Kai didn't speak. Not yet. The room was too quiet for words—too full of possibilities and mistakes waiting to happen.
The device sat in his jacket pocket like a heartbeat he could feel but not see. Every tap of his fingers on the table echoed a rhythm only he could hear. Jax leaned back, eyes narrowed. "You're waiting again," he said.
Kai's gaze didn't leave the faint traces on the monitors. Patterns. Routes. Calls that should have gone through but didn't. Small anomalies, meaningless to most, critical to him. "It's not waiting," he said finally. "It's observation."
Jax raised an eyebrow. "Observation doesn't solve problems."
Kai allowed a small, humorless smile. "Problems solve themselves when people make mistakes."
A low hum came from the building's ventilation, soft enough to be ignored. Outside, the city went on in oblivion. Someone laughed two blocks down. Someone else cursed at a delayed ride. Life never stopped. And that was why Kai moved with invisible hands, unseen threads. He had to anticipate before anyone acted.
One alert blinked on the monitor. A route shifted, a pattern repeated in the wrong sequence. Kai noted it in silence. That was the first visible signal. Small, almost accidental, but enough.
Jax leaned in. "They're slipping up."
Kai nodded. "Exactly. And every slip leaves a mark."
He moved to the window, looking down at the streets that didn't notice him. Each car, each pedestrian, each faint light a piece of the puzzle. And somewhere, someone would realize too late that control had already been taken from them.
Kai turned, eyes sharp. "We don't rush. We let them expose themselves. One wrong move, one misstep, and everything changes."
Jax let out a slow breath. "You've turned patience into a weapon."
Kai's fingers hovered over the pocket where the device rested. Not yet, he thought. The real leverage wasn't in touching it. It was in letting them feel its weight without knowing it existed.
The first crack had appeared. And with it, a sequence of consequences he had predicted, calculated, and now waited for to ripple outward.
Kai glanced at Jax. "This is only the beginning. Watch closely. They won't see the fall coming."
Silence returned. Thick, heavy, and full of unspoken threats.