The storm broke before dawn. Rain hammered the estate’s windows, a relentless percussion that carried through the marble halls like war drums. Owen lay awake, his dreams fractured with Allen’s voice, with the flash of masked faces, with the echo of his father’s words. Blood is only a price.

By breakfast, he wore composure like armor. The table was long, set with silver and china, but only three seats were filled. Norma sipped her tea in silence, every motion graceful, deliberate. Across from her, Owen cut into his eggs without appetite. At the far end, Thanos scrolled through his phone, muttering curses under his breath.

It was Norma who broke the silence.
“You left early at the gala.”
Thanos didn’t look up. “Business.”
Her eyes lingered on him, sharp beneath her calm mask. “Business with men who don’t belong in our house.”

The words landed like a knife laid carefully on velvet. Thanos’s head snapped up, his jaw flexing. For a moment, father and mother locked eyes across the expanse of the table. Owen watched silently, his fork still in hand.

John’s voice echoed later in the training yard, rough against the rhythm of rain. “She knows. Your mother. She’s too sharp not to.” He tossed Owen a wooden practice blade, but the boy didn’t catch it. He was staring at the rain.
“Good,” Owen murmured. “One day, she’ll have to choose which side she’s on.”

In a smoky warehouse at the docks, Kai Zeke leaned against a crate stamped with foreign insignias. Men unloaded rifles, crates of pills, and bricks of powder wrapped in tape. His eyes gleamed as he lit a cigar.

Rods Ronald stood opposite him, cane tapping against the wet concrete. “Every port, every truck, every deal—they’re watching us now. Royals got their dogs sniffing everywhere.”
Kai exhaled smoke. “Then let the dogs choke. We don’t fight the Royals head-on. We bleed them through the city. Smuggling routes, bribes, debt. By the time they look up, half their empire will already be ours.”

A shadow stirred in the far corner. Cloaked, faceless, the Order’s emissary. His voice was low, chilling. “Do not fail us. The boy is more dangerous than the father. And Thanos…” He paused. “Thanos belongs to us.”

Rods spat on the floor, but Kai only smiled faintly. The game was bigger than he had imagined—and the board was shifting.

That night, Owen stood in the estate’s library, the storm’s thunder shaking the glass. Books towered above him like silent witnesses. John entered quietly, rain still dripping from his coat.

“They’ve found one of the Zeke factories,” John said. “Weapons and pills. Police are already paid off, so nothing official will happen.”
Owen’s eyes narrowed. “Then we make it unofficial.”
John arched a brow. “You’re thinking like your grandfather.”
Owen’s voice was steady, cold. “No. I’m thinking like me.”

For the first time, John didn’t correct him.

Meanwhile, in her private chambers, Norma wrote a letter by candlelight. Her pen scratched deliberately across the page: notes of dates, names, movements. Thanos’s patterns. His meetings. His secrets.

She blew out the flame and sealed the page.

For the first time, she wasn’t just a queen beside the throne. She was preparing for war—against the man she had married.

And in the shadows of the city, as trucks rolled, guns traded hands, and officials counted bribes, a whisper moved faster than any bullet:

The Royals are cracking.