All Chapters of The Vision She Hid: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

Elky checked the vault panel—untouched. The black metal doors watched him with the arrogance that’s survived multiple architects and at least two mafia coup d’etats. He pressed his right palm to the biometric panel, just to hear it purr. The light blinked friendly enough. He didn’t open the door. This was not the time for demonstrations.“Speak,” I told the prone kid, and crouched so my voice would get to his ears before his courage did. “Who sent you?”He made the mouth noise mercenaries make when they think torture is next and want to audition for pity. “Don’t— We don’t— I don’t know the names.”“You know a name,” I said. “Better two names. Maybe a coat color. Maybe the smell of something expensive or extinct or mean.”“We— we don’t get to see our customers. We got a voice on the phone, okay?” His words clattered down the stairs of a bad accent toward the basement of outright bullshit. “The voice sounded strange. Like it was modulated or something. It sounded like a robot. Said we h

I think the same thought went through Elky’s head. He looked at me in sheer horror, as if he had enough of me playing brave. I didn’t mind. I suddenly felt it was late and I was ready to bed. Elky whispered something to my bodyguard, and I was unceremoniously invited on the back seat of the bullet proof car. It drove back to the house, no questions answered. I didn’t miss much of the action though. The gunfire had gone quiet, but quiet is a relative thing. The silence that follows a firefight doesn’t feel like peace; it feels more like somebody just slammed the door on hell, and you’re waiting to see if the hinges are strong enough. When I stepped into the house it was eerie quite. Not a creak of a floorboard, no Marta’s kettles boiling, even the heating system gave up on being out of tune. I didn’t like it. I slowly went up the stairs, trying not to wake up whatever monster the house tried to appease. I sat on the edge of my bed, light rain still needling the shutters, table lamp lig

“I am going to kill him,” Elky said after a short pause.I didn’t need to hear more to know he didn’t mean Anatole. I said nothing, just followed Elky where he had to go.The hunting room smelled like the past trying to stay respectable—varnish that remembered more caring hands, cigar smoke that had turned the rafters into a second ceiling, leather chairs that sighed every time a Jennings sat down on it and told a blunt lie. The poor lion’s head above the fireplace wore its permanent verdict. The glass eyes stared at two brothers like two polished noons that didn’t care who said what, just had zero time for everybody in the room.Elky opened the door and went in, because kings don’t knock on the doors of their palaces. I went with him because I was the only one in the house that didn’t require permission to enter. Andros was already there, filling the space with the ease of a man who rented his charm from murderous criminals. He lounged inside a chair under a boar’s head that had the

My blissful ignorance didn’t last very long. The old hunting room had narrowed to three people and a lion who’d seen better fights. Firelight painted the brothers like rival saints in a chapel where chaplain took bribes. The smashed glass on the hearth steamed a sour perfume. Andros breathed hard. The guy was running out of synonyms for rage. Elky stood square, not moving, the way cliffs don’t move when the sea auditions for tempest.“Say it, bro,” Andros snarled, voice sawn in half. “Tell the world your nest fairy tale. The pretty dancer’s a cure, the markets are a mirage in a desert, and you—” he jabbed a finger at Elky’s chest, “—you’re a bloody philanthropist with a swell body count.”Elky’s eyes slid to me and back, quick as a blade returning to its sheath. He didn’t flinch from his brother’s words. He flinched from something else, and I didn’t like it.“It is not a fairy tale,” he said. “It is a fact, I am afraid.”“Huh! Facts don’t buy you stuff,” Andros said. “Money does.”El

The moment snapped like a violin string that was tuned to murder. Andros moved first, all swagger and bad timing, the kind of lunge a man makes when he’s convinced the world belongs to his ancestors. Elky didn’t step back—he let the charge arrive like a bad debt and paid it back with good interest. They met under the lion’s sinister grin, shoulder to sternum, the sound of bone greeting bone in a language chairs don’t like to hear.Andros swung wild—big, theatrical, the way a press release throws adjectives. Elky answered with better accounting: short jabs, clean fists, nothing extravagant he couldn’t justify to a stern fight auditor. The first punch cut Andros’ lip; the second put a bruise under his cheekbone. Freshly spilled blood brightened the air, quick and embarrassing, like a rumor.“Gentlemen,” I said to be ignored, “the lion is judging your punches.”They couldn’t care less. They didn’t hear me. Men never do when the old drum starts up behind the ribs and tells them the world