The aftermath of the bridge was a wasteland of silence. The "Ice King" didn't return to his throne; he fell into a deep, obsessive pit of investigation that yielded absolutely nothing.
Arm spent the first forty-eight hours locked in his study, surrounded by the city's best private cybersecurity experts. He had the mystery number traced, but the results were infuriatingly clean.
The message had been sent from a "burner" app, routed through seventeen different international servers—from Estonia to Singapore—before hitting Arm's phone.
There were no digital footprints, no linked credit cards, and no recovery emails. It was the work of a professional—someone who knew exactly how Arm's security systems functioned.
Arm suspected everyone. Was it the Matriarch taking a final, petty revenge? Was it Skyler, bitter from the rejection? Or was it someone even closer?
