Stan drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh as he idly checked his phone while waiting at a red light.
A Snapchat from Vivian sat at the top of his notifications.
This one was different from the usual professional updates she sent him in his capacity as her superior. The tone was personal, almost desperate. It had been typed in one long, breathless burst, the kind that signaled genuine distress rather than performative drama.
Vivian: [Sir Stan. I need your guidance. Von wasted far more of the family inheritance than any of us realized, far, far more. The scammer didn’t just take what Von handed over. He had Von signing transfers and authorizations for weeks. The damage is severe. And now that it’s becoming clear how much we’ve lost, the Reeves family’s longtime competitors are starting to circle. People we considered allies for years, old family friends, business partners my father trusted, they’re moving on us. I can’t tell which of them are still safe and which ones are wolves in sheep’s clothing. I genuinely can’t tell, Sir Stan. They smile when they talk to me and I can feel the knives behind their teeth. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.]
Stan read the message twice and let out a slow breath as the light turned green.
He eased the Huracán forward.
Truthfully, he had little desire to help the Reeves family. Von had brought the disaster on himself. By any fair assessment, the collapse of the Reeves’ position was the inevitable consequence of a spoiled heir refusing to listen to the one person who had tried to stop him. Vivian had told him the picture on his phone was AI-generated. She had warned him repeatedly.
He hadn’t listened. Even though the warning came to late, the fact that he didn’t discuss this with anyone before making this move made it clear that he had earned the outcome.
But there was a second dimension to the matter, one that concerned Stan far more.
The man who had scammed Von had been posing as Sir Streak. And this wasn’t the first time.
Damien had pulled the same stunt about close to two weeks earlier, and Stan had dealt with him personally at the Wanhai Grand. Now there was another impersonator, operating on a much larger scale, running elaborate long cons against inherited wealth using a counterfeit version of his identity.
And if there were two, there were almost certainly more. Probably many more.
Spread across different cities. Different platforms. Different circles.
Each one represented a small but very real threat to the actual Streak’s reputation.
It was time to address the problem properly.
He had been turning the matter over in the back of his mind for days. The same answer kept presenting itself.
Vanguard. The team that had escorted Amelia had been deeply unimpressive, patchwork, undertrained, and embarrassingly slow to react.
But that had been a consequence of the assignment, not the company itself.
Amelia had insisted on female-only protection, forcing Vanguard to cobble together a unit by pulling women from multiple teams. Individually, the guards had been competent. Collectively, they had lacked cohesion.
The company itself, however, was another matter entirely.
The Inksea Police Commissioner had spoken highly of Vanguard Protection Group, and he was not a man who handed out praise lightly. His comments had made it clear that when Vanguard operated at full capability, it was exceptionally good at what it did, and what it did extended far beyond executive protection.
The firm possessed a serious intelligence and investigative arm.
They specialized in finding people who did not want to be found.
Which made them perfectly suited to the problem.
Stan made a mental note.
Once he got home, he would conduct a proper review of Vanguard. If the company checked out, he would quietly retain them to track down the scammer who had fleeced Von and, more importantly, to identify every other Streak impersonator operating across TikTuk and the offline circuits.
Find them, expose them. And perhaps make a very public example of one or two.
That alone would be enough to send a message.
Sir Streak was not an identity that could be borrowed casually.
The Reeves family would benefit as a side effect.
Stan himself would benefit considerably more. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and returned his attention to the road.
The drive back to Aurelia Heights was uneventful.
He was perhaps three minutes from the building, already turning onto the residential approach that led to the underground parking entrance, when he spotted them.
A line of vehicles stood parked neatly along the curb outside the main gate.
Five cars.
Polished. Professional. Arranged with the kind of deliberate spacing that spoke of protocol rather than convenience.
The lead vehicle bore a familiar silver-on-black insignia on its rear quarter panel.
Vanguard Protection Group.
Stan slowed. "What the fuck?"
He spoke the words quietly to the empty cabin. His mind did the math immediately.
’Vanguard. Five cars...’
There was exactly one Vanguard client he knew who traveled with a five-car convoy.
’Amelia Don.’
Stan let out a long, measured sigh.
"Why does she have to make a show of this?" he muttered. "It looks like I’m a wanted criminal."
The timing was almost absurd.
He had been thinking about Vanguard less than half an hour ago, considering whether to hire them himself. And now their most high-profile client was parked outside his apartment building with an armed security detail.
Frankly, it would have been funny if it wasn’t so conspicuous.
He eased the Huracán to a stop in front of the gate, lowered his window, and waited.
The rear door of the lead sedan, a sleek black executive car, opened. Amelia stepped out.
She wore a tailored cream coat over a darker ensemble beneath, the lines clean and understated in the way that truly expensive clothes tended to be. There was nothing flashy about her appearance. Real wealth rarely needed to announce itself.
Her dark hair had been gathered into a low, elegant knot at the nape of her neck. A pair of black-framed sunglasses rested on her face, not the oversized fashion variety, but a slimmer, sharper design that lent her a reserved, almost austere air, as though she had decided that being recognized today was entirely beside the point.
She looked, in a word, beautiful.
The severity of the aesthetic only enhanced the effect.
The sunglasses concealed just enough of her eyes to draw attention elsewhere, to the graceful line of her jaw, the soft curve of her lips, and the quiet composure that seemed to permeate her every movement. There was something effortlessly refined about her, a kind of restrained elegance that made loud displays seem unnecessary.
[Reference Image]