[BL]Hunted by the God of Destruction-Chapter 271: Traces

Chapter 271: Chapter 271: Traces
The car moved like a polished weapon through the city, expensive and fast enough to feel powerful. Robert drove without a word, gloved hands steady on the wheel, the divider glass up. He knew better than to interrupt when Victor was reading.
Victor sat in the back, legs crossed, the tablet resting against his knee as glowing data streamed across the screen. He was dressed in a three-piece black suit with a black and crimson tie, still smelling like Elias’s scent.
Clarke Industries. Now under Elias’s name. On paper, the transfer was clean.
But Victor knew what
"clean"
usually meant in this world of business. Someone was manipulating the truth enough for everything to look normal.
His expression didn’t shift as he flipped through encrypted s, staff rosters, offshore trusts, dead-end assets, and department budgets with numbers that didn’t add up no matter how creative the accounting. What disturbed him wasn’t just the imbalance or the shell companies rerouted through minor continents.
It was the names that didn’t appear. The ones that should have.
Jonathan had been an egomaniac and a liability. But he hadn’t been a tactician. He didn’t know how to hide this well.
Victor leaned his head back against the seat, red eyes half-lidded as the tablet recalibrated again. There were family members not listed. Gaps in the inheritance trail. Vanishing cousins. Blank executor lines.
Someone had survived the purge. Someone hadn’t come forward.
And someone, very likely a blood relative of Elias, had been helping Jonathan rot Clarke Industries from the inside years before the fall.
Victor exhaled slowly, the ether in his chest humming with ancient irritation.
He hated loose ends. And he despised threats hiding behind Elias’s name.
He could have ignored all of this, made Elias his soulmate and shown him for the first time his celestial home, but Victor still wanted for Elias to live his life before the vast power of godhood engulfed him.
The car slowed.
Robert’s voice came through the soft speaker at the front. "Sir, we’re at Numen Tower."
Victor tapped the screen once to lock it, slid the tablet into the leather case beside him, and adjusted the cuffs of his coat with the movements of a man that looked lazy but wasn’t. His mind was already moving. If there was a surviving Clarke, they would reveal themselves the moment Elias stepped into power.
They always did with the movements under his nose. The car door opened with a quiet click.
A woman in a slate-grey suit stood waiting under the entry canopy, tablet in hand, headset tucked behind one ear. She bowed her head the moment Victor’s shoes hit the pavement.
"Sir. Welcome back." She greeted professionally.
Victor gave her a glance. "Status?"
"There’s someone waiting for you," she said briskly. "Not scheduled. No ID scan. But they knew the phrasing protocol and cited Level
Omega clearance."
Victor stopped walking.
The red in his eyes flickered like a match catching air.
"And security let them in?"
"They didn’t have to," the woman said. "They used the old elevator."
Victor’s jaw flexed once. The old elevator hadn’t been active in years. Not since the last divine clearance was buried behind three sealed protocols and a soul-locked key.
Whoever had come... wasn’t just a Clarke. They were something older. Or something far more dangerous.
"Which floor?"
She hesitated. "Executive summit. They’re in the mirrored room."
Victor smiled slowly and the secretary found herself shuddering at the sight of it.
"Then let’s be courteous," he said. "Bring me coffee. Strong. And warn the board that my mood is deteriorating."
—
The study was quiet for someone trying to ignore an agent lounging on the couch like he lived there.
Elias sat at his desk, mug of tea cradled in one hand, glasses perched low on his nose. His other hand scrolled calmly through a stream of encrypted documents projected across his interface screen: research s from the Numen teams, three peer-reviewed publication drafts, one energy model correction request from Theo, and a brief memo from Victor titled "
RE: Corporate Vengeance Budget—Preliminary Approval,"
which he promptly archived without reading.
Outside, the snow kept falling in soft, deliberate patterns across the frost-lined balcony.
Ashwin sighed dramatically from the couch behind him.
Elias didn’t flinch.
"You’re going to give yourself neck strain if you keep reading like that," Ashwin called helpfully, sprawled in full tactical gear with his boots off and a bowl of grapes balanced on his chest. "Or ruin your optic nerves. That’s still a thing with mortals, right?"
"Don’t you have someone else to haunt?" Elias replied calmly, eyes never leaving the screen.
"Technically, I’m here under Victor’s orders."
"I’m sure you are," Elias muttered, sipping his tea.
"Protection detail," Ashwin added brightly. "In case the kitchen appliances stage a coup."
Elias clicked into a Clarke Industries server log. "If they do, I’m letting them take you first."
Ashwin grinned. "Harsh. But valid."
The newest Clarke files flickered open, a mixture of restoration s and internal investigations Victor had flagged for transparency. A lot of it had already been scrubbed clean, but Elias’s eye for technical patterns caught what Victor’s rage might’ve skipped.
The shell accounts traced back to companies that didn’t match Jonathan’s profile. The old product lines, long discontinued, are still drawing funds. Payouts in maintenance budgets that were exactly six percent above board thresholds, smart enough to slip through audits, and stupid enough to leave a pattern.
He narrowed his eyes.
This wasn’t Jonathan’s chaos.
This was someone who knew how to launder legacy.
"Is it treason to say I kind of like Clarke Elias?" Ashwin asked lazily, popping a grape into his mouth. "You’ve got that whole
’bitter empire boy with a god fiancé’ t
hing going."
"I will file a complaint to the commander."
"You are dating the commander."
"I’ll file it with Ego," Elias said flatly.
Ashwin fell silent for a moment, long enough that Elias was almost convinced he’d won, until he heard the rustle of movement behind him.
"You’re doing it again," Ashwin said.
Elias paused, pen hovering over his notepad. "Doing what?"
"That thing where you look calm but you’re about five seconds away from tracking a bloodline through three forged estate charters."
"I’m fine," Elias said.
"You’re plotting."
"I’m working."
Ashwin stood and wandered over, watching the screen from over Elias’s shoulder. "You found something."
"I found a relative," Elias murmured, tracing the signature string of a legal proxy. "Or someone pretending to be one."
Ashwin’s tone shifted instantly. "Do I get to shoot them?"
"Not yet."
"But later?"
Elias finally looked up, sipping from his tea. "Depends on how long they think they can hide from me."
Ashwin smiled, sharp and toothy. "You really have changed."
Elias didn’t smile back.
He just turned back to the screen and whispered, "No. I just stopped apologizing for surviving."