of rules.

I caught Charlotte by the wrist and pulled, felt her body lag behind mine, and another crack split the air.

The round passed so close I felt it displace the air, hot wind kissing my cheek before it sparked against a pillar in a burst of orange light.

Margaret stood frozen, mouth wide, the scream still trapped somewhere between lungs and throat. I hooked my arm through hers and dragged her with me, her feet barely brushing the ground as I covered fifteen meters in what felt like a single heartbeat.

ARIA's voice cut through the noise, clean but strained, the math barely holding the panic in check. "Peter, your heart rate is two hundred. You're moving too fast. The sniper's cycling the bolt every zero point eight seconds. You need to—"

"MOVE! FUCKING MOVE!"

Two more shots followed. I didn't see the bullets, only what they ruined. The Phantom's mirror exploded into glitter. A valet spun as his shoulder erupted red, his scream stretching long and warped, like someone had dragged the audio through mud.

Soo-Jin's Glock barked in controlled bursts, aimed at a rooftop one hundred eighty meters away—suppressive fire, not to kill but to disrupt. Brass casings pinged and scattered across concrete in a rhythm like rain, and she was already slamming doors shut, forcing heads down, moving faster than physics should allow.

"GET IN THE CARS! GO!"

I threw Charlotte into her Mercedes, my shoulder catching the doorframe wrong, and then the first bullet hit.

It didn't feel cinematic. No slow motion. No dramatic stumble. Just immediate, catastrophic force—like a baseball bat forged from fire smashing straight into my shoulder.

The entry wound was clean. The exit was not. Muscle and bone tore out my back in a spray I couldn't see but felt, heat flooding my shirt as my arm went instantly numb and useless.

ARIA's voice fractured. "Chest hit incoming—Peter, move—"

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