The single bulb buzzed like an angry insect, casting stark shadows across Jamie Rourke's pale, bound face. The rough cloth blindfold was gone, leaving him blinking in the harsh light at the two figures who had pulled him from his own doorstep.
Cedric stood by the rickety table, calm as a librarian. He opened the manila folder with a soft snap. "Jamie Rourke," he said, his voice devoid of malice. It was the tone of a state official reading regulations. "Let's be efficient. We have your bank records showing the monthly transfers to a shell account that funds Philip's operations. We have archived social media chatter where you called Carl Ames 'an interesting specimen.' We have a digital chain linking that comment to the escalation of harassment against him, correlated with the date on his suicide note."
He laid each photocopied sheet on the table like he was dealing cards. Ace, a tall, silent pillar by the door, watched Jamie's reactions. There was no yelling, no posturing. Just the hum of the bulb and the whisper of paper.
"This isn't a court of law," Cedric continued. "It's a meeting of facts. And the facts paint a very clear, very ugly picture for your father's 'Clean Up the City' press conference tomorrow."
Jamie's bravado had vanished in the concrete room. His voice was a shaky warble. "What do you want? Money? I can get—"
"We don't want your money," Ace interrupted, his voice a low gravel that made Jamie flinch. "We want a new arrangement."
Cedric took over, outlining the terms with chilling clarity. "Option one: we anonymize this file and send it to every news desk, school board member, and political rival of your father's by sunrise. Your life, as you know it, is over. You become a scandal, a liability. Your father's career takes a permanent hit."
He let the image hang in the stale air.
"Option two," Cedric said, leaning forward slightly. "You become Carl Ames's personal guardian angel. You use your name, your resources, your father's unspoken influence to ensure that for the rest of his school life—and beyond—Carl Ames experiences nothing but boring, peaceful safety. Any rumor about him dies before it starts. Any bully finds themselves facing sudden, mysterious social ruin. Any 'lost' item is returned tenfold. You will fix what you broke, and you will protect it forever. You will do this silently, completely, and without ever seeking credit or contact."
Jamie stared, his mind clearly trying to process the bizarre sentence. "You… you want me to protect him?"
"We want you to fix your mess," Ace corrected, taking a single step forward. The floorboard creaked. "Permanently. You turned his life into a hell. Now you'll be the fence that keeps hell out."
"And if I refuse?" Jamie whispered, the last flicker of defiance.
Ace's lips twitched in something that wasn't a smile. "Then we choose option one for you. And we add the security footage of you being escorted from your gate tonight to the file. Kidnapping looks bad, even for a victim."
It was the final checkmate. Jamie's shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him entirely. He was a puppet, and they held every string. "How do you know I'll keep my word?"
Cedric finally smiled, a thin, cold thing. "Because we'll be watching. And we still have the file. This isn't a promise, Jamie. It's a new set of rules for your life. Follow them, and you get to keep that life. Break them…" He shrugged, closing the folder with a definitive thump.
There was no dramatic oath, no signed contract. Only Jamie's ragged, defeated breathing and a slow, terrified nod.
Ace moved. He pulled a multi-tool from his pocket, flicked the blade open, and in one smooth motion, severed the plastic zip-tie binding Jamie's wrists. The sound was sharp in the quiet room.
"Get up," Ace said.
Jamie stumbled to his feet, rubbing his raw wrists. Cedric placed his wallet and phone on the table.
"Walk out the door, turn left, walk two blocks to the bus stop," Cedric instructed. "Go home. Go to school tomorrow. Start your new job."
They didn't escort him out. They simply watched as Jamie, moving like a sleepwalker, shuffled to the metal door, fumbled with the handle, and stumbled into the dim hallway beyond. The door swung shut with a heavy, final clunk.
In the sudden silence, Ace let out a long, controlled breath. Cedric carefully placed the damning folder into a waterproof backpack.
"Think he'll do it?" Ace asked, his voice back to its normal register.
Cedric zipped the bag shut. "He's a coward who loves his comfort. He'll do it. He'll hate every second, but he'll do it. For himself."
Ace nodded. The first part was done. The target had been neutralized, repurposed. The hunt, for now, was over.
The heavy door had barely finished echoing when Cedric was in motion. He pulled a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a clean cloth from his backpack, tossing the cloth to Ace.
"Wipe down the chair, the table surface, the door handle you touched. Everywhere," Cedric said, his voice all business. He was already scanning the floor on his hands and knees, picking up invisible fibers with a strip of duct tape wrapped sticky-side out around his fingers.
Ace caught the cloth and got to work. There was no discussion, no need for instruction. This was the other half of the hunt—the part that happened after the monster was dealt with. The eradication of traces. He methodically scrubbed at the wooden chair where Jamie had sat, the rickety table where the damning folder had lain. His movements were efficient, practiced. A hunter didn't just kill the beast; he cleaned the blood, scattered the ashes, and made the forest look untouched.
"Got a stray hair here," Cedric muttered, sealing it onto the tape before bagging it in a small plastic zip. "His panic sweat on the chair back is ours to deal with, but we eliminate the obvious."
Ace finished the surfaces and moved to the corners of the room, checking for anything they might have dropped—a loose thread from their clothes, a scrap of paper. The room was returned to a state of barren anonymity.
"Perimeter check," Cedric said, shouldering his backpack. They exited the room, and Cedric produced a small UV flashlight. He ran the beam over the dusty hallway floor outside their door. "Our footprints are here, and his… but this dust hasn't been disturbed in weeks. It'll resettle. The building's scheduled for demolition next month anyway. Perfect."
Ace nodded, a flicker of respect for Cedric's thoroughness cutting through the post-operation adrenaline. Cedric hadn't just found a random room; he'd found a tomb already waiting to be buried.
They moved silently down the back stairwell of the derelict office building, exiting through a basement door that opened into a grimy alley a block over from where Cedric's car was parked. The night air was cool and smelled of distant rain, washing the stale tension from their lungs.
When they were in the car, engine purring softly, Cedric didn't immediately drive. He looked over at Ace, the green glow of the dashboard lights etching his sharp features.
"Clean work," Cedric said finally. It wasn't effusive praise; it was a professional assessment.
"He folded fast," Ace replied, staring out at the empty street. "Didn't even try to call the bluff."
"Because it wasn't a bluff," Cedric said, pulling the car smoothly into the quiet road. "The file is real. The footage is real. He's a kid who plays with social power. We showed him real power. The kind with consequences he can't delete or laugh off."
They drove in silence for a few blocks, the city gradually shifting from industrial decay to sleeping residential zones.
"What now?" Ace asked. The immediate mission was over, leaving a strange, hollow space in its wake.
"Now, we wait and watch," Cedric said, his eyes on the road. "We give it seventy-two hours. If Carl reports so much as a dirty look, we drop the first page of the file to the school board anonymously. A warning shot. But he won't." Cedric's confidence was absolute. "Jamie's more afraid of us than he is bored of playing guardian angel. He'll make it his new, twisted hobby."
Ace let out a short, humorless breath. It was a bizarre, almost poetic end. The tormentor, terrified into becoming a shield. Justice didn't always look like a knockout punch; sometimes it looked like a permanent, invisible leash.
Cedric pulled up a block from the Ames house. "Go get some sleep. The family part of this isn't over yet. You've still got to be 'Ace the cousin' for a few more days. Sell the peace."
Ace opened the car door. "And you?"
Cedric offered a thin smile. "I'm going to make sure the digital ghosts of tonight are properly buried. Firewalls, encrypted backups, the usual. This never leaves this night." He met Ace's gaze. "Good hunting, partner."
It was a new word between them. Partner. It carried more weight than friend.
"See you tomorrow," Ace said, and closed the door. He watched the taillights disappear around the corner before turning towards the house. The concrete room felt like a distant, surreal dream. Here, the air was just cool night, the only sound a distant dog barking.
The operation was complete. The target was handled. The field was clean.
All that was left was to live with the quiet victory.
Three days later, the Ames household existed in a different dimension.
The air, once thick with unspoken dread and the sour tang of stale beer, had cleared. Sunlight streamed through clean windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in calm air. The change was subtle but absolute, like a fever breaking.
Ace found Carl in the backyard, not hunched over his phone in the gloom of his room, but sitting on the back steps, sketching in a notebook. He was drawing a bird in flight, its wings caught in mid-beat.
"Since when do you go outside?" Ace asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Carl looked up, squinting in the light. There were still shadows under his eyes, but they were just shadows now, not bruises. "Since it stopped feeling like everyone out here was watching me," he said, his voice quiet but steady. He tapped his pencil on the page. "School's… weird. Jamie passed me in the hall and flinched. Like I was the one who was gonna do something. My math book, the one that got ruined… a brand new one was in my locker this morning. No note."
Ace walked over and sat on the step beside him, saying nothing. He watched a sparrow hop along the fence. The plan was working. Not just the fear, but the reparations. Jamie was following the letter of his new law.
"It's like I've got a ghost," Carl murmured, almost to himself. "A really aggressive, weirdly generous ghost." He glanced at Ace, a question in his eyes that he didn't voice.
Ace met his look and gave a slight, almost imperceptible shrug. "Maybe some people have a real bad guilty conscience." He left it at that. The truth was a weapon, and Carl didn't need to carry its weight.
Inside, the shift was just as profound. Rose, their grandmother, was seated in her favorite armchair by the window, a soft blanket across her lap. Her breathing was easier, the alarming grey pallor gone from her cheeks. The constant, low-grade panic that had strained her weak heart had receded with the resolution of the family's silent war. Stability had returned, not as a cure, but as a reprieve.
The most shocking change was Sunny.
They heard it from the kitchen—a raw, shuddering sound. Ace and Carl exchanged a glance and moved to the living room doorway.
Sunny wasn't drunk. He was sober, sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa, his face buried in his hands. His massive shoulders shook. It wasn't the performative rage of a brawl; it was the devastating, silent collapse of a man who had just been shown the cost of his own absence. Samuel stood nearby, not with judgment, but with a sad, weary patience. The news of Carl's note had not ignited Sunny's temper; it had finally detonated the dam holding back everything else—the failed marriage, the lost career, the father he'd become. He was crying for all of it. For the first time, his violence was turned inward, and it was a necessary, cleansing destruction.
Sophie emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. She watched her brother for a moment, her expression a mixture of pity and profound relief. Then she turned to Ace, her eyes soft.
"We should go," she said quietly. "Mom's stable. They need to figure this out as a family now. Our part here is done."
Packing was a quick, silent affair. The guest room that had been Ace's battlefield headquarters for weeks was just a room again. As he zipped his bag shut, he took one last look out the window at the quiet street. The mission was over. The territory was secure.
Goodbyes on the front step were brief, wrapped in the unspoken understanding that they had all passed through something dark together.
"Take care of yourself," Ace said to Carl, clapping a hand on his shoulder.
"You too," Carl replied. "And… thanks. For being the one who didn't just walk by."
Ace nodded. It was the only acknowledgement he needed, or wanted.
He slid into the passenger seat of his mother's car. Sophie started the engine, and with a final wave, they pulled away from the Ames house. Ace watched it shrink in the side mirror—the white fence, the neat lawn, the window to Carl's room—until it was just another house on the tree-lined street, then gone.
The silence in the car was comfortable. The kind that comes after a long storm has passed.
"You did a good thing, staying with him," Sophie said after a few miles, her eyes on the road.
Ace leaned his head against the window, watching the city begin to blur past. "He's okay," was all he said.
And he was. The immediate, crushing threat was gone, dismantled by a perfect, invisible operation. The aftermath was healing. It was the closest thing to a clean victory their world allowed.
The car turned onto the road, pointing toward home. The arc was closed. The human monsters had been handled. Ahead lay the quiet of his own room, the familiar streets, a return to normalcy.
But as the city skyline receded behind them, Ace felt no urge to relax. He felt the calm, alert focus of a soldier between deployments. The hunt here was over. He knew, with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, that it was only the first one.
He was going home. But he was returning not as a refugee from chaos, but as a hunter in respite. Ready, and waiting, for the next call.