Rose and Chloe decided to visit Frank in the safe house that they had provided for him to stay since it was obvious that he was no longer welcomed in the Robbins’ mansion.The safe house was located in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood that offered privacy without ostentation, it was furnished with clean, modern pieces—a dark leather sofa, a sturdy oak coffee table, bookshelves filled with generic classics. It was a place to exist, not to live, a waystation between prison and a future yet undefined.Frank stood by the fireplace, a glass of water in his hand, staring at the unlit gas logs. Rose sat poised on the edge of the sofa, her sharp eyes missing nothing. Chloe paced slowly by the window, now tempered by the reality of her father’s presence—a man she scarcely knew.“This place is… adequate,” Rose said, breaking a long silence. “More than you’ve had in years, I imagine. It’s secure. Untraceable through the usual family channels.”“It’s a palace,” Frank replied, his voice a low ru

Frank turned and left the back room, the heavy door swinging shut behind him with a soft, final thud. The silence he left in his wake was dense, charged with unspoken thoughts.One of Cobra King’s men, a wiry, sharp-eyed figure named Silas who had been with him since the early days, finally broke the quiet. He stepped away from the wall, his gaze fixed on the door Frank had just exited.“Boss,” Silas began, his voice low and wary. “I don’t like it. I don’t think we should trust him. There’s something… different. That plan of his… it’s not just about the score anymore. It’s personal. It’s selfish. He’s using his own blood as pawns and shields. A man who does that… his loyalty is to his own ghost, not to any partnership.”Cobra King didn’t look at Silas immediately. He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, watching the legs run down the crystal. A low, dry chuckle escaped him, devoid of any real humor.“Trust, Silas?” Cobra King said, his voice a smooth, dangerous purr. “Trust is the l

In the vast, silent master suite of the Robbins mansion, William Robbins did not sleep that night. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t sleep and that was because sleep had decided to deliberately elude him.The heavy brocade curtains were drawn against the night, but the darkness offered no solace. It was filled with ghosts.And tonight, his mind traveled further back, past the recent wreckage, to the very genesis of the rot. To a memory he had spent a lifetime and a fortune trying to bury.He had not always been William Robbins, patriarch and titan. Once, he was just William, a young, ambitious geologist with dirt under his nails and dreams in his head. His two closest friends, his brothers in all but blood, were Matthews Wirtkov, with his steady, analytical mind, and Robert Powers, whose ambition burned as hot as any forge.The three of them, hired for a survey in a remote, ancient forest in Eastern Europe, a place where the trees seemed to whisper and the light fell in cathedral shaf

The following morning, Grandfather Robbins made up his mind to tell Emma about the Crown of Aetherion and the weight its legacy had upon him.The Crown of Aetherion still sat in its vault of stone and steel. But something fundamental had shifted. The vow he had defined his life by had been… absolved. He had feared that a day such as this would come some day and now that it was here, he just couldn’t run away from it any longer.Moreover, he wasn’t sure how much time he had left and he didn’t want anything to be a hinderance to what the Crown was meant for in a situation where death comes to take him all of a sudden.But this time around, it wasn’t only Emma he wanted to share the secret with but also to Ethan. From the very first day that Ethan walked into the Robbins’ mansion, he had known that he was on a mission and that part of it was connected to the Crown.A part of him had felt it, that Ethan could be the descendant of Aetherion who was supposed to bear the weight of the crown

Chloe moved through the west wing corridor like a phantom, her heart hammering against her ribs not with fear, but with a thrilling, vindictive excitement. The thick carpet muffled her footsteps, and the ornate shadows of the hallway swallowed her whole.She had been on her way to the kitchen when she’d seen them file into the library—Grandfather, Emma, Ethan. The air had been taut, serious. An instinct, honed by years of feeling like an outsider, had told her to listen. She’d pressed herself against the polished wood of a grandfather clock just outside the heavy library door, her ear angled toward the crack.And she had heard everything.The Crown of Aetherion. The vault. The biometric lock.Emma.The final piece of the puzzle had clicked into place with a satisfying, almost audible snap. All of her father’s plans, all of Cobra King’s muscle, all of Rose’s cold strategy—it had all been searching for a way past an impenetrable door. And the key had been walking around the house al