Private Welcome To The Family

[Darth Virelia]

"Criminal Connections."

Tags - Enric Hask

Lexrul's skyline wore its money like jewelry. Razor-thin spires cut the night into orderly columns of light, each window a ledger, each hover-lane a vein moving liquid capital. Down in the warrens between respectable towers—where air recyclers coughed and the holo-ads flickered in colors they never meant to—someone had shuttered a bill-exchange and sold the sign for scrap. That was where she waited.

Darth Virelia sat in the dark behind the teller's cage, the bars gleaming like a grin. Her armor hummed quietly, violet filaments pulsing under slick black plates as if some predator heartbeat lived beneath the lacquer. Neon bled through the front security grate and laid a false dawn across the dust.

The room smelled of old paper, ozone, rain that never quite made it down this far. She had left the counter drawers open and empty as a statement—no illusions here but hers. Above, a coin-sized camera nested in a vent was enough to read breath on glass; a second watched the alley mouth, disguised as a dead glowfly. A third was not a camera at all, just a sliver of mirrored phrik that told her where the narrowest sightlines ran and which beam would kill the first fool through the door if she flicked two fingers right.

She knew nothing about the one she was meeting. That was delicious.

An aspiring criminal mind. A mind. She found herself smiling at that, at the sheer audacity implied. Most who reached for her were supplicants or dreamers. He had sent no dossier, no calling card, no rumor fattened by braggarts in a bar. He had simply requested a time and offered a location that did not choose him back. It felt like a move from someone who understood the difference between theatre and ritual.

She had set the space as a thesis. A single chair in the center, not facing the door. A glass on the counter—empty, dry—placed precisely on a ring of old spill, the imprint of what had been. A briefcase sat under the chair, latched but unlocked, full of nothing except the echo of the first mistake a greedy man makes. Beside her, a steel-edged ledger lay open to a blank page. Tests hid in plain sight. There is no better mirror than opportunity.

Outside, sirens lilted through the rain. A freight lifter howled as it knifed upward. A thousand transactions closed with polite chimes in the buildings above, all of them thinking themselves the world. Virelia listened to the living static, to the wires singing low, to the tug of currents no ear could hear. Lexrul was about appetite with rules. She was interested in what happened when appetite wrote its own.

The time came and went, then circled back like a patient hawk. She waited. Her excitement was quiet, clean, almost ascetic. The unknown is the sharpest taste. It promised the only two outcomes worth having: a future or a lesson.

 

[Enric Hask]

He was late.

Hask made lateness a blade, never an accident. The city wanted to measure him in ticks and credits, wanted him punctual like a well-oiled lift, and so he denied it that satisfaction. By the time he came, the hour already felt bruised, overripe, as though it had waited too long on the vine. He stepped through the grate with rain clinging to his shoulders like a second coat, the Lexrul drizzle giving him the faint shine of something dredged up from the gutter and polished just enough to pass in the light.

His eyes tracked the room once, not hurried. Slow, deliberate. Like a buyer tasting wares. The empty glass, the single chair that demanded obedience, the ledger left open to absence. He smiled at the precision, the intent, the theatre of it all. A set piece, carefully staged, as much a performance as a trap.

First his gaze settled on her, then on the violet filaments crawling like veins across blackened armor, on the pulse of something alive under lacquer, a predator heartbeat made into costume.

"Nice stage," he said at last, voice pitched low and dry, as if he had swallowed gravel and found the taste amusing. "But you don't know yet if I'm audience, actor…or critic."

He didn't sit. Not yet. He let the silence stretch until it felt like a second participant in the room, taut as wire, a silence that had teeth. He watched her watch him, curious which of them would name it first. For Hask, delay was ritual. Patience was proof. And sometimes, the longest answer was the sharpest.

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Criminal Connections."

Tags - Enric Hask

The corner of her mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Approval, maybe.

"I like critics," she said, voice easy, unforced. "They prove the work exists."

She didn't tell him to sit again. She leaned one shoulder against the bars, palms open on the cool metal, posture loose in a way that still read like readiness. The violet threads in her armor pulsed once, slow as a thought. She tipped her head toward the door without looking.

"Your two outside can stop pretending to be gutter statues. They're fine. This block is mine for the hour."

A beat, respectful, letting him own the space he'd claimed by standing.

"I'm Virelia," she added, simple as a handshake. "Thanks for coming. And for being late on purpose. It says you don't bend to clocks you didn't set."

She stepped to the counter and nudged the dry glass toward the edge with a finger, then let it sit there on its ring like a coin on a thumbnail. A quiet click sounded somewhere above as one of the eyes in the vents blinked and went to passive. She made a point of the courtesy.

"Name?" she asked, looking at him rather than writing in the ledger. "The one you prefer tonight, not the one the city bought."

The rain ticked a soft code on the grate. She glanced at the single chair, then back to him.

"Stand if you like. Sitting makes some people feel staged." A wry beat. "You're not wrong about the room. It's theatre. But theatre is honest. Honest in the way that only some can act."

 

[Enric Hask]

"Darth Virelia," he corrected, voice flat, stripped of ceremony. "I'm well aware of who you are. It's my job."

She'd cleared the hour, dismissed his men with a flicker of assurance, but he heard the currents under the gesture. Control broadcast in subtleties, the kind that could fool lesser men into mistaking performance for generosity. He didn't mistake it.

He eyed the room's careful stagecraft. The glass nudged into place, the cameras shifting from predatory alertness into feigned dormancy. Everything a message. Everything meant to shape his posture, his tone, his conclusions.

He gave her nothing but dryness.

"An hour? I suppose that's long enough for you to tell me exactly what it is you require of me. Then we can discuss a price. Hell, if it's high enough I'll let you put me on retainer."

The words hung with the weight of a man who knew the market value of his own discretion. He wasn't impressed by shadows or titles. He'd seen admirals beg for his favor, senators curse his name, kings barter themselves into his debt. A Sith Lord playing at theatre didn't put him off-balance.

He remained standing. Let her interpret that however she wished.

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Criminal Connections."

Tags - Enric Hask

Her head tilted at the correction—no flicker of pride, no wound. A jeweler weighing a coin for authenticity.

"Virelia, then," she said evenly, almost conversational. "The 'Darth' is redundant in a room like this. We both already know what I am."

She didn't move closer, didn't lean on her presence like a cudgel. Instead she stayed where she was, half-shadowed behind the counter, posture loose, voice unhurried.

"Paid for quiet. That's all. What happens inside here doesn't leave our mouths."

Her fingers brushed the ledger but didn't turn the page. A pause. Violet filaments across her breastplate pulsed once, then stilled again, like a heartbeat settling.

"You've priced yourself high already." her tone was soft, respectful, a statement not a sneer. "That's good. It means you won't waste yourself on small work. I have no interest in small."

Her eyes found him, steady and violet-lit. No push, no intimidation. Just gravity.

"I don't require a sworn oath.." A faint shrug. "What I require is clarity. What you're after, what you enjoy sinking teeth into. Problems worth solving. Structures worth unmaking. Men like you don't move for credits alone. They move for appetite."

She let the words breathe, gave him silence to test them against his own weight.

"As for retainers—" she allowed herself a dry half-smile, a human one, quick as a flicker. "If you prove worthy, a larger contract can be arranged in the future."

The glass on the counter caught a drip of rain from a cracked ceiling seam. The sound was sharp in the hush, like punctuation.

"You think I'm playing theatre," she added, still mild. "Maybe I am. But I don't stage performances to impress. I stage them to see how someone moves when they know they're being watched. Most fold into the role. You haven't. That tells me something."

She shifted her weight against the bars, still utterly at ease.

"So. Let's not waste the hour. Tell me what you want to build. A network? An empire? A reputation no one forgets when they're dying?"

Her hand gestured slightly, an invitation, nothing more.

"And I'll tell you if I'm the right buyer."

 

[Enric Hask]

"Oh," he said at last, his voice quiet but clear, "I think the 'Darth' is quite relevant."

He dragged a chair out from the wall and spun it around, sitting backwards with the casualness of someone who had done this a thousand times before. His arms rested along the backrest. His eyes never left hers.

"It's the reason I agreed to this meeting."

For a moment he said nothing, just listened to the faint hum of the city outside, the hiss of rain against the roof. Then, almost conversationally, he added, "There's a fee for everything. Including my silence."

He tilted his head, as if testing her patience. Then he smiled a small, humorless smile.

"Clarity, eh? Well… let me tell you something. In a galaxy dominated by Empires and Republics, it ought to be time the little guy got a leg up. I've pulled myself up by the bootstraps. I deserve a seat at the table. I have a number of projects in mind. Some of them you probably won't like. Others, you'll find quite agreeable."

His fingers tapped lightly against the chair's back, slow, deliberate, a man thinking out loud.

"A network," he repeated, almost tasting the word. "Now that sounds interesting. I suppose that's what my syndicate will look like. Not something crude like the Black Sun. I don't need to run guns or slaves to feel important. Still, I'll admit the thought of being an Overlord or a Vigo has its appeal. If only as a means to an end."

He paused, studying her through the flicker of violet light. For a heartbeat, he looked almost reflective, like a man drifting somewhere else in memory.

"You know," he said softly, "when I was a boy, my father told me a table was just a place where you eat. But the older men, the real ones who understood power knew the truth and they taught me. The table was where you decided who got to eat, and who went hungry."

His eyes hardened again, the softness gone.

"Assuming you are the right buyer… give me a job. I'll do it. And the payment for that job is simple." He leaned forward slightly, voice dropping low. "Unimpeded passage through the Blackwall. Assuming that is something you can still arrange."

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Criminal Connections."

Tags - Enric Hask

"You're right," she said. "The title matters. It's a key, not a crown."

She didn't fill the space with threat or myth. Just facts.

"You want the Blackwall. I can open it—clean, quiet, and on a timetable that isn't yours. Windows, not doors. Lanes that shift. Keys that expire." A small nod. "I used to govern Polis Massa. Exile didn't break loyalty. My people are good at moving what shouldn't move. They do it without leaving fingerprints and without asking names."

She let the ledger stay blank.

"Payment is simple. Arms and armor to Malachor. Not junk. Factory-sealed, military grade. Power packs boxed separate. Plates and undersuits vacuum-wrapped. Off-books. No slaves, no spice, no 'bonus' cargo you forget to mention. You route it. You clean the trail. You hand it to my receivers on the basalt flats and you walk away."

A beat.

"In return: three guaranteed passages through the Blackwall for hulls you designate, plus one emergency burn I can call in or you can. Advance notice required. If the lanes twitch, I give you a replacement window. If a patrol sniffs, the corridor goes dark until it's safe again."

She tipped the empty glass back to center—neither invitation nor test now, just neatness.

"How it works stays vague. Medical consignments, calibration pallets, audit cooling—words that keep bureaucrats sleepy. A convoy you never see will carry your transponder through the fold. Your ship will look like it's riding beside them. It won't be." Her mouth curved, brief. "You won't meet my people. You'll meet drops."

Another pause, respectful.

"Terms. No ledgers that can be seized. No names you can be tortured into giving. If you skim or trace, the corridor closes and the table you're building gets sold for scrap. If you deliver clean, we talk retainer later—regular tonnage, better windows, deeper keys."

She let the rain fill a moment.

"You think in networks. Good. This is a seed node. You move steel and silence for me; I make sure the Blackwall feels porous when you need it. You keep the work elegant; I keep you off lists." Her eyes held his, steady. "You wanted clarity. That's clarity."

She pushed a small, matte coin across the counter—blank to sight, heavy to touch.

"First run is keyed to that token. You'll know when. You won't like how you know. That's the point."

A final, even nod.

"If you accept, take the coin and walk out on the minute. If not, leave it. Either way, the hour stays quiet."