Chapter 8: The Executioner Returns
Sebastian was never supposed to be just a butler.
He was born into the main bloodline of the Selene household—the same family that had served the Rowlands for generations. Led by the head maid, with the name Selene. But in every generation, a fighter emerged. A guardian. A blade in human skin.
In his time, that blade had been him.
His childhood was a blood-slick blur of precision, pain, and ruthless perfection. He had been trained in every assassination technique the Rowlands had ever acquired—some stolen, others bought in the dark, and a few etched in ancient, dying tongues.
He didn't just learn them. He mastered them.
And when he came of age, Ken Rowland sent him on missions that rewrote the underworld's food chain. Warlords. Arms dealers. Corrupt dynasties. If they so much as looked at the Rowlands the wrong way—Sebastian erased them. Alone.
They called him Sebastian, the Executioner.
His name traveled faster than his kills. His work was surgical. Swift. Devastating. It didn't take long before he built his own faction—the Eastern Syndicate—an elite shadow unit feared across continents. They answered only to him. But he answered to only one man: Ken Rowland.
Then came Selene.
The moment his baby sister was born, the next head of the family bearing the name, Selene, he saw the same flame—the same unnatural strength and instinct for battle. But unlike him, she laughed at flowers and hummed while cleaning blood off her knives. She was light and shadow in one.
And Sebastian made a vow.
He would step back. Retire his title. Trade bloodshed for black suits. And guard Ken Rowland's household from the shadows—not as an assassin, but as a butler, and help raise and train his sister. At least on the surface. He really was trying to tame her.
He trained a successor to lead the Eastern Syndicate in his stead. He handed over control. But they all knew—he was still the Executioner. The Syndicate still bowed to him.
Which was why, when a man infiltrated the Rowland villa on his watch…
He almost blew his top.
It wasn't just infiltration—it was evasion. The man escaped. From him. From his people.
The only one who noticed him… was the girl.
The child.
Mia.
Five years old. Barefoot. Barely spoke. But her senses were… unnatural. She had moved like vapor. Not even air was displaced around her. The only reason he ever sensed her presence was because she allowed it—through those gentle, rhythmic taps of her feet on the marble floors, as if announcing that she was there on purpose.
Pacing the dim control room, in deep thought.
He stopped cold. Of course, the technique, silent ghoul, that must be it!
A high-level, controversial infiltration method. Deemed too dangerous to teach. It allowed the user to move in harmony with their surroundings—to sustain presence without detection. But even mastering it slightly wrong could leave one permanently crippled.
And Mia used it like second nature.
Then came the memory of the fleeing man. Sloppier. Messier. But the same foundation.
"He used a knockoff," Sebastian growled. Hers is perfect.
Which meant someone had taught her… or worse, conditioned her since birth.
Wait, could she be from…, No, I heard they vanished a long time ago, but now's not the time.
His blood surged.
No one infiltrated Ken's house. Not on his watch. And no one, no one, escaped Sebastian twice.
He sank into his surveillance chair, fingers flying across the holographic console. Every known infiltrator. Every master of presence suppression. Every ghost the Syndicate had ever flagged.
Names filtered in by the hundreds.
"Too loud… too tall… kills for attention… wrong profile…"
He trimmed them down. One after another. Until he hit thirty-seven viable targets. Then nine. Then two.
And then…
John Masek.
Not much on paper. But he moved like smoke. No known residence. Changed names like others changed socks.
One problem, he was supposed to be dead.
"Nobody dies without my permission," Sebastian whispered. He kept digging.
It took thirty minutes of layered tracing, code breaking, and unregistered fund mapping.
And then he found it.
Not Nora directly. Too careful. But a shell company. Feeding into another. Then another. Then finally—
Her signature.
Nora Kensington had hired John Masek. He was her shadow.
The same man who had entered his villa. Slipped past his elite. And was only spotted by a barefoot child.
His pulse quickened. Not in anger. Not in fear.
Excitement.
It had been years since the hunt called to him like this.
He stood. Straightened his gloves. Adjusted his cuffs. And smiled for the first time in a decade.
"You're good, John."
"Let's see if you're better than me."
The Executioner was done resting.
Scene: No Words, Just War
John Masek was a phantom.
He had lived through six identities, three faked deaths, and more than one successful disappearance from global intelligence networks. Even the Eastern Syndicate had listed him as a myth, a "possible fabrication" in their database.
But tonight…
He felt watched.
Not the kind of watching he was used to—the sloppy kind from rent-a-cops or intel ops with caffeine shakes. No, this was colder. Tighter. Like the breath of death itself sat at the base of his neck.
He was good at disappearing. But Sebastian?
Sebastian was the kind who erased ghosts.
John moved through the old tunnels beneath the abandoned metro system—his personal fallback base, buried beneath six layers of city rot. As always, he checked the pressure pads, sensors, and trip wires. Clean.
Except tonight… There was something different.
In the middle of the rusted platform, a box sat on a plastic chair.
Unmarked. Untouched. Waiting.
His muscles coiled tight. No tripwire. No pressure plate. Not even a heat signature on the box.
It wasn't a bomb.
It was a message.
John approached slowly. He'd learned to trust instincts over tech a long time ago.
The box was simple. Inside, a single black cloth.
And wrapped in it—three things.
A single white glove.
A broken pressure sensor—one of his own, pulled from the hallway near the Rowland estate.
And a photo.
The photo was printed on glossy paper. High resolution.
A frame from a surveillance feed.
It showed John, mid-sprint, captured in perfect clarity just as he leapt over the estate's eastern wall.
The angle was impossible.
He had checked for cameras. There weren't any.
This was personal surveillance.
Sebastian had been watching in person.
Underneath the photo, in neat, handwritten ink:
"You dropped by and left without letting me serve you tea."
That was it.
No signature. No blood. No flashy theatrics.
But John's throat tightened. Because of that white glove?
It was the Executioner's trademark.
Sebastian never left his gloves behind.
Unless it meant you were already dead, and just hadn't realized it yet.
John backed away slowly, heart pounding, instincts on fire. The message was clear.
He had entered the Executioner's territory, he was now the mouse in the cat and mouse game. Now that Sebastian found him, he wouldn't let him go.
Next time?
He wouldn't get a warning.