Cold Blooded

In the high-stakes world of asset management, liquidity is power, loyalty is a liability, and betrayal runs cold. Ethan Vance is a financial prodigy who calculates market risk with the detached precision of an advanced algorithm. Alongside his older brother, Marcus, he has built their family's boutique investment firm into an untouchable empire. But on a freezing winter night, Ethan uncovers a slow-bleeding wound within the system: a series of micro-fractional diversions draining their father's legacy trust into unmapped offshore shell companies. Before Ethan can intercept the digital theft, Marcus springs a meticulously planned trap. In a single night, Ethan's administrative security tokens are revoked, his personal bank accounts are frozen, and a pre-packaged federal fraud warrant is issued in his name. According to the unyielding compliance grid, Ethan is no longer the protector of the firm—he is a rogue operator running from the law. Forced to flee into a blinding city whiteout, Ethan manages to extract the raw, unedited hardware metadata on an encrypted drive. With a private security detail tracing his heat signature and the digital network systematically locking him out, Ethan's survival depends on his ability to operate entirely off the grid. From the dark, flooded subway tunnels beneath the streets to a final, high-stakes showdown in a frozen industrial train yard, Ethan must deploy every technical fail-safe he knows to expose the truth. Cold Blooded is a gripping, fast-paced psychological and tech-thriller by Muhammad Awais. A masterfully crafted tale of fractured brotherhood, systemic isolation, and terminal exposure, this novel explores the terrifying speed at which a digital life can be erased—and the absolute power of an uncompromised truth.