The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 27
Every household had corners the outside world never saw. Plenty of people envied Michael’s life, his house, after all, moving into a middle-class neighborhood at his age was no small feat.
But who would guess that the inside of that house might not be as intact as William had imagined?
Some appliances were long past their time and still hadn’t been replaced. The wallpaper had begun to yellow with a faint, decaying tint. Decorative plaster panels showed cracks. Sections of the flooring, worn down by years of neglect and termite damage, no longer held steady underfoot.
Every family had problems like these. Some were cosmetic. Some ran deeper, into the relationships themselves.
Fortunately, Michael’s position and employer insulated his household from the latter. A management role in a key department ensured steady income, enough for comfort, and more besides.
Once financial security was in place, most family tensions simply failed to take root. Affection, passion, even conflict, all of it, at its core, rested on material ground. Everything else was just unnecessary agitation in the eyes of some.
When the boss stepped onto a loose plank, one Mrs. Michael had already mentioned twice without it ever being replaced, the warped wood let out a dry, twisting creak that carried through the empty house.
In the dead of night, a sound like that in the living room was enough to snap taut even the dullest nerves.
Mrs. Michael switched on the light. She moved to the door, pressed her ear against it, listening.
She was alone in the house tonight. The maid was not a live-in servant. This was no villa, no estate, just a standalone house in a middle-class neighborhood.
There were no spare bedrooms or washrooms to house a servant. Their child was away at a full-time private school. The house held only her.
The woman in her thirties listened carefully for a while. Nothing followed. The sound she had heard felt uncertain now, like something imagined.
Standing before the door, she hesitated.
Should she go out and check?
Usually Michael would be home. She had never realized before how a large house could feel like this, how it could turn into something that pressed fear into her bones. Just a door between her and the outside, yet it marked the boundary between light and darkness.
To open it, to face whatever lay beyond, not everyone had that kind of courage.
At the same time, the boss gripped his gun and moved up the stairs, barefoot, each step placed with care. His eyes were fixed, hard, almost feverish, on the strip of light leaking from beneath a door at the end of the second-floor corridor.
That thin line of light seemed to struggle to escape, to push back the dark, but it was too weak. It barely illuminated an inch of the floor outside.
He reached the master bedroom door and stopped. The plank he had stepped on earlier might have alerted whoever was inside. He waited, letting them come to him.
Ten seconds passed.
Mrs. Michael, still uncertain, opened the door a crack.
A grotesque face filled her vision.
Her scream burst out on instinct, but it lasted less than half a second before a fist slammed into her and crushed the sound back down her throat.
Outside, William watched through the not-quite-opaque curtains as two shadows flashed past the window. The sudden scream cut off almost immediately, so fast it didn’t even rouse the neighbors.
He gathered his tools, then climbed down from the pole without a word. He cast one last glance at the lit window, then turned and ran toward the front gate.
If the boss had never come looking for him, if he had been willing to swallow the loss, their stories would have ended separately.
But he hadn’t. He had come knocking.
That made him unstable. Dangerous. His greed alone was enough to turn into a knife in William’s back.
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