The days that followed were deceptively calm on the surface. Nara went about her routine, work, home, Zuri's messages, quiet evenings, but every now and then she felt watched. Not in a threatening way, more like the world around her had shifted slightly without her noticing.
She didn't yet realize that the disturbance wasn't around her. It was around the Alarics.
---
Meanwhile Keigh moved with the precision of a man who'd spent years studying every shadow where power liked to hide. His actions were not loud, violent or reckless, they were surgical.
Day 1 – Financial Pressure
Without a trace leading back to him, a discreet international compliance branch "randomly" flagged two of the Alarics' overseas accounts for irregular activity. The accounts were frozen by morning.
At the Alaric estate, panic spiraled like wildfire.
"What do you mean frozen?!" snarled Mr Alaric, slamming his glass onto the desk.
The accountant stammered, "It's… unclear. We've requested clarification. It seems to be part of a global routine sweep."
Keigh leaned back in his penthouse office, watching the encrypted data feed with quiet satisfaction. Routine. Yes. Let them believe that.
---
Day 3 – Their Allies Go Silent
A long-standing business partner, one the Alarics depended on for several key projects suddenly declined a meeting request. Then another and another. All within the same afternoon.
Behind the scenes, Keigh had ensured each one received a dossier. Objective, simple, but lethal. Evidence of the Alarics' illegal financial manipulations.
Not enough to bring them down legally, but enough to terrify anyone associated with them.
Their phones stopped ringing, emails went unanswered, every whisper they heard felt like it had something to do with them, but there was no proof. No name, no trail, just pressure.
---
Day 5 – Information Blackout
The Alarics tried to hire investigators to dig around their recent issues. Every investigator turned them down. Every intelligence consultant mysteriously doubled their fees. Every data broker they approached said the same thing:
> "We can't help you. Someone bigger than you is involved."
Mr Alaric felt the first true tremor of fear. Someone bigger, bigger than them? Impossible! And yet every door slammed shut in their face.
---
Nara started noticing small things, little details that didn't feel like coincidence. A car she'd seen twice this week. A familiar man standing near her office building's corner in different outfit, same posture. Her apartment building's guard being unexpectedly attentive, but when she blinked, the moments slipped away.
Maybe she was imagining it, or overthinking. All she knew was that life felt padded. As if someone had wrapped invisible layers around her to soften the world's edges. Dhe didn't yet know that she wasn't imagining it at all.
Keigh had doubled her protection but in a way she would never catch. Rotating shifts, plain-clothes operatives, altered traffic footage, blind spots erased around her daily routes.
The Alarics wanted to eliminate her, but Keigh had already decided, Over his dead body.
---
Day 7 – The First Crack Appears
At the Alaric mansion, Mr Alaric slammed a file onto the table.
"This is deliberate," he hissed. "Someone is trying to damage us."
His wife rubbed her temples. "We need to find out who. Hire more people."
"We can't," Mr Alaric snapped. "Every investigator is scared. Every resource is blocked. Someone is cutting off our access."
Mrs Alaric looked up, face pale.
"Who even has that reach?"
Mr Alaric didn't answer, but deep inside, a whisper crawled through his mind, Keigh Dynamite, but that was impossible. They were long term family friends, his father would disown him for ruining his connection with them.
---
Keigh reviewed the latest updates on his encrypted tablet, financial chokehold tightening, informants confirming the Alarics' frantic scrambling.
"Good," he murmured.
He closed the tablet and looked out the window, eyes hardening. They had taken the first step toward harming Nara, now, they would learn the price. A quiet price, asubtle one. A price that left no fingerprints, but a price all the same.