A high school bully destroyed the last gift from his dead father… But what happened next in that Seattle rain exposed a legacy that would bring down a global criminal empire.
The rain hit the plexiglass like bullets. I watched Brad Miller dangle my father’s compass over the puddle, his varsity jacket already soaked through.
“Beg for it,” he said.
I got on my knees. The freezing water soaked through my jeans instantly. “Please. Give it back.”
Brad smiled. Then he dropped it.
The glass shattered. The needle snapped. The last thing my dad touched before the accident—gone.
Something inside me broke too. Seven years of Judo training. Seven years of restraint. Done.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said.
Brad threw a wild punch. I caught his wrist, pivoted, and launched him over my shoulder. He hit the asphalt like a car crash. His friends charged. I dropped them both in under ten seconds.
Then the sirens came.
At the police station, they cuffed me. Called me violent. Councilman Miller wanted me tried as an adult. My foster mom refused custody. I had nothing.
That’s when she walked in.
Evelyn Cross. Expensive suit. Shark eyes. She slid a tablet across the interrogation table—the fight had gone viral. Two million views.
“I can make the charges disappear,” she said. “Or you can rot in prison. Your choice.”
She pulled out a black iron token with an engraved hawk. “Your Sensei was protecting you. But he’s dead. And now the Iron Circle wants you.”
“What’s the Iron Circle?”
“The people who really run the world. And your grandfather leads them.”
I took her hand. Biggest mistake of my life.
They flew me to a fortress in the Canadian wilderness. Five other candidates waited—trained killers in designer tactical gear. I stood there in my Goodwill jacket.
The Grandmaster, Silas Cross, stripped me naked in the snow. Made me run. Made me fight.
“Poverty is a disease,” he said. “We cure it with power.”
The first night, the other candidates cornered me. Rafe, the blonde rich kid, wanted revenge for the viral video making him look weak.
He attacked. I choked him unconscious in the courtyard snow. The others backed off.
But Silas wasn’t impressed. “Mercy is a luxury we cannot afford.”
The Cull came next. They dropped us in a blizzard. Ten miles to extraction. Three assets. Six candidates. Three would be eliminated.
I found Rafe hanging off a cliff, screaming for help. I could have let him fall. Instead, I pulled him up.
“Why?” he gasped.
“I’m not you.”
We limped to extraction together. I lied to Silas, said we’d worked as a team. He let Rafe live.
Then Silas showed me a photo—my dad’s car crash. “He wasn’t killed by accident,” Silas said. “He was murdered because he showed mercy to an enemy. Compassion kills, Liam.”
But it was a lie.
Six months later, at a Chicago gala, they ordered me to kill a defector named Arthur Pence. He pulled out a USB drive—the one they wanted—and whispered the truth.
“Your father refused to traffic children. Silas had him killed. Your father was a hero.”
Pence gave me a second drive. The real evidence.
“Execute the target,” Rafe’s voice crackled in my ear.
I raised my gun at Pence. Then I spun and pointed it at Elena, the other assassin. Rafe dropped from the balcony and blocked her shot.
“Run!” Rafe yelled.
I helped Pence escape. Gave Silas the decoy drive. He thought I’d killed the target. I was in.
Six months of playing their game. Becoming their “Prodigy.” Waiting for the one moment when all twelve crime syndicate heads gathered at Blackwood.
Tonight.
I uploaded Pence’s drive to the servers. Every crime. Every assassination. Every trafficked child. Sent to Interpol, FBI, the New York Times.
The alarms screamed.
Evelyn found me first, gun raised. “Step away from the console.”
“Your father killed mine for refusing to traffic kids. Read file 88-Delta.”
She looked. Horror washed over her face.
Silas burst in with a knife. We fought on the main stage as the leaked documents flashed on every screen. The crime bosses fled. The empire crumbled in real time.
Silas came at me with the blade raised. I blocked with the broken compass lid I’d carried every day—drove the jagged brass into his shoulder. Then I threw him into the podium.
He crashed, broken. I picked up his knife.
“Do it,” Silas wheezed. “Prove you’re my grandson.”
I stabbed the knife into the floor beside his head.
“I’m not a Cross,” I said. “I’m a Ford.”
One year later, I stood at the same Seattle bus stop. Watched a bully shove a skinny kid with a violin.
I walked over. The bully saw my scar. Saw my eyes. Ran without a word.
I helped the kid up. “Learn to fall. Then you can always get back up.”
I pulled out my new compass. The needle pointed true.
North wasn’t a place. It was a choice.
