Melissa was out cold.

Sprawled across the emperor-sized bed like a starfish that had given up on life, silk sheets tangled around her legs, one arm flung dramatically over her face. The woman who'd spent ten years making his life hell was now snoring softly into a pillow that probably cost more than his entire previous wardrobe.

Dragon's Rod strikes again.

Phei slipped out of bed carefully, not wanting to wake her. His body ached in that satisfying way that said he'd pushed it hard—the swimming, the sex, the general chaos of the past forty-eight hours catching up with him.

But sleep could wait. There was something he needed to do first.

He padded barefoot across the dark polished concrete, past the floating fireplace with its dancing flames behind black glass, and made his way down the spiral staircase to the second floor.

The study door clicked open like a vault welcoming its master.

Command center.

Even in the darkness, the room was beautiful. The floor-to-ceiling windows framed Downtown Paradise in its late-night glory—a sea of glittering lights stretching toward the bay, the distant mountains rising like silent witnesses to whatever the fuck his life had become.

Phei ran his hand along the wall until he found the control panel. Tapped it.

The room came alive.

The cloud-like ceiling panels, their hidden strips flickering on to cast a soft starlit glow across the charcoal acoustic walls. The massive star emblem behind the monitors blazed to life, pure white and sharp-edged, a personal sigil for a boy who was rapidly becoming something else entirely.

He crossed to the desk—that sculpted masterpiece of dark matte black, curved into an ergonomic arc that cradled him like a throne waiting for its king. The surface was seamless, almost liquid, with built-in wireless charging pads he hadn't even had time to appreciate yet.

The chair received him like an old friend. High-backed, contoured in gray and black leather, aggressive yet supportive. No garish RGB lights—just the subtle halo of underglow that traced its base, turning him into a silhouette against the glittering city.

Phei pressed the power button on the tower hidden beneath the desk.

A soft hum. A whisper of fans spinning to life.

The monitor woke up.

Fifty-five inches of curved ultra-wide glory, seamless black glass bent like a horizon, its surface reflecting his face in the dim light before the display bloomed to life. Mountains and fog rolled across the desktop in slow motion, serene and vast, the time displayed in crisp white at the bottom.

3:47 AM.

Plenty of time.

The minimalist keyboard and mouse sat aligned with military precision, their white bodies stark against the void of the desk. Phei's fingers found them naturally, muscle memory; he was good at this craft.

First things first.

He opened the settings. Started building his new digital identity from scratch.

No old email addresses. No recycled passwords. Nothing that connected this machine—this life—to the charity case who'd been living in a room next to the laundry.

The nobody.

That kid was dead. Stepped off a rooftop and never came back.

This was someone else entirely.

New email. New accounts. New everything. Each one secured with passwords that would make a cryptographer weep with joy and authentication methods that required more steps than a complicated dance routine.

Phei wasn't some naive kid when it came to IT. Never had been. He'd always been amongst the best in his class, even far beyond them actually—had to be, really, when academic performance was the only thing keeping him from being completely worthless in the Maxtons' eyes.

Computers had been one of his escapes, his weapon, his way of being invisible while watching everyone else.

And watching meant collecting.

He pulled out his old phone. The cracked-screen relic that had somehow survived everything Paradise had thrown at him. Inside this battered piece of shit was a treasure trove—years of carefully gathered secrets, recorded conversations, screenshots of messages people thought had disappeared, videos taken from angles no one ever noticed.

The dirty laundry of Paradise's elite, folded neatly and stored away for a rainy day. Well. It's fucking pouring now.

Phei connected the phone to his new system.

Started the transfer.

Files began flowing across—gigabytes of leverage, each one a nail in someone's coffin waiting to be hammered. Brett and Anderson's extracurricular activities. Danton's "little habit" that would make his father disown him on the spot. Kyle's accident that daddy's money had buried. Derek's family secret.

Aiden's side business.

Zack's particular brand of depravity.

And those were just the ones he'd already weaponised.

There was more. So much more. Secrets he hadn't even catalogued yet, gathered almost by accident during years of being invisible.

When you're furniture, people forget you're there. They say things. Do things. Think no one's watching.

But Phei was always watching.

The transfer completed. He ran verification—every file intact, every video playable, every screenshot crystal clear.

Beautiful.

Now came the important part.

He opened his security suite and started building walls. Encryption layers that would take a supercomputer years to crack. Hidden folders within hidden folders. Fail-safes that would scatter the data across a dozen different cloud services if anyone tried to access it without proper authentication.

And the crown jewel: a dead man's switch.

If anything happened to him—if he disappeared, if he died, if he simply stopped checking in—the system would automatically begin releasing files. One by one. Starting with the most damaging and working its way down.

Automatic. Unstoppable.

Paradise would burn.

Insurance, Phei thought grimly. Can't be too careful when you're declaring war on an entire community.

He tested the pathways. His new phone—sleek, expensive, already synced to his new identity—could access everything remotely. Secure connection, encrypted tunnel, the works. He could pull up any file from anywhere, send it to anyone, all without leaving a trace.

Beautiful.

Finally, he turned back to the old phone.

The screen flickered, tired and cracked, holding years of his miserable existence in its battered memory. Photos he'd never look at again. Messages from people who'd never cared. Apps he'd used to pass the time while waiting for life to get better.

It never did. Not until he'd taken matters into his own hands.

Goodbye, old me.

Phei initiated the secure wipe. Erasure, multiple passes, leaving nothing but zeros where his old life used to be. The phone's screen went dark, then lit up with a progress bar that crawled toward completion.

When it finished, the device was a brick. Factory reset wouldn't even work anymore. Whatever forensic expert tried to pull data from it would find nothing but digital ash.

Perfect.

He leaned back in his throne, surveying his kingdom of screens and shadows. The city glittered below him through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The star emblem blazed white behind his monitors. The sleek speakers sat silent, waiting for commands.

Command Central is operational.

Now let's see how Paradise handles a charity case with teeth.

The clock on his desktop read 4:23 AM. He'd been at this for over half an hour, and exhaustion was finally catching up.

Phei powered down the monitors, letting the room fade back to darkness except for the city lights and the soft glow of the ceiling clouds. He climbed the spiral staircase to the third floor, slipped back into the emperor-sized bed—giving Melissa's still-unconscious form a wide berth—and let sleep claim him.

Tomorrow was going to be interesting.

****

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The alarm was violence.

Pure, unfiltered violence against his eardrums, dragging him out of unconsciousness with all the subtlety of a brick to the face.

Phei's hand shot out, slapping at the nightstand until he found his new phone and silenced the assault.

6:00 AM. Right on schedule.

He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling—that vast expanse of exposed beams and recessed lighting—trying to remember why he'd set an alarm this early.

Then it clicked.

The grind. The routine. The Dragon doesn't rest.

Phei sat up.

The bed beside him was empty. Silk sheets still warm but definitely Melissa-free. She must have slipped out sometime in the last hour, probably heading back to the mansion before Harold woke up and started asking questions.

Good. One less thing to worry about.

He swung his legs out of bed, feet hitting the cool dark concrete, and padded toward the walk-in closet.

The double doors opened like a portal to a designer's fever dream.

Racks of clothes stood at attention. Shelves climbed toward heaven. The central island gleamed with drawers and display cases. Every inch full, every item expensive, every piece his.

But he wasn't here for the suits or the casual wear. Not yet.

Gym clothes. Where are the gym clothes?

He found them in a dedicated section—athletic wear arranged by function and colour. Compression shirts. Performance shorts. Running shoes that probably cost more than his old monthly food budget.

Phei grabbed a black compression set, simple and functional, and was about to close the drawer when something caught his eye.

Another Ashford Academy uniform.

Brand new. Perfectly fitted. Hanging in the "school" section next to the others, but this one had a small note pinned to it in Melissa's elegant handwriting:

"For today. Look sharp, Little Dragon. - M"

She must have brought it somehow. Arranged for it to appear in his closet while he was sleeping or setting up his command central. The woman was terrifyingly efficient when she wanted to be.

Manipulative, thoughtful, surprisingly-not-terrible woman indeed.

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