Cherreads

Chapter 42 - Chapter 42 — “Dead Queen, Living Joker”

Kodi Grey returns to the chessboard, only to flip the whole thing over.

Cut to: A sun-bleached villa in the Azores.Kodi's sipping pineapple juice out of a coconut. Shirt unbuttoned. Sunglasses too expensive. Mood? Unbothered.

Evan (somehow still around, now demoted to "private consultant"):

"Lucia killed NullSyntax. She just took down the one villain we couldn't touch. Eden's bleeding source code. The world thinks you did it."

Kodi, without looking up:

"Cool."

Evan blinks.

"That's it?""Let your mom play god," Kodi says with a lazy grin. "She earned it. I'm bored of world domination."

He stands, stretches like a spoiled cat, and tosses his burner phone into the pool.

"Let's go spend some Rothschild money. Something absurd. I want to buy a country. No. A moon crater."

Cut to: Private jet.NUKE's playing with a Rubik's Cube. Kodi's watching him like a proud dad, with the casual smirk of a man who once crashed the entire global internet for fun.

"You ever been to Monaco?""No.""Wanna buy it?"

NUKE: "Can we crash another bank on the way?"

Kodi:

"God, I love you."

Meanwhile:

Back on every TV screen: breaking news.

"Anonymous source leaked a video of Eden's collapse... linked to Lucia Grey. FBI still investigating. Global trust markets in chaos."

Kodi, now on a yacht:

"Let's fake our deaths again."Evan: "I literally just got my clearance back."Kodi: "You'll lose it again. But think about the adventure."

Suddenly: encrypted ping on an old Rothschild sat-phone.

Kodi picks it up. It's from Lucia.The message? A GIF.Just a throne... on fire.

Kodi chuckles.

"She's making her play. Cute. But now I'm bored and competitive."

He turns to NUKE:

"You ready to steal Eden's corpse and auction it off to the highest bidder?"

NUKE: "You said we'd have fun."

Kodi:

"This is fun."

The world thought the game was over. But Kodi Grey never played games.He rewrote the rules.

More Chapters