March 22, 10:33 p.m. – Safehouse Alpha, Somewhere in Southbank
The hum of the sedan finally died as Aaron pulled into a shadowed underground garage beneath a nondescript building. No logos. No fancy signs. Just reinforced steel, blank walls, and silence. A place built for ghosts.
Tony stumbled out of the car, sweat plastering his shirt to his skin, the adrenaline slowly bleeding from his system and leaving only fatigue in its wake. His legs were trembling—not from fear, but from the sheer weight of what they'd just done.
Alina popped the trunk and retrieved a portable drive-sealer—a compact machine that would encrypt, lock, and back up the stolen data. She looked dead serious now. No jokes. No quips. Just quiet efficiency.
Aaron touched Tony's shoulder. "You alright?"
Tony nodded, breathing heavy. "I think so. You?"
"I'm 43, Sir. I should be drinking tea, not throwing punches."
(Aaron's a legend.)
Tony gave a tired laugh. "Remind me to get you a vacation when this is over."
Aaron didn't reply. Instead, he looked toward the elevator door as it slid open, revealing a dim hallway with a single red bulb flickering at the end.
"Let's go. We don't stay exposed."
11:01 p.m. – Safehouse Interior
The room smelled of old concrete and freshly brewed coffee—Aaron had already put the kettle on. A small wall monitor displayed a rotating Bellingham logo, now hijacked with a fake IP to act as a dummy workstation. Alina sat cross-legged on the floor, connecting the stolen drive to her laptop, running it through scrubbing protocols.
Tony slumped onto the worn leather couch and leaned back, letting his head rest.
"I need to know what's on it," he said, voice low.
Alina tapped a few keys. "Me too."
The screen lit up—first with text files, then financial sheets, then blueprints.
Aaron leaned forward. "What is that?"
Alina's brows furrowed. "Looks like project documentation. Internal transfers. But this…" She zoomed in on one document marked AURELIA CORE v2.1 – Prototype Registry.
Tony sat upright. "What the hell is Aurelia?"
Alina opened it—and the lines inside were chilling.
Artificial load balancing for sensitive economic ecosystems… behavioral modeling based on real-time financial data… private AI testing environment approved under proxy accounts.
Tony's heart sank. "It's not just money."
Aaron looked grim. "It's control."
Alina whispered, "Dent's not just stealing. He's building something. And he's hiding it from the Board."
Tony rubbed his temples. "We've got to tell someone."
But even as the words left his mouth, he knew the truth: the Board couldn't be trusted. Not entirely. Dent had allies. Maybe even inside.
He stood. Walked over to the cracked window and stared at the lights of Southbank glowing like fireflies. The drive in his belt… it might be the key to saving Bellingham Industries or watching it burn.
(And i'm sure he doesn't want it burned.)
"Tomorrow," Tony said softly. "We go hunting."
Alina looked up. "Who?"
Tony turned, eyes hard. "Whoever Dent is working with. Whoever's helping him build Aurelia. Whoever's planning to take everything my father built."
Silence fell in the room again.
Then Alina said, almost gently, "You're not really him, are you?"
Tony froze.
Aaron looked up.
Alina shrugged, not unkindly. "You don't talk like a corporate prince. You fight like someone who grew up punching for rent money. And you call me family, not staff."
Tony said nothing.
But he didn't deny it.
Alina nodded, satisfied. "Good. Because I'd rather follow you than the formal Tony any day."
Aaron smirked. "Told you we'd like him. He's our tony."
Tony let out a breath. Somewhere between guilt and relief. "You two are crazy."
Alina grinned. "We broke into Bellingham Tower's core servers to take down a traitor. Crazy's the requirement."
Outside, the city roared in the distance.
Inside, the war had begun.
11:23 p.m. – Same Safehouse, Tech Room
The kettle whistled softly in the background, steam fogging up the small, bulletproof window near the ceiling. Aaron poured himself a mug and one for Tony, placing the second on the small desk beside him.
Tony stared at the mug for a long moment before picking it up and sipping. His hands were still shaking, and the heat stung his dry throat.
Alina was muttering to herself, scrolling through logs, metadata, and scrubbed comms. "He's been funneling money through shell vendors in Dubai, Shanghai, Lagos… using codewords from Bellingham's black-budget archives. This goes way back. Two, maybe three years."
Tony rubbed his jaw. "And nobody caught on?"
"No one looks too closely at success," Aaron said. "Dent's divisions have been outperforming projections. On paper, he's a golden boy."
Alina added, "And let's not forget, he was your dad's protégé. Peopletrustlegacies."
Tony leaned back. The ache in his head was spreading behind his eyes. A slow, pulsing reminder that the night wasn't over yet.
"I keep wondering," he said quietly. "Why Aurelia? Why build something that powerful in secret?"
Aaron sat down across from him. "Because Dent doesn't want control. He wants domination. The kind where markets shift because he says so. If that AI gets out… global finance won't be run by nations or boards. It'll be Dent pulling the strings in real time."
Alina frowned. "And maybe not even Dent. He's smart enough to build it… but dumb enough to think it won't get out of his hands."
Tony stared at the ceiling. "How do you even stop something like that?"
Aaron raised an eyebrow. "You built an empire on software and secrets. We fight fire with fire."
Tony chuckled dryly to himself. "I was just a dropout who got shot by a debt collector."
Alina looked over her shoulder. "You're a CEO with a war on your hands. Life comes at you fast, huh?"
"Feels more like a freight train."
11:34 p.m. – Monitoring Room, Sector 7, Dent's Private Compound
Dent adjusted the knot of his silk tie as he stared at the footage looping across the triple screen array in front of him. The deep vault breach. Three figures, blurry on infrared. The vault door opened with surgical precision.
His fingers clenched the armrest.
"Sir, we've initiated lockdown on the backup servers," said a shadowed assistant. "If they got the prototype documentation"
"I know what they got," Dent snapped.
He rose, walked to the glass wall of his office, and looked out at the private landing strip beyond. A chopper stood ready. Emergency transport. Just in case.
"Who?" he muttered.
The assistant hesitated. "Security says it was a Level 7 breach. Internal key access was used. Only two individuals could've pulled that off from the outside."
Dent narrowed his eyes. "Aaron Vex and Alina Ward."
"Correct."
"And the third?"
"We're still analyzing. Voice pattern is scrambled. But… the body language…"
Dent turned sharply. "Say it."
"The resemblance to Bellingham's heir is uncanny."
Dent smiled coldly. "It should be. I made sure of it."
The assistant looked confused, but Dent waved him off.
"Put trackers on Alina and Aaron. Dig into every contact they've touched. If Tony Bellingham is the one behind all this, I want to know how. And why."
He turned back to the window.
"Because if he is… he just made the biggest mistake of his life."
11:41 p.m. – Living Quarters
Later, when the files had been backed up and the equipment secured, Tony lay on one of the cots in the corner of the safehouse. The mattress was stiff, the blanket military-grade, but he didn't care. He couldn't sleep, but he couldn't move either.
Memories drifted in—of Kai's old apartment, of the cracked ceiling, of debt notices on the fridge. Of gunshots. Of waking up in a body with a billion-dollar name.
He glanced over to the corner where Alina had curled up with a headset still in her ears, softly humming to a playlist. Aaron was across the room, already asleep, gun still within reach on the nightstand.
Tony's fingers brushed the edge of the encrypted drive on the table beside him.
Dent had power, secrets, technology—and people willing to kill for him.
But Tony had nothing to lose.
He closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, the hunt would begin.
"I'm done running, i have to fight."
And this time, he wasn't playing defense.
(He's Serious now.)