MTLNOVEL Chapter 230: Private Jet Ride
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
The sounds of Darren's private jet, the Razor filled the sky's air. The jet cut through the clouds with the soundless grace of wealth engineered to perfection.
The Gulfstream 450 boasted of a sleek, instantly recognizable lines of the famous Gulfstream aircraft. It had a long, slender fuselage, gracefully swept wings, and distinctive T-tail, giving it a sense of speed and sophistication even while stationary.
Darren had painted it the color of steel, then inscribed his company's logo at its tail.
Inside, the cabin was all minimalist elegance — soft leather seats the color of aged whiskey, ambient lights glowing like melted silver along the trim, and a quiet jazz playing from the speakers.
Darren reclined in the main lounge, one ankle crossed over his knee. A tumbler of still water sat untouched on the armrest beside him, condensation gathering in slow tears.
His jacket was slung over a nearby chair, shirt sleeves rolled up. He looked like a man halfway between boardroom and vacation, but Rachel knew better. That calm, composed look of his wasn't rest. It was calculation.
Across from him, Rachel was curled into one side of the long, upholstered bench, knees pulled up and laptop balanced on a tray table. Her white button-down was rumpled from the long drive to the airstrip, her hair loosely tied back. She'd kicked off her heels the second they boarded.
"Do you really want me to believe you're not bothered about Adam Scotland?" she said. "I mean, the guy owned the most Bitcoins in history before you came along."
"I'm more interested in how he found out about what I was doing, not that copied it," Darren responded uninterestedly.
He smacked his lips and asked. "Have you noticed that it's been quiet from Richard Morrison and the others ever since I took his hospital branch?"
Rachel scoffed. "I mean... yeah. Does that bother you?"
"It could mean many things. Silence is pleasing but also worrisome. They could be planning something."
"Or maybe they've given up."
"Yeah. That could also be a possibility."
Rachel looked at him, gazing at that quiet, thoughtful expression on his face, then smiled.
"You ever think about how insane this is?" she asked, eyes turning to her screen but the smile in her voice unmistakable. "Most people take trips to Berlin for beer and photos of old walls. Us? We're here chasing the ghost of a dead crypto hoarder across continents."
Darren raised an eyebrow. "Are you complaining?"
She looked up, lips twitching. "I'm just saying, there's no such thing as a normal work week in this job."
"No one working with me gets normal," he said. "You signed that away with the NDA."
Rachel snorted. "That NDA could've been the length of a Bible and I'd still have signed it." She paused, then added, "For the plane alone."
Darren couldn't defeat the smile that braced his face. He looked away. "Speaking of which... You never did tell me how you were able to get the Trendteller application to go through."
Rachel's eyes widened as her cheeks turned red. "Well, I did my job as your representative and secretary, and I made Tyler Mooney sign the application."
Darren raised a brow. "Yeah. But what exactly did you do, though."
Rachel pouted. "Stop worrying! It's either you trust me or not. I got it done and I'm certain I got Tyler out of our backs for the foreseeable future."
Darren chuckled. "Is that so?"
He looked away, and sighed, agreeing that there was no reason to keep asking. "So. NakamuraGhost."
Rachel tapped the mousepad of her laptop. The screen cast faint blue light against her face as she pulled up a file — a stitched-together mess of archives, darknet threads, and offline storage logs she'd been scrubbing for two days straight.
"For now, his real name is still unknown," she began, voice shifting into her briefing tone. "His earliest appearance on the dark web goes back to 2009. Started as a vendor on SilkChain under the name 'Kurobit.' Sold cold storage drives preloaded with Bitcoin."
"He was really early. But let me guess," Darren said, leaning forward slightly. "He eventually stopped selling. Started hoarding."
Rachel nodded. "Exactly. He shifted to privacy protocol development, then ghosted completely in 2010. Last IP trace puts him in Romania. But… the breakthrough came last week." She flipped the screen toward him.
There, in grainy resolution, was a street cam still. A crash. Twisted metal. Headlights dead. Firefighters swarming.
"His confirmed death," she said. "From the looks of it, and by that I mean, the details available to me, it was a real accident. Not a setup. He used the same alias to rent the car. The same ID trail used to run an encrypted node that — get this — held a 0.0001 BTC heartbeat ping to a legacy wallet cluster."
Darren's expression didn't change, but his fingers tapped once against the table — a subtle tell of interest.
"I have a thought... But, Rach. You've not told me what your plan is?" he asked.
Rachel sat straighter. "We land in Berlin. First stop: an old cybercafé NakamuraGhost was seen entering at least three times in 2011. They used to let regulars leave data drives there — dumb practice, but it was common for some places back then. No camera records survived, but an archive log shows a terminal under his alias."
Darren leaned back again, looking up at the cabin ceiling like it might draw a map for him. "Any idea what we're walking into?"
Rachel's eyes narrowed, her voice softening. "It's Berlin. These kinds of places attract a different kind of loyal. You don't go digging in the bones of the darknet without stirring something."
He glanced at her. "That a warning?"
She gave a small, almost sheepish shrug. "A reminder."
For a few seconds, the jet hummed in quiet luxury, the distant sound of wind only a murmur against the reinforced hull. Then, Rachel closed her laptop, the magnetic click of the lid shutting marking a shift in tone.
"I know we joke a lot," she said, more quietly now. "But this… this could get dangerous. You know that, right?"
Darren turned his head toward her, expression unreadable. Then he simply said, "It always was."
There wasn't bravado in his voice. No drama. Just fact.
Rachel nodded. "Still," she said, smile returning, though thinner, "I'd rather be on the Razor with you than chasing dead hackers through Europe with anyone else."
Darren smirked, eyes flicking to the built-in mini-bar at the side. "In that case, after Berlin… drinks are on me."
"Don't make promises like that, sir. I'm always going to come collect."
Darren scoffed.
They sat in companionable silence for a while after that, the sky outside shifting from copper dusk to the deep navy of approaching night. Somewhere far ahead, Berlin waited. And somewhere in Berlin, the first breadcrumb of a digital ghost and his forgotten empire lay waiting.
Not long after, the hostess announced that they had arrived.