All Chapters of After Prison, I Became the Apex of the Stars: Chapter 1
- Chapter 8
8 chapters
CHAPTER 1
The old man's fingers trembled as he pulled the ring from beneath his cot, but his voice carried the kind of authority that made three hundred men hold their breath at the same time."Kneel."Eddard dropped to one knee on the cold concrete floor of Hell Prison's east block, feeling the chill bite through the thin fabric of his pants while three hundred men stood in rows behind him, silent as gravestones, their eyes fixed on the ceremony they had waited years to witness. The old man held the ring between his thumb and forefinger, a silver band with a black stone and a symbol carved into its face that most governments would start wars to understand."From this moment forward, you are Zeus," the old man said, placing the ring into Eddard's open palm and closing his fingers around it with surprising strength. "The Apex of the Stars answers to you now, every cell, every operative, every resource spread across six continents. All of it is yours, and yours alone."Eddard slid the ring onto
CHAPTER 2
Three years he had rotted in a cell for a crime he didn't commit, and this was his welcome home, a clipboard and a pen and a cousin who looked at him like he was an insect she wanted to step on."Arya can't even face me herself, she sent her cousin to end our marriage in a parking lot?"The rear door opened, and Arya stepped out with the kind of grace that made the air around her seem to rearrange itself. Tailored dress, hair pinned back, the posture of a woman who had spent three years learning how to carry authority in her spine. She was beautiful the way a blade is beautiful, and Eddard hated that he noticed it even now, even with the divorce papers still warm in Martha's hands.But her eyes wouldn't stay on his, and that told him everything the paperwork hadn't."Eddard, this isn't a joke," Arya said in a voice that was careful and measured and practiced, like she'd rehearsed this conversation in a mirror until all the guilt was smoothed out of it. "I need you to understand that
CHAPTER 3
Arya stood by the car door, watching Eddard walk away with his bag slung over one shoulder like a man leaving a hotel instead of a prison, and something about the way he moved bothered her in a place she couldn't name."Eddard, wait."He stopped but didn't turn around."You're being impulsive," she called out, and even as the words left her mouth she could hear how small they sounded against the vastness of what had just happened between them. "Tearing up that check, walking away with nothing, you're going to regret this when the reality sets in and you realize you have no money, no job, no connections."Eddard turned just enough to look at her over his shoulder, and the calm in his face was so complete it made her stomach tighten because it wasn't the calm of a man who had given up. It was something else entirely."Just don't regret it in the future, Arya."Martha let out a laugh that cut through the afternoon air like glass breaking. "Regret? Regret divorcing you? That's the funnies
CHAPTER 4
The villa looked the way abandoned things always look, like something that had been holding its breath for three years and had forgotten how to exhale. Dust covered the windowsills in a fine gray layer, and the garden that Eddard's mother had once tended with such careful hands had gone wild with weeds that pushed through the stone path like they were trying to reclaim the place for nature. The porch light was dead, the mailbox was rusted shut, and the front door stuck when he turned the key because the wood had swollen in its frame from seasons of rain that nobody had been there to wipe away.Eddard stood in the doorway and let it all settle over him, the silence of the house mixing with memories that hit harder than he expected. His father reading at the kitchen table, his mother humming while she cooked, the sound of their laughter moving through rooms that now held nothing but stale air and dust. He had fought wars inside a prison, learned skills that could topple governments,
CHAPTER 5
Chapter 4Gwen's words hung in the air like smoke from a cheap cigarette, and the woman standing in the doorway let them settle for exactly two seconds before her expression went from cold to something that could freeze water in a pipe."Who are you?" Agatha asked, and her voice carried the quiet precision of someone who asks questions not because they need the answer but because they want the other person to hear how small they sound giving it.Gwen looked Agatha up and down with the lazy contempt of a woman who has spent her entire life measuring other women by their usefulness and finding most of them lacking. "Who am I? Who are you, sweetheart? Strutting into someone else's property with bodyguards like you're some kind of queen when you're nothing but a cheap little tramp who probably spread her legs to afford that dress." She flicked her wrist toward the door. "Get out. Get out before I call the police and have you arrested for trespassing, you worthless little insect."Somethi
CHAPTER 6
The lead bodyguard didn't even slow down. His open palm connected with the side of Luigi's face with a crack that echoed through the foyer like a gunshot, and Luigi's head snapped sideways so hard his entire body followed, spinning him halfway around before his legs gave out and he staggered into the wall with his hand pressed against his cheek and his eyes swimming with confusion because nothing in his pampered life had prepared him for the simple reality of being hit by someone who knew how to hit."You, you hit me?" Luigi's voice came out thick and slurred, and he was blinking rapidly like a man trying to see through water. "I'll kill you. I'll kill every single one of you, I'll kill your families, I'll burn your houses down, I'll make sure every person you've ever loved suffers for this."Agatha's expression, which had been merely cold, turned into something that belonged in a freezer. Her grandfather, the man she loved more than anyone alive, was lying in a hospital bed right now
CHAPTER 7
Marcus Clarke had spent twenty-three years married to Gwen, and in all that time he had learned that when she cried, something expensive was about to happen. But the sound coming through the phone right now wasn't the calculated crying she used when she wanted jewelry or a vacation, it was like broMarcus sobbing of a woman whose world had been turned inside out, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up."What did you say?"he said, gripping the phone so hard the case creaked. "Say that again.""Luigi's leg is broMarcus, Marcus. That filthy animal Eddard had some woman's bodyguards beat us like dogs in the street. They slapped me, Marcus, they slapped me in front of that worthless criminal like I was nothing, and then they snapped Luigi's knee like it was a twig and threw us out of the villa like garbage."The rage that hit Marcus was immediate and total, the kind of anger that starts in the gut and spreads upward until it fills the skull and turns the world a shade darker
CHAPTER 8
The lead doctor had been practicing medicine for nineteen years, and in all that time he had dealt with grieving mothers, angry fathers, patients who threw bedpans at his head, and one memorable incident involving a senator's wife and a smuggled Chihuahua, but Gwen Clarke was quickly climbing toward the top of his list of people he never wanted to see again."Ma'am, I've explained the situation to you three times now, and the answer has not changed," he said with the strained patience of a man who could feel his blood pressure climbing with each passing minute. "The VIP wards are fully reserved and there is nothing I can do to alter that arrangement.""Then un-reserve them," Gwen shrieked, and several patients in nearby rooms pressed their call buttons just to make sure a nurse was nearby in case whatever was happening in the hallway came closer. "My son is lying on a gurney with a broMarcus leg and you're telling me he has to share a room with common people who probably can't even af