Nathan sat alone in his study, the desk littered with drafts of forged legal documents. His hand trembled slightly as he placed his signature on the last page. The papers looked flawless with watermarks, signatures, corporate seals—but Nathan knew they were a gamble. A desperate play to buy time, to face Liam on his own terms.He leaned back in the leather chair and rubbed his eyes. “Still awake?” Cassandra’s soft voice came from the doorway.Nathan raised his head. She stepped into the study, wrapped in a silk robe.“You should be resting,” he murmured.“I can’t,” she said, her tone laced with emotion. “Not while you’re planning to walk into a trap. And not while Mr. Hayes is—” she stopped herself, lowering her gaze. “Nathan, are you absolutely sure about this?”Nathan glanced at the forged documents, then back at her. “It’s the only way. If I refuse, Liam will tighten his grip. If I comply too easily, he wins everything. This… this buys us time.”Cassandra approached, pulling out a

The warehouse thundered with gunfire. The air was filled with plumes of smoke, stinging eyes and choking lungs as Liam’s men, positioned on fences and rooftops, fired down ruthlessly. Nathan crouched low, one arm braced protectively around Cassandra as bullets ricocheted off metal crates nearby. His heart pounded like a drum in his chest, not only from fear but from the desperate hope that his father—the man bound at the center of this madness, was still alive.“Stay down!” he hissed, pulling Cassandra closer as shards of wood splintered overhead.Cassandra clung to his sleeve, trembling. Her face was pale beneath the shifting red and blue lights that cut through the broken warehouse windows. “Nathan, we have to get out of here! This isn’t just a negotiation anymore—it’s a warzone!”But Nathan’s gaze was still on Liam.Liam stood tall amidst the chaos, a dark figure clad in bulletproof gear, his voice carrying above the gunfire. “You think you could trick me, Nathan? You dare bring f

Nathan sat propped against the velvet cushions of the Hayes mansion’s grand library, one leg elevated on a stool, his face pale but resolute. The pain in his leg throbbed steadily, a sharp reminder of the bullets that had nearly derailed everything. Yet, even as sweat dotted his forehead and his fingers clenched the armrest, his mind refused to surrender to weakness. His father, Mr. Hayes, was out there—likely terrified and alone—and Nathan’s determination to bring him back was the only thing keeping the agony at bay.Cassandra moved quietly by his side, her presence both reassuring and tense. She had insisted on overseeing his recovery personally, her sharp hands now wrapped around his leg, adjusting the bandages and checking the swelling. “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” she said, her voice laced with worry, though her dark eyes softened each time they met his. “You need to heal first. You won’t get your father back if you collapse before you even start the chase.”Nathan winced

The chandelier in the Hayes mansion’s study cast fractured light across the oak-paneled walls, but Nathan sat in its shadow. His leg ached from the old injury—a dull, insistent throb that seemed to worsen whenever he tried to think clearly. Stacks of contracts and draft proposals littered the desk before him, yet his eyes were fixed not on the numbers but on the memory of his father’s face in Liam’s video—bloodied, half-conscious, pleading.Forty-eight hours. Already a day had passed. Time was slipping.But still he told himself: no surrender.Across the room, Cassandra watched him with quiet intensity. She had spent the morning combing through encrypted records, following faint trails Liam thought buried. And she had found something: proof of the villa’s ownership buried under layers of shell companies, finally linking it to Liam’s shadow network. A location—remote, coastal, nearly unreachable without notice.Her first instinct had been to rush the document into Nathan’s hands. But t

The video spread like a virus.Not thirty minutes after dawn, Nathan’s phone buzzed incessantly with alerts, news outlets, gossip blogs, investors’ groups, even political commentators sharing the same cryptic clip. The image was grainy, shot in dim light: Mr. Hayes, hunched in a chair, his wrists tied, his head drooping as if each breath weighed a ton. A blurred voiceover, Liam’s unmistakable sneer masked by distortion, taunted, “The empire collapses when its pillars rot. Fifty-one percent for a man’s life. You have until sundown.”Nathan stood frozen before the television in the mansion’s lounge, his reflection ghosted across the screen. His father’s frail figure flickered there — not dead, not gone, but humiliated, displayed like some grotesque exhibit. His jaw clenched until the muscles ached. Rage pressed hot against his ribs, yet beneath it lay a sharper edge: fear.The markets reacted instantly. Hayes Telecom’s stock line dipped red as analysts speculated, spinning theories that