There was a rhythm to catastrophe.
Luke had learned this across worlds—before swords were drawn, before guns were fired, before headlines screamed, disaster always hummed softly to itself. A melody only audible to those who knew how to listen.
Tonight, the melody was wrong.
Michael Corleone sat alone in the study, the city breathing beyond the windows. His wound had healed enough to dull the pain, but Luke felt something sharper stirring beneath the calm—an approaching dissonance in the world's flow.
The System responded.
Not with words.
With clarity.
[Karma Store Activated]Metaphysical Enhancement: Foresight (High-Grade)Cost: Significant Karma AllocationEffect: Temporal Pattern Recognition & Event Pre-Echo Detection
Luke accepted without hesitation.
The moment the Karma burned away, the world slowed—not physically, but meaningfully. Conversations revealed intent. Documents revealed motive. Silence revealed danger.
And the melody resolved.
Poison.
Or worse—a fake audit.
Both were classic European solutions. Elegant. Bloodless. Plausibly deniable.
The Vatican Bank was already dying.
Luke could see it now—not as rumor, but as inevitability.
Banco Ambrosiano.
Offshore accounts.
Shadow transfers.
Dead men who would soon be called suicides.
History, repeating itself.
Except this time, Luke was inside the loop.
The foresight sharpened.
A point in time crystallized:
24 hours.
That was the window.
Not when the collapse would happen—but when it became unstoppable.
Everyone else would react after.
Luke would move before.
Michael did not summon Lucchesi.
Did not call the Vatican.
Did not alert the Swiss.
Instead, he made three quiet calls—each to institutions that did not care about scandal, faith, or family names.
Only certainty.
By dawn, the Corleone fortune began to sing a different tune.
Hundreds of millions shifted—not hurriedly, not suspiciously—but with the calm authority of long-term planning.
Swiss instruments were diversified.
American Treasury bonds absorbed capital like deep water.
No single transfer was large enough to raise alarms.
No pattern suggested fear.
To any observer, it looked like an old man preparing for death.
The cabal felt nothing.
Not yet.
They toasted in Rome.
They signed papers in Zurich.
They prepared statements for journalists who didn't know they were about to become weapons.
And then—
The melody broke.
The Vatican Bank collapsed.
Banco Ambrosiano imploded under the weight of its own sins.
Audits became investigations.
Investigations became accusations.
And money—vast rivers of it—vanished overnight.
But not Michael Corleone's.
Panic spread through European boardrooms.
Funds that were meant to be seized… were gone.
Accounts that should have been frozen… were empty.
The trap snapped shut—
On no one.
Lucchesi raged in private.
Gilday prayed louder than usual.
The Swiss asked questions they should have asked weeks ago.
And somewhere in New York, Michael Corleone listened to the evening news in silence, hands folded, expression unreadable.
Luke felt the System stabilize again.
The world accepted this outcome.
Not as miracle.
Not as manipulation.
But as timing.
The melody returned.
Soft.
Controlled.
Victorious.
Luke understood now why the System had named this power as it did.
Foresight was not about seeing the future.
It was about hearing it—before anyone else knew there was a song playing at all.
And as Europe burned under its own secrets, Michael Corleone remained untouched.
Not because he was innocent.
But because he had moved to a different rhythm.
One the cabal could no longer hear.