The week had been a blur of menial servitude, scrubbing floors, running packages, standing guard in empty warehouses. Our first real assignment since the trial was a test of obedience, a humiliating tour of a Corvini drug lab. Gleaming steel, harsh white light, and the sharp, chemical fumes of synthesis filled the air.
This wasn't an initiation. It was a performance designed to reinforce the crushing hierarchy.
Kevin Corvini finally returned. He walked in dripping insecurity dressed as arrogance. He lacked the crushing silence of John, the surgical competence of Asrit, and the haunting charm of Sam. Kevin was loud, his suit slightly too flashy, his movements jerky, a man desperately trying to inhabit a role he hadn't earned.
He didn't greet us. He launched straight into the performance. The drug lab was his stage, and we were his props. He wanted to prove he was above us, above the crew, and most crucially, above any internal doubt about his place in the family.
He went station to station, his criticisms petty, sharp, and designed purely to wound.
He sneered at Gautham for taking too many notes on the chemical process. "You think this is college, Gautham? This isn't theory. It's profit. Stop wasting paper."
He picked at Arpika, criticizing the way she handled the fragile glassware. "Careful, princess. These cost more than your little crew will earn this year. Don't break what you can't afford to replace."
He scoffed at Sanvi for leaning against a purification unit. "Show some respect for the product, girl. Or does violence always override discipline?"
And then he got to Pranav.
Pranav stood at a synthesis station, performing the mindless task of dissolving base components. He was hollowed out, but the emptiness had become a kind of cold, internal shield. He was still carrying John's revelation like a ghost in his chest, the knowledge that the foundation of the Corvini power was not divine right, but a bloody, ambitious treason.
Pranav made a microscopic mistake, a slight fluctuation in the mixture, a minor impurity that wouldn't matter in the real world, but which a paranoid supervisor could find.
Kevin pounced on it with a vicious, triumphant smirk. He slammed his hand down on the steel bench.
"Look at this!" Kevin snarled, pointing a trembling finger at the beaker. "Contamination! You half-wits can't even manage basic solubility! You want to run an empire, but you can't even run a Bunsen burner!"
He expected fear. He expected a desperate apology, a torrent of self-defense, a plea for leniency.
But Pranav just stared at him. Cold. Empty. The chemical fumes and the harsh white light seemed to strip away all pretense.
The look wasn't defiance; it was acknowledgment. Pranav saw the transparent fear in Kevin's eyes, the overcompensation, the desperate need for validation from the very people he was humiliating.
Kevin faltered.
For a brief second, his voice cracked, the sound high and reedy, his insecurity bleeding through the loud veneer of bravado. His eyes flickered to the corners of the room, checking if any unseen guard had noticed the lapse.
The recruits noticed. Arpika's eyes narrowed, tracking the tremor in Kevin's hand. Sanvi's sneer softened into a calculating assessment. We finally understood: Kevin's whole persona wasn't dominance.
It was fear pretending to be dominance.
The brief moment passed, and Kevin snatched back his composure, his face flushing crimson with shame and rage. He needed to reassert control, but the initial vulnerability had already fractured the air.
He ended the session abruptly, his voice brittle and shaky as he delivered a final insult.
"You're garbage. All of you. You're failures that my family has to drag around because you're cheaper to brand than to bury. You think you're smart? Prove me wrong."
He pivoted and strode out of the room, the scent of his expensive cologne a poor mask for the sheer panic he left behind.
But the room already knew the truth: Kevin didn't need us to prove anything to him.
Kevin needed to prove something far more than they did. He was a successor who carried the terror of inadequacy, and that inadequacy was a crack that the New Blood—the actual heirs to the Corvini tradition of betrayal, could drive a wedge into. The real performance had ended the moment his voice broke.