Chapter 342: The Devil Wears Sheep Clothes
Morning light filtered through the villa’s bay windows, cutting pale rectangles across the tempered glass table where dozens of folders were piled up: profiles of Sector 4 merchants, profitability curves, distribution maps traced in red and blue.
The smell of cold coffee had been lingering in the room for three hours.
Nash sat at the end of the table, motionless, slowly spinning a pen between his fingers.
Across from him, Dahlia was going through her report.
"The Sector 4 profiles are validated at ninety-two percent. Three families are still reluctant, but we can tip them with a first-quarter rent exemption. As for the clandestine transporters..." she tapped a sheet, "I’ve renegotiated the routes with the Castilla brothers. They’re willing to double the medicine deliveries if we cover the losses in case of a police check."
Victoria was listening, chin resting on her fist, her black glasses pushed up onto her head for once — a rare detail. She was noting every figure in a notebook.
"And the food?" Nash asked, without looking up from the file he was leafing through.
"The stocks from the Vasquez Street wholesaler arrive the day after tomorrow. Enough to cover six blocks for two weeks." Dahlia paused. "The budget is starting to seriously creak, Nash."
It was at that exact moment that Victoria’s pen stopped.
She put it down. Not gently — a sharp click against the glass that made Dahlia jump.
"No." Victoria straightened up, her fingers nervously tapping the notebook. "We stop here."
Nash finally lifted his head. His calm, almost bored gaze locked onto hers without blinking.
"I agreed to be your financial advisor," she continued, her voice rising a notch, as sharp as she knew how to be. "I unlocked the millions Blacklist earned — *our* millions, Nash — because I thought we were investing in something solid. Sponsors. Equipment. Maybe a training facility worthy of the name."
She swept her hand across the table in a wide, almost violent gesture.
"Instead, I discover we’re financing renovations of bankrupt grocery stores in Sector 4. That we’re paying rent for families we don’t even know. That we’re covering the losses of clandestine transporters who could very well stab us in the back at the first opportunity." Her voice hardened further. "These are dumps, Nash. With zero commercial value. We’re burning our money on mini-projects that will never bring anything back."
She leaned forward, her sapphire eyes locked into his.
"So I want to know. Right now. Where are we going with all this? I believe in you, I want to trust you. But I need to understand. We have a team to finance, a payroll to manage. How do we do that if all our resources are going into charity?"
"Harlan said more than what I mentioned," Nash said.
Victoria froze.
"Not more than what you already know, don’t worry," he clarified, setting his pen down. "But enough for me to understand Hector’s plan." He folded his hands in front of him. "Now that they no longer have the girls, if they want to reach you, they won’t attack with hired muscle. That’s too crude, too traceable. They’re going to attack your image."
"My image?"
Nash nodded.
"Like in the Graves Anthem days. Apex is definitely going to circulate stuff about you, and if I’m right, it’ll be something like... the drama with Graves Anthem in the Upper League. That’s all they have. A cold, calculating woman who doped her players and fixed matches to dominate the league." He let the sentence hang for a moment. "They want the street to hate you as much as they hate you. Because the day they actually strike, they need no one to lift a finger for you."
Dahlia had stopped taking notes. She was staring at Nash, mouth slightly open.
"So here’s what we’re doing," he continued. "We’re not building a team under your name for accumulation. We’re building a myth."
He placed a finger on the Sector 4 file.
"Every business we buy, every rent we erase, every free shipment of medicine... everything is signed in *your* name. Not mine. Yours." He paused. "In six months, you won’t be the Blacklist manager the street tolerates because it’s afraid of her. You’ll be the one who reopened the Vasquez Street grocery store when no one else wanted to invest. The one who brought medicine when Sector 7 hospital shut down. The one who gave normal jobs to a hundred women off the street, the one who put a hundred thugs back on the right path."
"A saint," Dahlia murmured, suddenly understanding.
"An untouchable queen," Nash corrected, his eyes still fixed on Victoria. "The Queen of Nothing will become the Queen of the People. And the day Hector wants to strike, he won’t be attacking a gang that can be sacrificed quietly. He’ll be attacking the icon of the entire Underground. And this time, the whole Underground will rise to cover you. Not because they owe you something. Because they love you."
The silence this time lasted a long while.
Victoria didn’t move. She was looking at Nash, who had just moved every piece on the chessboard without anyone seeing him make a single gesture, even though she had been there from the beginning. Her lips parted slightly, searching for words, but nothing came out right away.
"You knew all that," she finally said, "and you let me get angry for ten minutes over grocery invoices."
"You needed to ask the question yourself." A slight, almost casual shrug. "Otherwise you would have felt like I was deciding everything behind your back."
She shook her head. God, he was annoying... but what kind of guy was this, always pulling the most far-fetched plans out of nowhere? She had decided to follow him from the start so she wouldn’t be caught off guard again, but this was even worse. She was feeling a lot of things, but it wasn’t irritation — rather a mix of relief and poorly hidden admiration, her voice becoming softer, almost low.
"I see... you’re turning every business we buy into a shield against Apex." She let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. "They wanted to make me a monster. You’re answering by making me a queen no one will dare touch."
"It’s the only armor that holds against Hector. Money, he can trace. Lawyers, he can buy. But the loyalty of the entire Underground..." Nash leaned slightly forward, his gaze never leaving hers. "That, he can’t buy or destroy with a phone call."
Dahlia, who still hadn’t reopened her notebook, was watching the scene with something close to wonder. She had known Victoria long enough to know she never yielded this quickly. It was crazy how far Nash had risen in her estimation.
"Double the orders, Dahlia," Victoria said, without taking her eyes off Nash. "All of them. The grocery stores, the medicine, the rents. Everything it takes. We’ll go into debt if we have to, but we’re going to keep buying."
Dahlia stood up, closed her notebook, and left without a word, leaving behind a silence different from the one that had started the morning.
Victoria stood up as well, slowly walked around the table until she was facing him. She stopped for a moment, looking at him with that particular light she had created and reserved only for him — a mix of tender exasperation and admiration she no longer even tried to hide.
"I overreacted," she admitted, her voice losing all its edge. "I hate getting angry at you. It doesn’t suit me."
"I know." Nash tilted his head slightly. "But goddamn, I love watching you freak out. That little crease between your eyebrows when you think I’m doing whatever with your money."
"It’s *our* money."
"Exactly."
She let out a breath that sounded like a laugh, shaking her head, before coming to sit astride his thighs, one arm around his neck.
"You know you could just brief me next time. Spare me the circus in front of Dahlia."
"Where would the fun be in that." His hands found her hips naturally. "I like watching you think out loud. You’re different when you’re trying to understand rather than control. More... you."
Victoria narrowed her eyes, but the gesture completely lacked bite behind that damn smile she could no longer suppress. Her fingers slowly climbed, gripping his collar.
"One day," she murmured against his mouth, "your little mystery game is going to drive me crazy."
"You seem to be enjoying the madness pretty well these days." He returned her kiss.
She laughed softly, forehead against his, the entire weight of the morning — the files, the numbers — dissolving behind this brand-new title he had just given her.
"Queen of the People, huh." She let the words roll on her tongue. "You really thought of everything."
"Always."
Outside, the artificial light kept turning, carrying the flow of time with it.
One week.
Seven days had been enough for Sector 4 to change face. The iron shutters, rusted for years, were rising one by one along Vasquez Street. The corner grocery store smelled of fresh bread again. An armory had given way to a pharmacy. Neon lights flickered above storefronts everyone thought were dead.
Blacklist’s money was flowing through the arteries of the neighborhood like new blood.
In front of the logistics offices, the line stretched over three blocks from dawn. Tired faces, marked by years of street horror. Former prostitutes in coats too thin. Dealers at the end of their rope, hands still trembling from withdrawal. Homeless people who hadn’t filled out a form in a decade.
The posted positions were simple — servers, cashiers, security agents, warehouse workers... but the salaries were not. Decent. Regular. With hours written in black and white, no empty promises.
A man with a shaved head and arms covered in gang tattoos signed his contract with trembling hands. He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, embarrassed, avoiding the recruiter’s gaze.
Farther away, a young man barely out of adolescence pulled out his phone, voice cracking with emotion.
"Mom. Mom, I got a real job."
He was crying as he said it.
It was around noon that the most important scene of this campaign broke out.
A young woman, her round belly stretched under a coat too light for the season, had just been hired as an accountant in one of the new neighborhood cafés. She was holding the employment letter between her fingers like a relic, and suddenly she collapsed.
Uncontrollable sobs. She was stroking her belly, apologizing over and over to the staff, her voice broken.
"I’m sorry — I’m sorry, I— I had no hope left. Nothing. I’m going to fight, I swear, I’ll work day and night if I have to, for him, I—"
A clear, icy voice cut through the noise.
"That will be impossible."
Everyone turned. At the top of the metal staircase, Victoria was coming down, a long black coat cutting sharply against the worn clothes around her. A murmur ran through the crowd. The boss. That’s her — the legend of the moment.
She approached, her heels echoing on the concrete, and the young woman instantly went pale, terrified at the idea of already having lost everything.
"Madam, I can, I swear I can keep up the pace, please don’t—"
"Look at yourself." Victoria crouched slightly, her sapphire eyes descending toward the prominent belly. Her voice, still sharp, lost a bit of its coldness. "How far along are you? Eight months? Nine?"
"Eight and a half."
"Then no. You will not work day and night. You will not work at all, for now."
The woman panicked.
"Please, Madam... I can do it. My health doesn’t matter, I swear I’ll be efficient, I won’t take breaks, I—"
But Victoria placed a firm hand on her shoulder, a gesture that cut any further discussion short.
"Your position is secured, rest assured. What I mean is that you will start after the birth, after your recovery. Not a day before." The woman’s breath cut short. Victoria continued. "Blacklist will cover all medical expenses. Your salary will arrive every month, starting today, whether you work or not. Consider it an investment in your future efficiency. Understood?"
The silence that followed was absolute, even among the onlookers.
The young woman brought her hands to her mouth, unable to speak, then threw herself forward, her tear-soaked face burying itself against Victoria’s chest. The director froze for a quarter of a second, arms slightly open, clearly unaccustomed to this kind of physical outpouring. But she didn’t step back.
She let the young woman cry against her torso, her gloved hand awkwardly stroking her back to comfort her.
Around them, the room exploded. Sustained applause rang out, followed by vibrant cheers.
"Thank you, Madam!" "Long live Madam!"
Praise poured from every side. People were conquered, crushed by the unexpected kindness of this woman they had believed cold. What a magnificent boss she was. How good she was for the people. You didn’t know if you wanted to fuck her or kiss her.
At the back of the room, a man discreetly raised his device.
The click almost went unnoticed in the noise. An independent journalist, opportunely positioned at the back of the room with his lens aimed, had just captured the perfect moment: the proud Victoria Blacklist, noble gaze, protecting with her body a weeping mother from the lower city. The image of the year.
This journalist was not there by chance.
Dahlia had paid him the day before, in cash, with precise instructions on the angle, the light, the exact moment to press the shutter. A self-fulfilling prophecy, financed in advance.
The next day, the holographic newspapers of the Underground displayed only one image.
THE QUEEN OF THE VOICELESS — VICTORIA GRAVES OPENS HER HEART TO SECTOR 4
The headline looped on every street screen, shared, commented, worshipped. Some people looked at it wondering if her kindness would reach their own neighborhoods.
This was no longer just a street movement. It was a true Victoria Mania taking over the city.
In his office at the top of the Spires, Hector looked at the same newspaper and threw it away just as quickly as he had opened it.
He remained motionless for a long moment, jaws clenched, his emerald eyes fixed on the empty space left by the vanished image.
"The Queen of the Voiceless," he repeated in a low voice, almost to himself.
He didn’t understand. How could a girl from the gutters, a bastard he had spent years breaking, transform into an icon that an entire population seemed ready to defend with their lives.
What was happening? What the fuck was happening?
His hand clenched on the edge of the desk. Seeing her rise like this, out of his reach, loved by people he despised, reignited that sick obsession he had for her with a violence he struggled to contain.
He had believed he held all the cards, but he was still missing one, and he knew in whose giant hands it was waiting to be found.