The call came at 4 a.m., long after Ronke had gone quiet in the office chair, arms crossed, watching the gate with the particular alertness of someone who no longer trusted silence.
Miles’s phone lit up on the counter.
No name.
No number.
Just a blank screen, ringing.
He looked at Ronke.
She looked back at him, and something in her face — not fear exactly, more like recognition — told him she already knew who it was before he even answered.
He picked it up.
Didn’t speak first.
The voice that came through was even, almost warm, the kind that had clearly learned a long time ago that threats landed harder when they didn’t sound like threats.
“Miles. I’ve been wanting to hear your voice for a while now.” A pause, unhurried.
“You gave my men quite a story to bring back. Well — the one who could still talk.”
“Fela.”
“She told you my name.” Something shifted in his tone, not quite anger, more like mild disappointment, the sound of a man recalculating.
“I suppose that was inevitable, once you found her in that warehouse. She always did have a soft spot for strays.”
Ronke’s jaw tightened at that, but she didn’t reach for the phone.
“In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. Bayo is replaceable. You’re not, which is the whole problem, isn’t it?” Fela’s voice carried the ease of a man who’d made this exact kind of call many times before.
“You built something out there that shouldn’t exist yet. A Creator this raw, this new, shouldn’t have infrastructure. Shouldn’t have a physical front hardened enough to put two of my men on the ground without me lifting a finger. That’s not supposed to happen at your stage.”
“Maybe I’m not following the stages.”
“No,” Fela said, almost admiring.
“You’re not. That’s exactly why I’m calling instead of sending anyone else.”
The gold text flickered faintly at the edge of Miles’s vision, quieter than usual, almost listening rather than directing.
Foreign Signal Detected: Voice Call.
Origin: Untraceable.
Signature Partial Match — Ronke Cross-Reference.
Advisory: Speaker possesses knowledge of Creator System internals.
Miles’s grip tightened on the phone.
“How do you know about the system at all.”
Fela laughed, low and genuinely amused, the kind of laugh that made Miles’s skin go cold in a way none of the enforcer’s threats had managed.
“Because I had one too, Miles. A long time ago. Before Ronke’s crew, before any of this.” A pause, long enough to feel deliberate.
“Mine didn’t look like yours. Mine was red where yours is gold. But it made the same promises, and it demanded the same price, and when I finally paid it in full, it didn’t hand me an empire.” His voice dropped, quieter now, stripped of the earlier warmth.
“It handed me a job watching for the next person foolish enough to build one.” New chapters come out on g.com first.
Ronke’s head came up sharply at that, and something crossed her face that Miles had never seen from her before — not fear of Fela’s threat, but fear of what he’d just said.
“That’s not possible,” she said, loud enough for the phone to catch it.
“Fela, that’s not how it—”
“Ask her what happened to my hands, Miles,” Fela said, ignoring her entirely, his voice sliding back into that calm, patient register.
“Ask her why I don’t run a crew from a warehouse anymore, watching feeds like some kind of penance. Ask her why the registry has a very particular interest in creators who build real, physical infrastructure instead of just riding the numbers up.”
“Why.”
“Because the last time someone built something as solid as The Wash,” Fela said, his tone dropping level and flat, “the system didn’t lose him to a rival label. It lost him to himself. And the registry has spent every year since trying to make sure that never happens twice.”
The line went dead.
Miles lowered the phone slowly, the dial tone humming faint and tinny against his ear, and turned to Ronke — studying her now the way you study someone you thought you understood completely, right before finding out you didn’t.
“What did he mean,” Miles said.
“What happened to his hands.”
Ronke didn’t answer right away.
She looked down at her own palms instead, turning them over slowly in the weak office light, like she was checking they were still hers.
“He means,” she said finally, “that Fela used to be exactly what you’re trying to become. And the system doesn’t let go of people like that quietly.”