The night had already thickened into something solid and biting. Kael stood a measured distance from the main gate of the residential complex, arms crossed tight against his ribs, shivering each time the cold wind found the gap between collar and skin.
From here the compound looked exactly as wealth promises: sprawling, gleaming, smug behind its high walls and soft amber lighting—every inch the gated kingdom rich people build to remind the rest of the world who belongs inside.
Fifteen frigid minutes later, twin beams finally sliced through the dark. The black sedan rolled to a smooth stop. Kael yanked the rear door open almost before the car had settled, dropped inside, and pulled the door shut with a satisfying thud that sealed the cold out.
He exhaled a long, grateful breath, the warmth of leather and heater coils wrapping around him like a blanket.
"Man, Ricardo, you can't just leave me standing out there in the middle of the night, bro."
His voice carried the easy, familiar complaint of someone who'd said versions of this line before. Up front, Ricardo—broad-shouldered, thick-necked, looking far more like hired muscle than a chauffeur—gave a low, rumbling chuckle as he eased the car forward.
"Sorry, buddy. Got held up on the way."
"Whatever," Kael muttered, already sinking deeper into the cushioned seat. He let his head tip back, eyes drifting shut. Exhaustion pressed against the insides of his eyelids, heavy and welcome.
Most people would envy his job: nights spent with women who turned heads in any room, women who smelled of expensive perfume and quiet desperation. But envy never accounts for the stamina it demands—especially when the woman is married and every second is borrowed time.
Three rounds tonight, back-to-back-to-back, each one a performance calibrated to leave Mrs. Tachibana boneless and convinced she'd been reckless in the best possible way. His body felt hollowed out, pleasantly wrecked.
He was already sliding toward the familiar half-sleep of the ride home when Ricardo's voice reached him again, warm and unhurried.
"You look beat, buddy. Everything all right?"
Kael didn't bother opening his eyes. The darkness behind his lids was kinder than the sodium glow sliding past the windows.
"Yeah. Don't worry." A faint, tired smirk tugged at his mouth. "Just had to go three rounds straight to calm Mrs. Tachibana down."
The sedan purred on, streetlights flickering across closed eyelids, carrying him away from the glowing fortress and back into the ordinary night.
Ricardo's brow lifted at the words, though his gaze never left the dark, empty ribbon of road unspooling beneath the headlights. "Three, huh?" he said, voice low and dry. "No wonder you look so spent."
Kael gave a small, tired nod—barely more than a dip of the chin—too drained to muster anything else. The sedan hummed on through the quiet, the only sound the soft hiss of tires on asphalt and the faint rush of heat from the vents.
After a stretch of silence that felt almost deliberate, Ricardo spoke again, his tone casual in a way that prickled the back of Kael's neck.
"By the way… Mr. Tachibana paid double what we agreed."
Kael's eyes cracked open, just enough to catch the dashboard glow sliding across Ricardo's profile. "I see," he murmured. A faint, crooked smile ghosted his mouth. "Well, he did tell me I did a good job."
Ricardo nodded once, slow and thoughtful. "Yeah. You did." He paused, then added, quieter, "More than that. You did too much of a good job."
The wheel turned sharply. Tires bit pavement; the sedan swung right and eased to a stop at the shoulder of the main road, engine idling low. Streetlight fell in thin, cold bars across the interior.
Kael straightened, startled. "What happe—"
Shot!
The gun shot came muffled, almost polite—a soft, wet cough through the suppressor. Smoke curled in a lazy thread from the muzzle now leveled at him.
For a heartbeat Kael simply stared, confusion creasing his brow as he registered the black cylinder, the faint wisp of grey rising into the warm air of the car. Then his eyes tracked upward to Ricardo's face—calm, familiar, unchanged.
Pain arrived next, slow at first, a dull bloom spreading outward from the neat hole just below his ribs. It sharpened into something bright and vicious, stealing the breath he tried to pull in. His hand drifted toward the spreading warmth on his shirt; fingers came away dark and shining.
"Why…?" The word scraped out, hoarse, thin.
Ricardo kept the gun steady, barrel unwavering. He exhaled through his nose, a sound that might have been regret if it weren't so tired.
"Kael, my friend…" He let the silence sit between them a moment, heavy as the smell of cordite. "You were too good at your job. Really. And that kind of good—it irked the one person in our business you can't afford to irk."
He looked at Kael with a long, heavy sigh. "Sorry, brother," Ricardo said, the words quiet, almost tender. "But this is the life of a Breeding Bull…"
There was a real pang in his voice—something like sorrow, or maybe just weariness—but Kael no longer had room for it. The truth had already punched through him sharper than the bullet.
Warmth spread across his abdomen in slow, spreading pulses, blood soaking the fabric of his shirt, seeping between his fingers when he pressed weakly against the wound.
"I see," he rasped. "So I made Mr. Tachibana jealous." His lips moved again, slower this time, disbelief clinging to every syllable. "But… but he said I did good…"
A wet cough broke the sentence; blood bubbled up, dark and bright at once, spilling over his lower lip and down his chin. He stared at Ricardo through the haze that was already creeping into the edges of his vision.
Ricardo shook his head once, slow and final. "Sorry, friend. This is goodbye." His voice stayed low, almost gentle. "I hope you have a good next life."
Shot! Shot! Shot!
Three flat, muffled cracks in quick succession. Each round punched through Kael's chest, the last one finding the heart with surgical precision. His body jerked once—small, involuntary—then went still. Breath simply stopped. No dramatic gasp, no final shudder. Just absence.
Ricardo sat a moment longer, gun still leveled at the slack face now staring past him at nothing. He exhaled through his nose, a sound that carried the weight of too many nights like this one.
Another friend gone by his own hand.
That was how the organization worked: Breeding Bulls were exactly what the name implied—used until they weren't useful anymore, then culled like any stud past his prime.
He stepped out of the car into the cool night air, boots crunching softly on gravel at the shoulder. The phone was already at his ear.
"Yeah," he said, voice flat and professional. "Yeah, he's dead."
Inside the sedan the dashboard lights glowed faintly on skin gone grey. Kael's final awareness flickered like a candle in wind—thin, unsteady, already thinning to nothing.
Then something impossible cut through the fading dark.
A voice—not Ricardo's, not any human voice—spoke inside his skull, clear and mechanical.
[System awakening condition met… Downloading the system.]
Why?
The question bloomed in the last scrap of his mind, not aimed at the cold voice but at everything that had led here: the gate, the cold wind, the bedroom, the bedroom again, the car, the muzzle flash.
A single, exhausted syllable hanging in the silence between one heartbeat that never came and the next.
But Fate, of course, answered no one. Not even itself.
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