Draft

Andrei:

London always smells like rain, even when the sky is dry. There’s something in the air here. A strange, polished rot that’s trying too hard to pretend it isn’t there. Beneath the glimmer of expensive buildings and lattes is a city riddled with filth. Not the kind you can wash off.

The kind you burn down.

I didn’t plan to stay here long, but things changed.

My penthouse overlooked the Thames, sleek and silent like a blade unsheathed. I’d bought it years ago as a contingency—a place to disappear, if needed. Now it served a different purpose. A nest for a vulture circling his prey.

I entered without ceremony. My men followed quietly, their boots brushing over imported marble. I didn’t speak until I reached the large desk in the study.

“Report.”

Vladimir, the youngest of them, handed me the file. “Everything we could find on Aldric. He's been careful.”

Of course he has.

I dismissed them with a nod, and the penthouse fell into silence. No music. No distractions. Just the sound of pages turning and the occasional creak of leather as I sat back and read.

Hayes. The name was enough to set my teeth on edge.

Father of M.I.D.A.S. The bastard who turned soldiers into broken shells. Who ruined lives for profit. Who turned madness into a goddamn business.

I flipped through photos of labs. Account transfers. Transport routes. Names that meant nothing until they became corpses.

And then, one line caught my attention.

"Hayes has a son. Identity unknown. No public record. Possibly estranged."

I stared at those words.

A son.

How interesting.

No names. No photos. No mention of where the boy was. Just that he existed.

Hayes, for all his power, kept his own blood out of sight. Why? Ashamed? Afraid?

Or maybe he didn’t care. Fathers like him rarely did. I knew the type. I had one.

I closed the file and leaned back in my chair, eyes tracing the city skyline. London sparkled like jewelry over a corpse. Beautiful. Hollow.

I poured myself a drink, let it burn. I needed something to snap me out of this tension clawing under my skin. I was getting too involved. Too personal. But M.I.D.A.S. wasn’t just business. It was blood. I’d buried too many good men because of that drug.

And now I wanted Hayes buried too.

After a week locked inside with nothing but whispers and data, I needed air. Real streets. Real people.

I dressed down. No suits. No jewelry. Just jeans, a coat, and a cap pulled low. I didn’t want to be seen.

I ended up near an art district. No reason. My feet just carried me there. It was peaceful. Tourists walked around taking photos. Students smoked on curbs. Cafés spilled their chatter into the streets.

That’s when I saw him.

Through a café window, hunched over a sketchpad like it was the only thing tethering him to Earth.

Matthew.

His fingers were stained dark, maybe charcoal or pencil. His eyes focused but far away. He looked tired. A little haunted.

But alive.

I didn’t go inside. Didn’t announce myself. I just leaned against a brick wall across the street, pulled out a cigarette, and pretended to light it. My eyes never left him.

What was it about this college boy?

He didn’t look dangerous. Not in the traditional sense. But something about him felt like a ticking clock. A stray spark near gunpowder.

He limped slightly when he shifted in his seat. His hands moved like they had a mind of their own, sketching feverishly. Obsessed, almost. There was something raw and restless in him.

I studied people for a living. Read them. Broke them. Matthew didn’t fit into any box I knew. He was… wrong, in a way that fascinated me.

And he didn’t know who I really was.

Just like I didn’t know who he really was.

I stayed for five minutes longer than I should have. Then I turned and disappeared into the crowd, footsteps swallowed by the hum of the city.

Back in my penthouse, the file on Hayes still sat open.

Still mocking me with that single line:

Hayes has a son.

But no name.

I poured another drink.

________________________________________________________

It started as an itch I couldn’t scratch. The kind that burrows into the back of your mind and nags you with whispers you can’t quite catch. That boy—Matthew. I told myself I was just being cautious. That it was normal to want answers, especially when I had so few.

So, I did what I always do when instincts flare. I set the dogs loose.

Not literally. I picked two of my men—discreet, loyal, sharp-eyed. Told them to keep tabs on him. I didn’t give them a reason, just a name and a face. That was enough. I thought it would ease my mind.

It didn’t.

A few days passed. They came back unsettled.

“He’s... weird,” one said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s like he knows. He shouldn’t, but he does. Never turns around, but he’ll stop walking. Stare into glass or reflections—like he’s seeing us without looking. Creepy.”

I brushed it off. Told them to keep watching.

But then they showed me the photos.

Shots of Matthew walking toward some small building, his studio. His posture was relaxed, slouched even, but those eyes...

Those goddamn eyes.

Bright emerald. Piercing. Cold. They weren’t looking at the camera, no, not directly. But it felt like they were. As if he had locked onto whoever was behind the lens from across the street, through brick and glass and bone.

It unsettled me. And I don’t get unsettled easily.

I decided to see for myself.

The next evening, I parked across from his studio and stayed in the car. London traffic whirred behind me, but all I focused on was that cracked sidewalk and the thin alley he always passed through.

Then, there he was. Hood pulled up loosely over his brown curls, messenger bag slung over his shoulder, one hand tucked into his coat pocket like he was holding something. A blade, maybe. Or a habit. I couldn’t tell.

He stopped briefly near a puddle, city light shimmering gold and sickly orange in the water. His head turned.

And those eyes. Again. Peering over his shoulder, but not directly at me. They drifted. Past the cars. Past the sidewalk. Straight into the shadows, like he was looking through time itself.

It was the strangest thing. For a second, I forgot I was tailing him. I just... watched.

I couldn’t place the feeling he stirred in me. Not desire, not pity. Something more tangled. Like looking at a reflection of something I didn’t know I had buried.

He didn’t run. Didn’t break routine. Just turned and walked up the rusted steps to his studio like none of it mattered. Like none of us mattered.

The next morning, I called off the tail. Told the men to stand down.

“He knows,” I said.

“So, we back off?”

“No. We wait.”

________________________________________________________

I returned to my penthouse later that day. It still didn’t feel like mine. England was never home. Too grey, too polished. But I liked the height of the place. The silence. The windows that stretched out over the city like the edge of a goddamn chessboard.

I poured myself a drink. Sat at my desk.

The file was still there, Hayes's file. I never called him by his first name. He didn’t deserve that kind of familiarity. Hayes, the ghost. The cancer at the root of the drug called M.I.D.A.S.

I flipped through the pages again. Names. Numbers. A blurred photo of a boy from years ago. Messy hair, pale skin, some paint splattered on his sleeves.

Something about that photo had always bothered me. I couldn’t say what. Not until now.

The shape of the eyes.

The quiet in the face.

The ghost of something ruined and brilliant.

I turned my head away, and closed the book.

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