Chapter 82: Different circles

FAILED.

Tom’s jaw clenched as he took in the word. He looked again at the security man before walking back to the car with his anger held tight in his chest.

The glass front of Goldy Realty Group still rose behind him, unchanged and uninterested, as if the morning had not just closed a door in his face. He got into the driver’s seat, shut the door harder than necessary, and for a second only sat there with his hands locked around the wheel.

Then the temper broke through. He punched the steering wheel once, sharp enough for the pain to flash up his knuckles.

"So that’s it?" he asked the empty car. "One failed entrance and I’m a hundred thousand down?"

[Debt applied,] the System replied.[Effective immediately.]

Tom let out a short, humorless breath and hit the wheel again. "Of course it is." He flexed his sore fingers. "So when do you expect me to repay that? Before lunch?" he asked sarcastically, yet somehow expecting a reasonable deadline.

[As soon as possible would be wise. Probably, before the end of the day.]

He closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the seat. Had it been he hadn’t purchased those suits, he wouldn’t have had any problem paying the debt, knowing he would have enough money left. If he settled the penalty now, what remained would be thin enough to sting every time he looked at it.

The System did not wait long for him to finish the calculation.

[Host will make money again.] A slight pause, then lighter: [However, that is not the real problem here, Host. The mission repeats tomorrow. Use the rest of today properly. Watch the building. Study how people get in and come back prepared tomorrow.]

Tom opened his eyes and just stared ahead through the windscreen . "That’s still not a proper tip, you know." he scrunched up his nose.

[That isn’t anything less than a proper tip, Host.] The system replied.

Tom huffed in disappointment. Then he remained parked there, fixing his attention on the stream of people the building accepted without friction. Their badges were clipped where they could be seen, that combined with their clean, corporate posture. Men and women who crossed the security line as if the place had been built around their schedules. Tom watched them with the hard focus of a man who now understood that a good suit was only half a key.

Then a knock sounded against the driver’s window.

Tom turned his head.

A man in casual clothes stood outside, leaning in just enough. His tone, when he spoke, was mild in a way that felt wrong but unfortunately, Tom didn’t get the hint.

"Hello."

"Hi...how may I help- ?" Before Tom could answer properly, the passenger door opened. A second man slid into the seat beside him with a smooth fast speed that looked rehearsed. There was no conversation after that.

The first man pulled the driver’s door wider while the second shoved Tom hard toward the middle. When Tom resisted, a fist drove into his gut and emptied the air from his lungs. Pain folded him forward. Hands dragged him over the seat, shoved him into the back, and the car was already moving before he fully recovered his breath.

"What the hell is going on?" Tom forced out.

"Who are you guys?"

Neither man answered.

The driver took the road like it owed him nothing. He shot out of the parking space, cut into traffic without waiting for a full opening, and forced a white sedan to brake hard behind them. The horn blared. The driver ignored it and accelerated again, swinging into the next lane so sharply that Tom was thrown sideways against the door.

Ahead, a delivery van occupied the center of the road. The man did not slow down. He overtook from the outside, squeezed through a gap that barely existed, and for one stretched second the side mirror nearly clipped the van’s bodywork before the Mercedes tore free and surged forward again.

Tom’s stomach clenched. He tried to sit up and got slammed back into the seat when the driver braked late for a light that had already turned red, then ignored it completely and pushed through the junction. Another horn. Another near miss. The man behind the wheel changed lanes again, aggressive and exact, as if frightening the passengers was part of the job rather than a side effect.

Then the second man climbed into the back with him.

Tom tried to straighten, still protecting his stomach, and saw the blade only when it was already at work. The man hooked the front of the new suit jacket and cut upward. The fabric split with a rough, ugly sound. The tie followed. Then the shirt. Each piece of the corporate image Tom had bought that morning was opened up and dragged off him with impatient hands, leaving the ruined clothes in a mess around the seat.

"Stay away from circles you don’t belong in," the man said, almost conversationally, as he stripped him down to his underwear. "Next time, remember how easy this was."

No names, no explanations. Just the message, delivered while the car continued its punishing run through the city. Outside the tinted windows, traffic kept breaking around them as the driver overtook one more vehicle on the inside and forced yet another motorist to give way with a hard, angry blast of horn.

Tom’s pulse hammered in his throat. The humiliation sat heavier than the bruise forming under his ribs. He had walked out of that mall looking like a man preparing to enter a serious building. Now he was half-naked in the back of his own car while two strangers used the morning to remind him how quickly that image could be taken apart.

After several long minutes, the Mercedes finally slowed.

They had taken him to a busy roadside stretch, not isolated, not hidden, and deliberately so. Morning traffic continued around them.

A second vehicle was already waiting nearby, plain and ready. The men dragged Tom out of the car in his underwear and put him on his feet long enough for the exposure to register fully. One of them held up the car key, turned toward the roadside bush, and threw it hard into the bush. Then they left him there.

Doors slammed. The waiting vehicle pulled away. Within seconds, both men were gone.

Tom stood by the roadside in nothing but his underwear, the morning air slapping on his naked body harshly, not bothering to show any mercy on him while the city moved past as if a man left half-stripped in public was only another inconvenience at the edge of the road.

The anger from the failed mission had not disappeared and now this?

Tom gritted his teeth so hard he felt the pain.