Chapter 356: Inmate 0451

CYAN

The selfie on my screen was ridiculously close, mostly because my arm wasn’t long enough to capture both my face and the sheer, unbothered hostility of the plushie at the same time.

I stayed in the back of the town car, keeping the screen tilted just out of view of the rearview mirror, watching the little chat bubble that remained entirely one-sided.

Nick hadn’t replied.

I looked at my own face in the image... the messy pink roots growing out into brown, the tongue piercing catching the screen’s light, the exact expression I used when I knew I was being completely insufferable and wanted to make sure the other person felt every bit of it.

The silence from his end didn’t irritate me; it did something odder, a light prickle against my skin that made me want to poke at him until he broke that tidy, serious voice of his.

I smiled a small, private thing to myself, not caring to figure out why a quiet phone mattered this much today.

"We’ve arrived, sir," the driver said.

The words cut the quiet. I let the smile fold away, clean and easy, the way a hand closes around a blade before it slips into a pocket.

"Stay here," I said, sliding the phone into my leather jacket.

Outside, the district looked like it was rotting from the ground up. The buildings leaned into each other across the alleyways, concrete and rusted iron propping up more concrete and rusted iron, resembling a crowd of exhausted people trying not to collapse into the dirt.

The streets were too narrow for cars, filled with the gray grease of old puddles and the heavy, thick air that comes right before the sky breaks.

Overhead, the clouds were rolling in dark and slow, the kind of heavy black that means business.

Before my boots hit the wet pavement fully, the phone in my pocket buzzed. I didn’t need to look at the screen to know the frequency.

"Update," Cassian’s voice came through, low and dry, devoid of any unnecessary weight.

"Just arrived," I said, leaning my shoulder against the cold metal of the car door. "I’ll call you when it’s done."

A beat of silence followed over the line... the usual heavy pause Cassian used when he was calculating things he didn’t want to explain. "Be careful."

"I’m always careful," I said, my teeth catching my lower lip.

"You’re really not."

The smile came back before I could stop it, bright and useless in the gray alley. "Bye, Cassian."

I cut the call, stepping fully into the gathering dark.

Three of my men stepped out from the shadows of the secondary car behind us, their jackets unbuttoned just enough to leave their waistbands accessible.

They didn’t ask for directions; they didn’t need their instructions repeated. They just fell into position around me, quiet and competent, their boots clicking against the stones in perfect sync with mine.

We moved deeper into the gut of the slums. I didn’t look at the corners or check the entryways; the familiarity was there in the way my weight shifted over the broken asphalt. I wasn’t a tourist here, and I wasn’t lost.

I moved like someone simply walking down their own hallway at home.

The bar was tucked between two crumbling concrete structures, entirely unmarked. It didn’t need a sign.

The people who had business here already knew which door to kick; the people who didn’t stayed on the main avenue if they wanted to keep their teeth.

When I pushed the door open, the interior smelled exactly as it had a year ago... cheap grain liquor, damp sawdust, and the sour tang of cigarettes smoked down to the filters.

A few women were working the booths, their faces tired under the dim red lights, and the men at the counter were drinking far too early for it to be anything other than a long day already in progress.

The bartender looked up from a greasy glass, his face going through three distinct shifts in under a second: recognition, followed by the sudden drain of color that means fear, ending in a desperate, hard-fought calm that didn’t reach his eyes.

"M-Mister— Sir" He was already halfway into a bow, his hands spreading flat against the wood of the bar. "What are you... I mean... welcome. We didn’t expect..."

"I’m here to see Rico," I said. My voice was pleasant, casual, the exact tone you’d use to tell a clerk you were there for a scheduled haircut.

"He’s, uh... he’s in the middle of something right now," the bartender stammered, his eyes darting toward the heavy curtain at the back of the house. "A very particular meeting. Maybe if you wait in the front—"

I didn’t wait for the rest of the sentence. I was already walking past him, my shoulder brushing the edge of the bar as I moved toward the rear exit.

The bartender trailed behind me, his breath coming short and ragged as he scrambled to keep up without actually touching me.

He hurried ahead, whispering frantic warnings to the guards stationed at the intervals along the narrow corridor. "It’s him, it’s him, just let him through, don’t touch him—"

Each man stepped aside after a single look at my face, their hands dropping away from their jackets as if the fabric had suddenly grown teeth.

At the final door... a thick slab of oak reinforced with iron straps... the bartender tried one last time, reaching for the handle with a trembling wrist.

"Let me just... let me announce you first, please—"

I pushed the door open with the heel of my boot.

The room erupted into instant, loud motion.

It was the chaos of five armed men believing, for one half-second, that their lives were over and the police had finally broken the locks.

Guns cleared leather, metal clicking against metal as barrels leveled directly at the doorway.

I stayed on the threshold, completely still, examining the skin around my left thumb where a small hangnail had started to form. I didn’t look at the iron pointed at my chest.

Behind the heavy mahogany desk sat Rico Velez, a former inmate with too many charges to count but got out anyways because the elites always need someone else to get their hands dirty for them.

He hadn’t changed much since his days in the lower wards, though his suit was more expensive now and his rings were larger. In front of him, kneeling in the center of a cheap rug, was a man.

His hands were bound behind him with thick zip-ties, his face a completely ruined shape of purple bruises, split skin, and old blood that had dried into his collar. It was the messy, unnecessary work of someone who liked the sound of a fist hitting bone a little too much.

Rico looked up, his eyes locking onto my hair. His expression went sour instantly... the look of a man who had just smelled something rotten under his floorboards.

"You," Rico said. It wasn’t a greeting. It was a groan.

I stepped over the sill, walking past the line of guns as if they were nothing more than heavy pieces of furniture left in a hallway. "You didn’t see my texts, Rico? I’ve been ignored all morning. It’s very rude."

Rico looked from me to the bleeding man on the floor, his jaw working silently before he turned to his henchmen. "Out. All of you. Clear the room." He pointed a thick finger at the bound man on the floor. "Not you. Sit."

The guards hesitated for a fraction of a second, shooting me looks that meant absolutely nothing to me, before they filed out through the side exit, leaving the heavy oak door to click shut behind them.

Rico stood up, his heavy frame shifting as he went to sit behind his desk properly, while his personal driver swept several stacks of dirty bills and small, heat-sealed plastic bags into a leather brief.

I watched the cash disappear, my head tilting slightly. "Look at you," I said, my tone genuinely admiring. "Last time I saw your name on a manifest, you were running errands for someone else’s crew. Now you’ve got the desk, the iron, the whole little empire. Impressive, Rico. Truly."

"What do you want, Cyan?" Rico asked, leaning his palms on the wood.

"Is that how you greet an old friend?"

"We’re not friends. We never were. What do you want?"

I moved closer to the desk, not stopping until the leather of my jacket brushed the edge of his paperwork.

I leaned forward, bringing my face down toward his, my voice dropping into that slow, rhythmic space where every syllable carries weight.

"Inmate 0451," I murmured, saying the numbers like a family name. "He has a little side quest for you."

Rico went completely stiff. The numbers did exactly what they were designed to do... they took the expensive suit and the big desk and stripped them away until he was just a man in gray denim again.

"Wolfe," Rico said quietly, his voice turning thin..

"Correct."