Diamond District

Somebody planned this district on purpose, which makes it the odd one out. In the years after the harbor boomed, city planners carved out a business core meant to attract international trade, laid it out in a clean grid, and populated it with glass towers that still catch the light strangely at dusk. The plan mostly worked. It just didn't work out quite the way the planners pictured — the offices filled, the contracts got signed, but the people who actually decided which permit cleared first were rarely the names on the building.

Violence barely shows its face here, which is precisely what makes it dangerous the moment it finally does. Mira Arden built her power the unglamorous way, through security contracts — her firm badges nearly every tower in the district, which means she knows who enters which building and when, a kind of leverage that never needs to raise its voice. Cassian Korda works the other angle, routing money through consulting structures so layered his own accountants sometimes lose track of them. Between the two, almost nothing moves through Diamond District without one of them noticing.

Their business happens in boardrooms and over long lunches, not on street corners, but losing a deal here can end a career in one afternoon. No blood, no headlines — just a name quietly removed from a list.

New arrivals sometimes assume this is the safe district, since nobody's visibly carrying a weapon. That assumption is usually the last mistake they make before someone teaches them otherwise.