All Chapters of THE MAN NAMED AXEL KNOX : Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
10 chapters
A STREET DOWNTOWN
In Bonneville without power you are nothing, without money you're considered a limitation and without a name, you're good for nothing. “Inject him and let's get the fuck out of here!” “But we've got to see if it actually works, that's the rule.” “Fuck the rules man! Do you want to go to prison?” He paused, looking at his partner waiting for a response. “That's what I thought, so inject him and let's get the fuck out of here, they don't pay us enough for this shit!” The police sirens grew louder as it drew closer to the downtown vicinity, the place where the two accomplices and their victim currently were, as he was slowly losing his life. “Fine,” he grumbled, crouching down to the ground, injecting a blue liquid substance into the arm of a young skinny boy that lay helplessly on the ground on the brink of death. “Let's go!” They both skedaddled away running for their lives. The police stopped at the alleyway where Axel Knox lay on the ground as he gasped for air. The alley on
MYSTERY MAN
He fluttered his eyes open, the light came first. It was very bright, white, and sharp as a blade. Axel Knox tried to turn his head away, but his neck felt like it was filled with cement. The loud beeping sound on his right distorted his mind as it grew faster—beep-beep-beep-beep—matching the sudden race of his heart.The door of the room slid open. “He’s awake,” a nurse said. She was middle-aged, with very kind eyes. She checked the monitor, then his pulse, then shone a small light into each of his eyes. Axel winced in pain. “Welcome back. You gave us quite a scare, young man.”“Where….” His voice came out rough like gravel. He swallowed. “Where am I?”“Bonneville General. You were brought in last night. You had cardiac arrest.” She said it flat, without trying to hide anything like she was reading a grocery list. “You’re even lucky to be alive.”Axel tried to sit up, his arms suddenly felt wrong. Not wrong in a weak way, it felt kike something underneath his skin was humming, pat
A NAME I NEVER ASKED FOR
In Bonneville without power you are nothing. Without money you're considered a limitation. And without a name, you're good for nothing.That was the unwritten law of the city, everyone who mattered knew it and the ones who mattered most came from the five founding families. The Falcones, who ran the ports and the unions. The Beauforts, who owned the banks and the judges. The Hawthornes, who controlled the media and the truth. The Marlowes, who held the construction and the land and the Windsors which were the oldest, the proudest, and the dead.The other four families had erased the Windsors twenty years ago, not with fire or blood, but with betrayal. A single piece of information, whispered in the wrong ear, at the wrong time. The Windsor fortune vanished overnight, their name became a curse and Harrison Hawthorne had been the one holding the match.Axel still tied to a wooden chair, wriggling, trying to set himself free as he dug fingers into the carved armrest. “Don’t call me t
SOMETHING MORE THAN THIS
Before that night in the alley, Axel Knox was nobody. He didn't live on the streets, and didn't he starve either, but he had learned early that the world had no interest in him. Foster homes came and went, some were fine, some were cold but none of them were kind enough to want him forever. He was just a body of matter taking up space.Teachers looked past him and oher kids called him "the ghost" because he was so quiet, so easy to forget. When he turned sixteen, he aged out of the system with a trash bag of clothes and forty-seven dollars. He worked odd jobs—washing dishes for restaurants, sweeping floors, stacking boxes in a warehouse that smelled like mold. Nobody ever said to him "you matter, Axel." Nobody ever looked at him like he was worth anything.People always had a way to tell him exactly what he was. That he was nothing, that he was a limitation and that he was good for nothing.And then, overnight, everything changed.He was the son of Harrison Hawthorne. Heir to one of
THE FOUNDING FAMILIES
The meeting room was deep underground, there were no windows, no clocks that could tell of the time. A single round table sat in the middle, surrounded by five chairs. Three of them were occupied, Harrison was a representative of his own family, the Hawthorne, while the fifth, while the fifth, which was the Windsor chair, remained empty. It had been empty for twenty years.Harrison Hawthorne stood at the head of the table. The three figures across from him sat in shadow. Their faces were hidden, one of them hid their face wearing a hood, another by the angle of the light and the last person was by choice. That was how these meetings worked. Power didn't need to see faces. Power needed results.“Report,” said a voice from the left. Harrison clasped his hands behind his back. “The boy survived.”Silence. Then a woman spoke from the right. “The elixir?”“Fully absorbed, there was no rejection, no side effects either, it was beyond what we expected.” Harrison paused. “His powers have aw
A GHOST IN THE FLESH
Mariette Windsor moved like the forest itself was helping her. She held Axel's hand and pulled him through the dark trees, stepping over roots and fallen branches without breaking stride. Axel's legs burned. His lungs ached. But he kept up.“Where are we going?” he asked between breaths.“Somewhere safe,” she said. “For now.”They ran for twenty more minutes. The cabin's fire light slowly fading away behind them as they both ran. Eventually, they reached a small clearing with an old stone well at the center. Mariette stopped, knelt down, and pressed her palm against a moss-covered rock. The rock glowed blue for a moment, then the ground beneath the well shifted. A hidden door opened.“Down,” she said.Axel hesitated. “Into a well?”“It's not a well. It's an entrance.” She climbed down first, disappearing into the dark. Axel hesitated and then followed behind him.Inside was a small underground room, it wasn't ot a cave…. It was a real room, with wooden walls, a cot, a table, and lante
WAR BETWEEN PARENTS
Harrison dropped through the broken ceiling and landed on the dirt floor like a cat. His blue eyes swept the room. Behind him, two more figures climbed down not Vince or Leo. New men, which were much bigger, they looked harder, Their eyes also glowed faintly blue.“You've been busy,” Mariette said, stepping in front of Axel. “Building an army of vessels.”“Not an army.” Harrison brushed dust off his jacket. “A collection of some work. Most die, but your son? Our son?” He looked at Axel. “He's the first one who survived with his original mind intact. The others become… empty. Hollow shells. But Axel has this rare ability that allows him to keep himself with his mind intact. That's why he's special.”“I'm not your experiment,” Axel said. His voice was low. The hum in his chest was slowly building again.“You're my son and that makes you whatever I say you are.” Harrison took a step closer. “Come home, Axel. Your mother abandoned you, for fifteen years of your life she left you with stra
CHOOSE WHAT YOU BECOME
The truck hung suspended ten feet above the ground. Axel's body slammed against the dashboard. Mariette grabbed the steering wheel to keep herself from falling out of the truck.“Let us go!” she screamed.Harrison tilted his head. “I will, let you go, but the boy has to go with me.”He snapped his fingers. The truck dropped as the metal crunched against the road. Airbags deployed. Axel's vision went white for a second. When he opened his eyes, the windshield was cracked and Mariette was slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious.“Mom?” He shook her. No response. Just shallow breathing.The passenger’s door was ripped open from the outside. Harrison reached in and grabbed Axel by the collar, pulling him out like a ragdoll.“Let's take a walk, son.”He dragged Axel to the side of the road and dropped him on the grass. Axel tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't work. The crash had done something to his spine. Pain shot up his back.“You broke me,” Axel whispered.“I barely touched you
SHOW US WHO YOU ARE
The Hawthorne estate sat on a hill overlooking Bonneville. It wasn't just a house, It was a fortress. Stone walls, iron gates, and towers that had stood for over two hundred years. Axel had seen it from the highway as a kid, always wondering who lived inside. Now he knew, a father he never knew existed.Harrison led him through the main doors. The inside were even bigger, marble floors, chandeliers, paintings of stern-faced men and women who all shared the same cold eyes.“Your ancestors?” Axel asked.“I wouldn't particularly call them that, we prefer to be called the Hawthornes. My bloodline but your bloodline is the one that matters tonight.” Harrison stopped in front of a large wooden door. Behind it, Axel could hear voices. Low. Serious. “They're waiting.”“What do I say?”“Nothing. Just show them what you can do.” Harrison opened the door.The room was round, like the underground meeting chamber, which smelled of riches and generational wealth. It had velvet chairs, a fireplace a
I AM A WINDSOR
Axel stood between two fires. Behind him, his mother who looked red-eyed and sounded ghost-voiced, radiating a power that felt ancient and wrong in every way. In front of him, his father…… blue flames dying around him, face twisted with fury and fear.“Choose,” Mariette said. “Him or me.”“You don't have to choose,” Harrison said. “She's not your mother anymore. Look at her eyes that's not Mariette. That's the hunger, the curse from being a Windsor. The magic that destroyed her family from the inside.”Axel looked at Mariette. Her face was still her face. But behind her eyes, something else dwelled. Something hungry ready to take on anything, he didn't blame her, she lost everything that she could call hers.“Mom?” he said softly.Her expression flickered and f a moment, her eyes went back to blue. “Axel. I'm here. Fight it….. I'm fighting it…… but I can't hold on much longer. The families didn't just take my blood. They took a piece of my soul and that piece has been waiting for reve