He'd known how dangerous the Legacies were.

That was precisely why he had never craved direct confrontation—not yet, not until he was armored in power sufficient to survive the fallout.

The threats he had issued were not declarations of war. They were polite warnings. Back off. Mind your lanes. I possess knowledge that could wound you gravely, so let us all maintain the fragile peace of mutually assured silence.

But they hadn't listened.

And honestly? He couldn't even muster genuine anger over that.

This was war now, and one did not whine that the enemy had struck first or struck harder. That was merely defeat by another name. That was being outplayed.

What he could be furious about himself—what burned cold and precise in his gut—was not expecting the sheer scale of how far they can go.

He had not anticipated they would escalate so ferociously, so swiftly. And that was on him.

Had not expected seven masked professionals—hired muscle with brass knuckles and clinical efficiency—augmented by the Seven themselves, taking gleeful turns with bats and boots while the thugs held him down.

Three hours of systematic destruction, herding him toward the Derek estate for whatever finale their "Boss" had scripted.

He had naïvely assumed the opening salvos would be subtler—Paradise's preferred weaponry: whispers, rumors, social vivisection. The slow, exquisite bleed of reputation.

Not kidnapping.

Not torture.

Lesson learned. Painfully. Literally.

The reason he had walked into the trap at all was Brett.

Brett, to whom Phei had confided the Boss's most guarded secret on that rooftop that left Brett stunned—a calculated risk, a probe for weakness, a potential wedge. Some foolish, lingering fragment of him had hoped it might matter.

That Brett might prove the fracture line, the reluctant conscience, the exploitable flaw in the Legacy monolith, Phei could use to destroy them.

Instead, Brett had been the lure.

I was perfectly baited. He laughed as he played.

Phei's guard had lowered—just a fraction, just enough.

And they had nearly ended him for it.

His fingers found a chord. C minor. The saddest sound in music, his first teacher had once told him. The key of loss and longing.

Thanks to Maya, I survived.

The thought arrived warm, complicated, threaded with something perilously close to gratitude.

She had materialised with an army.

And thanks to her, thanks to the second chance at life, they'll bleed too.

Eventually.

Patience.

The word settled into his chest like a lodestone—cold, heavy, orienting.

It would be so temptingly easy to be reckless now. To let the rage and the pain and the raw humiliation propel him into something gloriously stupid. Take Paradise by storm and unload every secret he'd hoarded. Watch reputations ignite and burn. Savor the spectacle of seven founding heirs scrambling in the ashes of their own myth.

But that is hasty.

Emotional.

Predictable.

Exactly what they would expect from the beaten dog finally baring teeth—blind vengeance, sloppy execution, the sort of overreach that would hand them justification to finish the job.

No.

They had drawn first blood, but that did not oblige him to abandon the architecture of his plan. Did not require him to discard months worthy of meticulous preparation he had simply because they had accelerated the timeline.

They want a beast, Phei thought, fingers shifting into a darker progression. Fine. I'll oblige.

But I'll be a patient beast.

A surgical one.

The kind that waits in perfect darkness until the prey believes itself safe.

And then strikes once—clean, final, irreversible.

His fingers began to move in earnest.

Not conscious choice at first—just muscle memory unfurling after years of repression. A melody rising from somewhere visceral, something he had carried unspoken for so long he hadn't realised it possessed form.

The opening notes were fragile. Searching. A question posed in minor key.

Then they deepened. Layered. Harmonies braided together like scars turning into strength, bass line rumbling low and inexorable while the right hand spun out a line that was both exquisite and lacerating.

He played.

Truly played.

Not the furtive practice of stolen minutes in empty houses. Not the muted, terrified music of a boy afraid of being discovered.

This was a release.

This was everything he had swallowed—the agony, the fury, the terror, the strange, defiant ember of hope that refused to die.

The music flooded the penthouse. Rebounded from glass and steel. Rose to the vaulted ceiling and lingered like incense.

He lost track of time.

Minutes bled into an hour; the city lights beyond the windows shifted hue. His ribs protested, but he ignored them. The disappearing pain was merely background noise now—fuel for the fire pouring through his fingers.

When he finally lifted his hands, the silence that rushed in felt reverent.

Phei sat motionless, palms resting on cool ivory, chest rising and falling in measured breaths.

I'm good at this.

The thought arrived not as boast but as simple, irrefutable fact.

He was exceptional at this, and he had never shared it, never pursued it again, never allowed it to become anything more than private salvation.

Perhaps that had been the deepest wound of his old life—not the beatings or the isolation or the endless degradation, but the burial of something beautiful inside him that no one had ever bothered to unearth late afre his parents.

No one except himself.

And perhaps—perhaps—Melissa.

Who had installed a concert-grand Steinway in his penthouse without a word.

Who had never betrayed his secret music to the rest of the family.

Who had, in her silent, inscrutable way, kept this one fragile light alive.

Who are you really, Aunt Melissa?

What game were you playing all those years?

And why does the possibility that you were protecting me feel both impossible to handle and inevitable?

Paradise glittered beyond the glass—beautiful, rotten, oblivious.

Somewhere out there, seven Legacy heirs were doubtless toasting their little victory. Convinced they had reasserted the natural order. Convinced the upstart had been taught his place.

They had no conception.

They had pressed every fatal button.

Forged precisely the monster they believed they were disciplining.

And now that monster sat at a piano they didn't know he owned, in a penthouse they couldn't find, composing the requiem they would never hear coming.

Patience, Phei reminded himself, fingers hovering above the keys once more.

Patience.

Then he played again—darker this time, richer, a promise woven into every note.

They wanted a beast.

He would give them one.

But on his terms.

In his time.

And when he struck, Paradise itself would feel the earthquake.

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