The situation report from Reindeer Logistics arrived just after midnight, routed through three layers of internal encryption and flagged priority. Derek read it in silence from the study of his Bel Air home, the lights dimmed, the city beyond the glass walls reduced to a distant constellation of wealth and movement.
Reindeer Logistics had always been a calculated bet.
What began as a strategic acquisition—$425 million for controlling interest, followed by a bold $1 billion fleet expansion—had quietly transformed into something much larger. According to the COO's report, Reindeer was now operational in over twenty countries across Asia and Africa. Not partnerships. Not pilot programs. Actual presence.
Freight shipping hubs in Lagos, Mombasa, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta. Door-to-door delivery networks spreading through secondary cities that legacy logistics giants had ignored for decades. Reindeer wasn't competing with the old system—it was bypassing it.
Projected revenue by year's end: between two and five billion dollars.
Most of it, unsurprisingly, stemmed from the North Compton redevelopment project—raw materials, prefabricated components, specialized machinery. But what caught Derek's attention was the reinvestment figure.
Seventy percent.
Seventy percent of projected revenue earmarked for further expansion.
Reindeer wasn't being run like a profit-extraction vehicle. It was being grown like infrastructure.
Derek closed the report and leaned back.
Infrastructure lasted.
Blackfire Technologies was next.
The numbers were absurd, even to him.
Reality Quest had crossed three billion downloads globally, a figure that would have been dismissed as fantasy just a year earlier. In-app purchases flowed steadily, not in spikes but in consistent streams—players buying land deeds, crafting rights, governance tokens. RQ Coin transaction fees had become so normalized that users barely noticed them anymore.
Total revenue: $4.4 billion.
He broke it down methodically, as he always did.
$1.7 billion diverted directly into the nanotech cancer treatment program. Facilities. Materials. Talent acquisition. Silence.
$300 million—already accounted for—had gone into the original development of Reality Quest itself.
That left $2.7 billion in pure profit.
Liquid assets sat at $3.4 billion.
Derek stared at the numbers longer than necessary.
If he took Blackfire public now, it wouldn't just be one of the most profitable startups in the world—it would destabilize entire market sectors. Gaming, fintech, digital governance, biotech by proximity alone.
An IPO would force exposure.
Exposure meant loss of control.
He set the thought aside. For now.
Then there was Raven Corporation.
The anomaly.
Raven had started with one hundred billion dollars, and it was the only one of his entities operating at a deficit. On paper, it looked reckless. In reality, it was deliberate.
$425 million for Reindeer Logistics.
$1 billion for fleet expansion.
$50 billion allocated to North Compton redevelopment.
The project itself was finally beginning to resemble the scale he'd envisioned. The central district—the so-called Monolith—was nearing completion. A cluster of hundred-floor towers rising like a geometric spine from the city's heart. Housing, research facilities, vertical agriculture, municipal services stacked and interwoven.
Once the Monolith was finished, the rest would be easier.
Buildings capped at fifty floors or less. Distributed density. Livability without sprawl.
The three-year timeline was still intact.
What amused him—darkly—was the silence from the political class.
The governor.
The mayor of Compton.
Councilwoman Lakeisha Williams.
During JBL's weaponized curiosity campaign, they had distanced themselves with surgical precision. No statements. No defenses. No acknowledgment. They had treated Derek and Raven Corporation as expendable liabilities, sacrifices offered to public sentiment before it could turn.
Now they had nothing.
The project was succeeding too visibly, too tangibly, to criticize. Jobs. Housing. Infrastructure. All without their fingerprints.
They had acted too early.
And in doing so, they had forfeited one of the most powerful campaign talking points of the decade.
Derek allowed himself a thin smile.
They could wait.
He shut down the reports and stood, feeling the accumulated weight of weeks without rest settle into his shoulders. The house was quiet—too quiet for someone whose name was now circulating in federal briefing rooms.
He decided to step outside.
The night air was cool, the kind that cleared the mind without numbing it. He walked past the edge of his property, hands in his pockets, posture loose. To any observer, he looked like what he presented himself as: a young man with money, nothing more.
That was when he saw it.
An unmarked van, parked just beyond his gate.
Plain white. No logos. Tinted windows. Parked at the wrong angle for a delivery vehicle, too patient for a rideshare, too empty for coincidence.
Derek stopped.
His mind moved faster than his body ever could.
FBI surveillance vans had a particular signature. Local law enforcement favored discretion through blending—sedans, SUVs. Federal teams preferred utility. Mobility. Containment.
This was federal.
His first assumption was the charity gala.
Five dead men. Clear footage. Too clean, too decisive to ignore forever.
The second possibility was worse.
The Wraith.
He had been careful—painstakingly so—but nothing was invisible forever. The compound attack, the FBI presence, the footage that had reached too many desks before being buried.
Either way, the conclusion was the same.
They suspected.
But suspicion wasn't enough.
If it were, he'd already be in custody.
Derek's gaze lingered on the van for no more than two seconds before he turned away, continuing his walk as if nothing were out of place. No tension in his shoulders. No break in stride.
Surveillance fed on reaction.
He would give them none.
Back inside, he locked the door and leaned against it briefly, eyes closed.
He was tired.
Not physically—though that too—but mentally. Every move now carried weight. Every success created attention. Every mistake would compound.
He had crossed a threshold at the charity gala.
He had crossed another at the Seventh Sons compound.
The systems were reacting.
Not panicking.
Adjusting.
Derek pushed himself upright and headed upstairs. Whatever the FBI thought they were waiting for, it wouldn't come tonight.
He needed sleep.
Tomorrow, the world could circle him again.
Tonight, he would rest—knowing, with quiet certainty, that the hunt had begun.