Phong went to Hà Nội Corner alone first.
He did not tell the others where he was going, only that he needed to go see Long before the day got any louder. After Daniel Harlan's death, New York had gone wrong in that specific way only rich people's fear could make a city wrong. The streets still looked normal. The traffic still moved. The coffee shops still opened. But at the top of everything—behind glass towers, in boardrooms, penthouses, and secured private lounges—panic had set in, and the pressure of it filtered down even to people who had no words for what they were sensing.
A billionaire had been killed in the dungeon.
Not by market collapse, not by scandal, not by a car accident or a plane dropping out of the sky.
Killed. Ambushed. Torn apart inside the dungeon.
And for the first time since the dungeon had appeared, the class that believed itself untouchable had been forced to look at a truth it had spent centuries avoiding: wealth did not make a person less mortal. It only changed how many walls were built before death reached them.
Hà Nội Corner was warm when Phong stepped in.
Warm in the real way, not the expensive one. The windows were fogged slightly near the kitchen. The smell of coffee held under the sweetness of condensed milk and freshly baked Vogel's breads. Someone had put on music low enough that it did not interrupt thought. Long stood behind the counter polishing cups that had already been polished twice that morning and looked up the second Phong entered.
He did not ask why Phong was there, as he had heard the news. Hard not to when someone lived in New York. He only looked at him for one quiet beat, then nodded toward the back.
"I kept them ready."
That was all he said.
Phong followed him into the small storage room behind the counter, past sacks of beans and stacked boxes of supplies, past shelves full of clean cups and old receipts and the bits and pieces that made a business run. Long bent down, opened a lower cabinet, and took out two framed photographs wrapped carefully in cloth.
For a second, Phong did not move.
Because he knew what they were. He had ordered them two years ago.
Back when his aunt and uncle had been killed.
Back when his grief had still felt too raw to touch with bare hands. He had gone to a carpenter then, voice flat and face numb, and asked for the frames to be made properly. Dark wood, clean corners, something worthy of a family altar.
And when the carpenter delivered them, Phong had looked at the polished photographs of his aunt and uncle and realized he could not take them home.
Not yet.
Not before revenge.
Not before he had done something to deserve the right to place them in a place of honor.
Not before he felt he had earned the right to put them in a place of honor without drowning in the shame of still breathing when they were not.
So he left the frames at Hà Nội Corner. Long had understood without needing the explanation spoken out loud.
And now, two years later, he handed them back exactly as if they had only been waiting a week. The wood was still polished, the glass was spotless. No dust had been allowed to settle on them. Long had kept them clean with the same care Phong imagined some people reserved for old temple statues.
Phong took the frames with both hands.
His aunt smiled from one, warm and sharp-eyed, every bit the woman who had scolded him for not eating enough and then forced seconds onto his plate herself.
His uncle stood in the other, awkward around cameras even then, trying not to smile too big and failing.
Phong lowered his eyes.
Long said nothing.
That was why Phong loved him.
He did not ask whether it was done. Did not ask whether Daniel Harlan's death had changed anything. Did not ask whether Phong felt better now either. He only stepped back and let Phong stand there with the dead.
After a long while, Phong said softly, "Thanks."
Long nodded once.
"Thanking me make you sound like a stranger. Take them home."
Phong let out one shallow breath that might have been agreement and might have been pain.
"I will."
He left the pictures at Dominic's house, rather than one of his camp.
His aunt and uncle had distrusted the dungeon, even before it took everything from them. They would never have wanted their altar set up inside its mouth. So Phong entrusted the frames to Dominic, and Dominic—silent for once, and careful in the hands that could break men—helped him arrange them in a clean place inside the house.
The altar itself was simple.
Too simple for what they deserved, Phong thought.
The framed pictures, a dish for offerings, a cup for water, space for incense, and flower vases.
When he lit the joss sticks, his hands shook only once.
The first threads of smoke curled upward in slow gray lines.
Phong knelt.
For a moment, he could not speak.
Then, very quietly, with Alex standing behind him and Dominic elsewhere in the house pretending not to listen, he bowed his head and said, "I'm sorry it took me this long to offer you incense, aunty, uncle."
His throat tightened.
"But I did it."
That was all.
He cried silently.
Not the kind of crying that broke into noise. The kind that slipped out anyway after a body had held too much for too long. His shoulders shook once, then twice. He kept his head bowed and let the tears fall without wiping them away.
Alex came and knelt beside him. She held her own joss sticks carefully, awkwardly at first, then more surely once Phong adjusted her hands. She bowed too.
"I should learn Vietnamese family customs now," she said softly, "if we're engaged."
Her voice had no joke in it.
Only steadiness.
Only the quiet seriousness she reserved for the things that mattered most.
Phong looked at her through blurred eyes and felt his chest ache in a different way.
He showed her how to place the incense. How to bow again. How to let silence do part of the speaking.
And in that moment, with smoke rising before the photographs of his aunt and uncle and Alex kneeling beside him without needing to be asked twice, something inside him loosened.
Not healed, not fully. But loosened.
Later, they went to the graves.
It was the first time Phong had visited them since the funeral.
That truth sat in him like rust.
The cemetery was quieter than the city, and cleaner in the way places of the dead often were—trimmed grass, fixed stones, paths kept neat by workers who understood tidiness was one of the only kindnesses left for those who came to kneel.
Phong found the graves without getting lost.
That hurt too.
He bowed.
Then he cleaned them with Alex beside him.
She did not ask what to do. She followed his lead and handed him what he needed. Water, cloth, flowers. And her own silence, too. Together they wiped away dust, dead leaves, and the little neglect that time laid over everything if no one fought it off.
When they were done, they bowed again. Then they left.
The city outside had gone more visibly wrong by then.
Phones everywhere showing tight faces in expensive clothes. Security men where there had not been security men a week ago.
The pressure of elite panic had thickened enough that even ordinary people felt it, though most could not explain why. New York did not look like it was collapsing. But it did look like it was struggling to hold its own breath.
The billionaires were in disarray.
Daniel Harlan's death had not only broken a family. It had destabilized an ecosystem. Shareholders, investors, corporate alliances, political favors. And most important of all, it had broken the understandings among the very rich that the dungeon, brutal as it might, still ultimately belonged to men like them if enough lawyers and guns were pointed in the right direction.
Now one of their own had died screaming on a hill and no amount of market influence could smooth that into something safe.
Josh had taken over family business, at least publicly.
Kitahara had come to the US to steady the ship and keep the shareholders from jumping overboard. On financial channels and closed investor boards, the speculation had already gone rabid. Would Springwell survive? Would Josh lead or flail? Would the Kurosaki absorb the Harlan? Would the stable spot project continue? Would the government intervene? Would the dungeon now be classified as an assassination-risk environment for executives?
Phong saw all of it in the faces of passing suits.
Then the men stopped them.
There were four of them. Not bodyguards in full formal black, but not street punks either. Worst. They were men who knew the taste of blood, black hands of the Kurosaki's Yakuza.
They stepped into the sidewalk space ahead of Phong and Alex with just enough confidence to imply this was not a request.
Alex moved in front of him instantly.
Her shoulders squared, her eyes went hard. Whatever patience she had offered the world at her aunt and uncle in law graves was gone now. What remained was a lioness protecting what's hers, and daring the world to take her on.
The men noticed. And, for all their assignment, they hesitated.
That was when someone across the street called out.
"Step aside, you buffoons. Your life worth more for the Kurosaki than simple fodder to throw at Alexandra Vogel."
A black car waited at the curb.
The window had already come down.
Kurosaki Kitahara sat inside.
Phong knew at once who she was.
Josh had her eyes, though his were softer in the wrong places and harder in the petty ones. Kitahara's face carried the precision of a woman who had spent too much of her life being watched and had long ago learned how to weaponize composure. Her hair was immaculate, her clothes understated in the way true wealth preferred. Beside her, the inside of the car looked like another world.
She looked at Phong first.
Then Alex.
Then back to Phong.
"I have no proof," she said, voice calm enough to be colder than anger, "that you were behind Daniel's death."
Phong gave her nothing.
Kitahara continued.
"But I will operate as if you were."
That landed cleanly.
Neither accusation, nor courtroom game. No public drama either.
It was a private statement of how she would move from this point onward.
Phong still said nothing.
"I have no intention," she said, "of avenging Daniel if that's what worry you."
That made Alex's eyes narrow slightly.
Kitahara noticed, but did not care.
"He was never my concern in that way. But if you aim for Josh..." Her gaze sharpened. "I will step in."
That was the first true emotion she had shown.
Phong shrugged lightly, and because he had spent too long around people who lied with polished voices, he matched her calm instead of challenging it.
"I had nothing to do with Daniel's death," he said.
That was technically true enough, depending on which god counted planning as murder and which god only counted presence.
Kitahara did not react.
Phong went on.
"So if Josh dies next in the dungeon, that would be occupational hazard."
Alex looked at him sideways for a second. Only a second.
"He should think about that," Phong said, "if he intends to keep being a diver."
Kitahara's gaze held on him.
Phong did not look away.
Then, because he could not quite stop himself, and because the pain from seeing his aunt and uncle graves was still fresh, Phong did something less than optimal, he added one more thing.
"You should keep him a CEO and nothing more. That would be more productive to your goal of keeping him safe."
For the first time, something unreadable flickered in Kitahara's face.
Not quite anger. Not quite amusement, either. Certainly not approval.
She studied him for a few seconds in silence that felt longer than it was. Then she gave the smallest gesture and the men on the sidewalk stepped back.
"Go," she said.
So they did.
Alex stayed tense until the car had disappeared into traffic. Phong remained quiet for another full block.
Finally, Alex asked, "What do you think she wanted."
Phong answered honestly.
"I don't know."
And that bothered him. Not because he feared her more than Daniel, but because women like Kitahara did not speak without purpose, and purpose unreadable was often more dangerous than open hatred.
Still, she had not promised revenge.
Only intervention, only Josh. That was certainly not enough, but at least it was something.
They kept walking through a city that still had not decided how to metabolize the death of a billionaire. Around them, ordinary people moved through the day with half-heard fragments of the story. In towers above, the rich were learning fear in a language they had always outsourced.
Phong walked beside Alex with incense smoke still in his memory, his aunt and uncle finally honored, Daniel Harlan dead, and Josh now standing alone in the place of sons expected to become fathers before they were ready.
He did not feel lighter. Not exactly.
But he did feel something had closed.
And something else had opened.
An Asian family altar looked something like this:
From left to right was my grandma, my great grandma, and my grandpa
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