A Blade in the Ashes

It was only on the day of my father's funeral that I learned the keepsake he left me wasn't a battered copy of Principles of Accounting, but a key stained with the rusty blood of the underworld.

When I was publicly humiliated and had my engagement broken off, then trampled underfoot by a rich kid, I gritted my teeth and opened that book. Every page held a name and a debt of life and death.

I thought I was just an ordinary college student, never knowing that from the moment I was born, I had been standing on the cliff between the underworld and the law-abiding world.

When those legendary “uncles” started knocking on my door one by one in the dead of night, I finally understood: some people are born into wealth and privilege, but I was born to rebuild the rules of an entire empire.