While Max was sitting in his office at the Billion Bloodline base, a strange notification popped up on his phone. It was a text message from Chad, of all people. The string of characters was completely butchered and unreadable, leaving Max to wonder if his idiot cousin had just gotten blackout drunk at some local club.
"Trouble... trouble, need you... ship"
Based on the few coherent words he could actually decipher, Max figured Chad had managed to land himself in some type of stupid trouble. It wasn’t exactly a massive surprise; Max had been expecting something like this to happen sooner or later given Chad’s track record. The only odd thing about the situation was that Chad hadn’t actively begged Max for help over the past few weeks. He hadn’t even asked for a temporary increase in his allowance, acting as if he were truly trying to prove he was a changed man. Because of that, Max felt a little disappointed in him, almost tempted to just ignore the text and not even bother replying.
But before he could put his phone face down on the desk, an incoming call flashed across the screen. It only rang for a few seconds before the line disconnected. Max stared at the device, debating over whether he should even waste his energy calling back, but he eventually decided he should at least hear the kid out one last time.
He pressed redial, but the moment he heard the voice filtering through the receiver, his heart completely sunk. The one person he had fully expected to make a lethal move at some point—the ghost who had left him in his current defensive position to begin with—was standing on the other end of the line.
"Dud, is it?" Max asked, his voice instantly dropping into a freezing cold frequency.
"Well, I’m genuinely surprised you remembered my name and recognized my voice so quickly," Dud replied back, his tone casual and smug. "I must have made quite the terrifying impression on you back then. I’m incredibly happy to know that’s the case."
"Did you seriously kidnap a nobody like Chad just to get back at me?" Max asked, leaning back in his chair. "Or did your little crew think you could somehow use his corporate resources? Because I’m sorry to break it to you, but there are probably a hundred people in this city I would care about ahead of him. And if you’re looking for a ransom, I don’t think his personal finances can exactly help your bank accounts."
On the other end of the line, a loud, full belly of laughter erupted through the speaker.
"Oh, you are entirely right about that, and trust me, I already knew the metrics," Dud chuckled, his voice echoing over the ship’s engine hum. "Chad was never my primary target. But it appears that in my pursuit of tracking down the individuals you might actually care about a little more, I managed to catch a few useful strays along the way. Why don’t you guys say a quick hello to the boss?"
There was a long, heavy silence on the line, followed by a couple of weak, trembling "hellos" filtering through the static. The voices were clearly shook up and terrified, and the sound instantly made something click in the room.
"Sir, it seems that might actually be Bobo and Karen on the other end," Aron stated quietly. He was standing like a stone statue right beside Max’s desk along with Na. "My surveillance teams have been keeping loose tabs on their movements, and the three of them went out together to the docks tonight."
Max frowned, his mind racing. It felt incredibly strange for an enemy to target three separate members of the Stern family all at once. Was Dud just after a massive lump sum of ransom money after all? There was a connected history between Chad and Dud’s old operations, so it could have just been a pure coincidence that they were all caught in the same room.
"But that’s not even the best part of the blueprint, Max," Dud continued, his voice dropping into a sharp, malicious purr. "Let me clear the ledger for you. I have managed to systematically gather a massive coalition of people who all share the exact same goal: to completely take down the Billion Bloodline group, along with every single member hiding inside your fortress.
"In fact, I hear there are some very old, very vengeful friends of your personal bodyguard who are hunting for his head right now. And the best part? There is absolutely no need for money on our side of the fence, because we also happen to have a Stern financing our war."
The pieces of the puzzle instantly clicked together in Max’s head as he thought about the recent high-security prison break and the dark news he had gathered from the mountain trail. He finally understood why Dud hadn’t launched a direct attack on their borders until now.
Most likely, the enemy coalition was vastly stronger than he had initially envisioned. Dud wanted to make entirely sure things were executed flawlessly this time around, so he had spent his time gathering every single powerhouse possible who held a grudge against the Bloodline.
The real question is... were these the monsters responsible for what happened to Hercules too? Max wondered, a cold sweat threatening to break. If they are the ones who cleared out that mountain cabin, what type of terrifying power do they actually have at their disposal?
Max wasn’t the only one spiraling. Dud’s words seemed to visibly startle Aron—a man who practically never showed a single shred of vulnerability. Max could feel the raw energy in the room shift instantly, the air turning thick and heavy. Why the hell would Dud specifically mention his bodyguard’s past? If the enemy had a rogue member of the Stern family on their payroll, they obviously would have access to Max’s personal files, but this threat felt deeper.
"Let me cut straight to the chase, Max," Dud barked, his playful tone completely vanishing. "Right now, I have three core members of the Stern family bound to my sofa. And sitting right next to them, I have the broken leaders of the Black Hounds, Jett and Darius.
"It’s statistically safe to say that with their bosses in my hands, the rest of the Black Hounds’ forces won’t be able to lift a finger against us. And if the word gets out to the streets that your top champions lost rather easily to our new group, it’s going to cause a massive amount of trouble for your reputation with the other regional syndicates.
"So, I’m giving you exactly two choices. You can personally come to the coordinates I send and try to save them, or you can sit in your fortress and watch me use the forces of every single gang in the country to slowly grind your empire down to dust.
"Oh, and before you repeat that line about not caring about these three Sterns... I actually agree with you. Which is exactly why we went ahead and harvested a few others from your circle just to balance the ledger."
The phone call slammed shut, the line going completely dead.
The silence in the office was suffocating. A second later, Max’s phone buzzed with an incoming encrypted text message. He tapped the screen, opening a freshly sent photograph.
Max stared at the image, the color completely draining from his face as his knuckles turned white around the phone.
"This man... is completely crazy..." Max whispered, his eyes locked onto the screen.