The rain didn’t fall it stabbed. Cold, sharp, merciless. Just like today. Aiden Cross stood outside the glass tower of Huxley & Marrs Global Finance, shirt soaked, tie loosened like a noose around his neck. The echo of the security guard’s laughter still rang in his ears.“Don’t come back, loser. You’re fired, not furloughed.” Fired. On a Wednesday. In front of the entire floor.Not for incompetence. Not even for a mistake. Just… replaced. By the senior partner’s golf buddy’s nephew. “Nepotism,” they called it. Aiden called it betrayal.Clutching the cardboard box of his desk belongings half-used pens, a photo of his late parents, and a cracked mug that read “World’s Most Broke Genius” he took slow steps down the street, the city’s chaos blurring behind streaks of water and heartbreak.He checked his phone. 5%. No calls. No texts. No one. Except a single message, sent thirty minutes ago. Lena: “Don’t bother coming to dinner. I can’t be with someone who’s going nowhere.” Short. Surgica

The jet touched down on a private airstrip carved into the side of a mountain in Switzerland. No customs. No delays. Just men in black waiting with silent precision.Aiden stepped out onto the tarmac and was immediately enveloped in crisp alpine air. The snowcapped peaks stretched across the horizon like sleeping gods. Below, nestled into the cliffs like a secret, was Vallion Estate One a fortress disguised as a palace.Veylor appeared beside him, speaking with low reverence. “This was Mr. Vallion’s stronghold. It is now yours.” Aiden barely registered the words. His mind still swirled from the dossier. The power he now held wasn’t abstract anymore. It was real. Living. Dangerous.He was escorted into a luxury vehicle that made limousines look like toys. The road to the mansion was narrow and winding, guarded by drone surveillance and biometric checkpoints. At every turn, the empire revealed itself in pieces hints of a world invisible to most. The real world, run not by presidents or

The silence between them stretched like a wire ready to snap. Aiden stood on one side of the reinforced glass wall. Jacen his twin, his mirror twisted by secrets sat cuffed to the table on the other. Eyes locked. Not a word spoken. But everything screamed between them. Same jawline. Same sharp cheekbones. But Jacen’s eyes were colder. Harsher. Like they'd never known softness. Like they were carved in steel.Maera stood beside Aiden. “We’ve confirmed it. He’s your genetic match same bloodline, near-identical DNA.” Aiden’s voice was low. “Where the hell has he been all this time?” Maera didn’t answer. Because she didn’t know. And Jacen… he was finally ready to speak.They moved him to a high-security chamber within the estate glass walls, biometric locks, armed guards at every entrance. Aiden entered alone. Jacen didn’t rise. Just watched him with quiet interest, like studying a chess piece that had moved too soon. “I thought you’d be taller,” he said.Aiden crossed his arms. “I though

Smoke curled through the stone corridors like a living thing. Emergency sirens wailed. The walls of Vallion Estate One pulsed red with warning lights as sealed compartments began to detonate from within surgical, targeted, merciless. This wasn’t an invasion. It was an execution.Aiden sprinted through the northern corridor with Maera, Veylor, and two elite operatives at his back. Every second, more systems dropped off the grid. They were being dismantled from the inside. “Who breached the firewall?” Aiden shouted. Maera was already on her comms. “It wasn’t hacked. It was accessed. Someone used internal clearance.”Aiden’s blood ran cold. Jacen’s warning echoed in his head: “There’s a mole inside your walls.” As they reached the last vault exit, Veylor slammed a metal panel open and activated the Shadowline Protocol a hidden escape route used only once before, when Julian Vallion disappeared from the world. A reinforced floor panel slid aside, revealing a cylindrical shaft lined with m

Vallion Safehouse – Geneva Sector, 6:42 A.M. Rain bled down the reinforced glass walls as Aiden stared at the Codex display. Every channel, every platform, every screen around the world now bore the same headline: "Global Betrayal: Vallion Heir Exposed as Mastermind Behind Collapse Plot."The fabricated footage was damning. Aiden’s face. His voice. A confession he never gave. Maera switched off the screen. “We underestimated them. Again.” “No,” Aiden said quietly. “I underestimated her.” Lucienne. His childhood protector. His father’s secret weapon. The one person who knew both his weaknesses and how to weaponize them.Now a pawn of the Circle. Or worse... not a pawn at all. Across the room, Silas was already digging through the decrypted contents of Erebus’s remaining memory files. He looked different now. Sharper. Like a caged beast back in its natural element. “These aren’t just war schematics,” Silas muttered. “They're blueprints. Civilization redesigns. Political overhauls. Curre