The manorhouse did not look like a place that expected trouble.

  It sat back from the street behind a short rise of manicured stone and trimmed hedges, lanterns burning steadily along the walkway as if Rafborough were a city where men slept easily. The fa?ade was all clean lines and old money, thick masonry and tasteful ironwork, the kind of building that told the world its owner belonged to the class that made rules instead of following them.

  The door to the study was broken.

  Splintered wood and twisted hinges lay scattered across marble tile, the wreckage shoved aside just enough to clear a path. The air inside held the faint, sharp scent of recently disturbed wards, like lightning had been trapped in a bottle and shaken.

  Grump stepped through first.

  He did not hurry. He did not pause either. He moved like a man walking onto a familiar battlefield, eyes taking inventory without drama. His coat was buttoned, his hands bare, his face set into that expression of calm practicality he wore when he was deciding how much of the truth to say.

  Behind him came Humbert.

  Massive was the correct word for Humbert. Not merely tall, but thick with a kind of strength that made doorframes look too small and furniture look fragile. He had the quiet composure of a veteran who did not need to prove anything. The only sound he made was the muted shift of leather and the soft creak of floorboards protesting his weight.

  The entry hall opened into a sitting room that had been designed to impress.

  Mahogany and brass. Polished surfaces that reflected light in controlled, flattering ways. Rugs thick enough to swallow footsteps. Heavy drapes pulled back from tall windows, revealing a night sky over Rafborough that looked too clean from this height.

  Jordy and Paul were already there.

  They had stripped down to simple clothes, jackets, and rolled sleeves, no armor. They looked like men who had come in from the street and immediately found work to do. Papers were spread across the floor and the low tables. Ledgers had been cracked open and laid flat. Some were stacked in uneven towers near the desk, others fanned out in a deliberate chaos that suggested Paul was building a system as he went.

  Jordy sat on the edge of the upturned desk, one boot resting on a drawer that had been pulled halfway out. He held a book open in one hand, flipping pages with the other, his face twisted in a mixture of amusement and irritation. He looked comfortable in other people’s wealth in the way a wolf looked comfortable in a sheep pen.

  Paul crouched near the desk, a small lantern positioned to throw clean light across a spread of papers. His hands were careful. He touched ink and wax seals the way a medic touched a wound, gently, with respect for what might happen if he rushed.

  Meechum himself sat on a couch against the wall.

  He did not look comfortable.

  His suit was still immaculate, but the man inside it had lost the protective shell of certainty that wealth usually provided. He held himself stiffly, shoulders tight, jaw set. His eyes followed Grump and Humbert as they entered, then flicked toward the doorway as if he could will a rescue into existence.

  Doke stood a few steps away from the couch, rifle in hand, posture relaxed in the way only truly alert men ever were. He was watching Meechum without making it obvious, the muzzle of his weapon angled down but ready to rise in an instant.

  Grump took in the scene, the broken door, the scattered books, the toppled desk, the butler lying under a thrown blanket in the corner where someone had at least taken the time to make him look less like a body on display.

  He let out a slow breath through his nose.

  “Hm,” Grump said, voice low. “Just the butler. No guards. No security magi-cams. Guess a crimeboss doesn’t want to draw attention to himself.”

  Humbert barked a laugh, a short sound that carried more disbelief than humor.

  Grump walked farther into the room, boots muffled by thick carpet. He did not look at Meechum yet. He looked at the work.

  “How’s it coming on those books, Paul?” Otwin’s voice came from the doorway behind them, calm and flat, like the night’s violence had been an inconvenient chore and nothing more.

  He stood near the far side of the room in his Stormtrooper armor, plates sealed and scarred, the suit’s bulk lending him a presence that made the space feel tighter. The armor hummed softly with contained power, servos idling, systems awake. He did not need to move to make himself felt. The vibro sword rode at his side, easy to reach, but unnecessary. The armor alone made the point.

  Paul looked up from his papers, blinking once as if dragging himself out of a different mindset.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “It’s all encoded,” Paul said. His voice carried the tired annoyance of a man who knew exactly how much work was in front of him. He tapped one of the ledgers with two fingers. “But I found some cyphers in his desk.”

  He held up a folded slip of paper covered in neat symbols and short lines of notation.

  “What kind of overconfident moron keeps the cyphers out in the open?” Paul asked.

  Jordy snorted.

  “The kind that thinks his big-time position will keep him safe,” Jordy said. He flipped another page, then another. “No one ever expects to get kicked in the teeth in their own parlor.”

  Paul’s mouth twitched at that, not quite a smile.

  “It normally would protect him,” Grump said.

  He finally walked over to Meechum.

  Meechum’s eyes tracked him like a cornered man watching a knife.

  Grump did not loom. Humbert did that naturally, standing a few steps behind with arms loose at his sides. Grump simply stopped in front of the couch and looked down at Meechum with a tired sort of curiosity, like he was evaluating a piece of gear that had failed in the field.

  “But sometimes they run into problems,” Grump said, “even that won’t protect them from.”

  Meechum’s lip curled.

  He tried for disdain. It came out as a grumble.

  “And,” Grump added, his tone sharpening just slightly, “apparently, Otwin is one of those problems.”

  Meechum’s gaze darted to Otwin, then away.

  Otwin did not react. He simply watched, eyes steady, expression unreadable.

  Paul set the cypher paper down carefully and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “It’ll take days to go through all this,” Paul said. He gestured toward the ledgers, the piles of paper, the desk drawers that had been emptied onto the floor. “If it’s as deep as it looks, it could take longer.”

  Jordy closed the book he had been holding and set it down with a soft thud.

  “Then I guess we’ll be here for days,” Grump said.

  The words settled into the room like a weight.

  Meechum opened his mouth, then closed it again, realizing that in his own immaculate room, his life had stopped belonging to him.

  ***

  The manorhouse stopped feeling like a residence sometime during the second night.

  By then, the rooms had settled into a rhythm that had nothing to do with comfort. Lamps were kept low but steady. Curtains stayed drawn. Someone was always awake. Papers migrated from room to room as Paul chased patterns across ledgers and scraps of encoded notes, building a map piece by piece on the floor and low tables. Empty cups accumulated near the walls. Time stretched, compressed, and then blurred.

  Meechum watched it all from the couch.

  He was allowed water. Food, when Paul remembered. Bathroom breaks under watch. Nothing more. His suit stayed pressed, but the man inside it frayed. The stiff posture gave way to slouching. The practiced indignation dulled into silence. He spoke only when spoken to, and even then, his answers were careful, trimmed down to what could not be avoided.

  Two days passed.

  On the morning of the third, Paul froze mid-motion.

  He had been crouched over a spread of books and loose sheets, fingers stained faintly with ink, eyes bloodshot and unfocused in the way of a man who had slept in short, accidental stretches. His lantern sat close to the page, throwing sharp light across symbols that had stopped looking like nonsense sometime in the night.

  “I’ve got it,” Paul said.

  The words were quiet, almost disbelieving.

  Then louder, sharper, cutting through the low murmur of the house.

  “I’ve got it. It’s all here.”

  Jordy looked up from the chair he had claimed near the window, boots hooked around the legs, knife idly spinning between his fingers. Humbert straightened from where he had been standing watch near the hall, massive shoulders shifting as his attention locked in. Grump lifted his head from the ledger he had been reviewing, eyes narrowing slightly.

  Paul pushed himself to his feet, one hand braced against the table to steady himself.

  “Accounts,” Paul said, voice picking up momentum now that the dam had broken. “Safe houses. Transfer routes. Front businesses. Names tied to dates tied to payments. It’s not just one set of books; it’s layers. He kept redundancies. I think he trusted the encoding more than people.”

  He let out a short, breathless laugh.

  “Everything’s cross-referenced. If one trail breaks, there’s another pointing to the same place.”

  Meechum’s head came up.

  For the first time in two days, real emotion cracked through his expression. Not anger. Not fear. Recognition.

  Grump closed the ledger in his hands with deliberate care and set it aside.

  “Well,” he said mildly, turning his attention fully to the couch. “Looks like you’re ours now, Meechum.”

  Meechum swallowed.

  In the two days it had taken Paul to break the cyphers, life outside the manorhouse had not stopped.

  People came looking.

  At first, it had been polite. A clerk from the bank, hat in hand, asking after Meechum’s health. A courier with documents that needed signatures. A partner requesting a meeting, voice carefully neutral.

  Meechum had been forced to tell them he was sick.

  The lie came easily. It always did at first.

  After that, the visits changed.

  A man who did not give a name but waited too long in the doorway. Someone who circled the house twice before leaving. A message left with a servant that never reached its intended recipient.

  In the world of criminals, silence did not mean rest.

  It meant absence.

  By the end of the second day, there were a few extra missing persons in Rafborough. Men who had come looking too hard. Men who had not understood the change in ownership.

  No one commented on it aloud.

  Otwin stood where he had stood for most of those two days, armor sealed, presence immovable. The Stormtrooper plates bore new scratches from leaning against walls that had not been built for armored men. He watched Paul speak, watched Meechum react, watched Grump’s expression shift from calculation to decision.

  “Humbert,” Otwin said.

  The single word carried.

  Humbert turned his head, beard catching the lamplight.

  “You, me, and Jordy are going to start some resource gathering.”

  Jordy grinned slowly, knife coming to rest between his fingers.

  “About time,” he said.

  Humbert’s smile was smaller, heavier. He nodded once.

  Grump leaned back against the edge of the table and laughed, a low sound that held no humor in it at all.

  “I bet you wish you’d never gone after my gold,” he said.

  Meechum looked up at him.

  For a moment, it seemed like he might spit something back. A threat. A curse. A reminder of who he used to be.

  Instead, he exhaled.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” Meechum said.

  Paul began organizing the papers again, already shifting from discovery to execution, stacking ledgers into new piles marked with chalk and string. Grump moved closer, eyes scanning names and numbers with a veteran’s sense for logistics rather than finance.

  Otwin turned toward the door.

  Outside, Rafborough kept pretending.

  Inside the manorhouse, ownership had changed hands completely.