2025-08-23 22:14:57The hum of the engine was the first sound Gibson heard when the darkness loosened its grip.
Pain followed next. Every breath cut like broken glass. His ribs burned, his vision swam, and his body screamed to surrender, but surrender had never been in his blood.
He forced his eyes open. The ceiling above him was leather and steel, the faint glow of dashboard lights flickering in the distance. He was in a car. Alive. Barely. Two shadows sat in the front.
“Still breathing?” the driver muttered, voice steady, almost indifferent.
“More than breathing,” the passenger said. His head turned, eyes gleaming in the rearview mirror. “Look at him. A man beaten within an inch of his life… and yet he refuses to close his eyes.”
Gibson’s lips cracked as he whispered, “Who… are you?”
The man in the passenger seat leaned closer, his voice low, carrying a sharp edge. “Friends. Or enemies. That depends on you.”
The SUV roared through the night, leaving behind the Greenwood mansion like a graveyard of broken promises.
Every jolt of the road sent lightning through Gibson’s body. But it wasn’t the pain that consumed him, it was Clara’s scream echoing in his mind. The way she reached for him, small arms outstretched, before Deborah ripped her away.
“Clara…” His voice broke.
The driver’s eyes flicked to the mirror. “Your daughter?”
Gibson’s jaw tightened. He forced himself upright, ignoring the agony tearing through him. “They’ll twist her, poison her, make her believe I abandoned her.” His fists clenched weakly, blood dripping down his knuckles. “I won’t let them.”
The passenger studied him in silence before finally speaking. “Then don’t. Fight back.”
The vehicle slowed, turning off the highway. Hidden gates opened, and they entered a compound disguised as an abandoned warehouse. But inside, it was alive.
Lights blazed across rows of servers, monitors displayed stock markets, maps, and names of corporations flashing like prey under a hawk’s gaze. Men and women moved with precision, armed, disciplined, watchful. This wasn’t a hideout. It was a war room.
They carried Gibson inside, laying him on a steel bed under harsh white lights. A woman in a lab coat appeared instantly, her hands swift, efficient. “Fractured ribs. Internal bruising. Concussion. He should be dead.”
Gibson gripped her wrist, his voice a hoarse growl. “Don’t waste your breath on pity. Fix me. I have work to do.”
Her eyes flicked to the passenger, as if seeking permission. The man removed his cap, revealing sharp features, silver at his temples, eyes cold with experience. He stepped forward, extending a hand.
“Marcus Vey,” he introduced. “I’ve been watching you for a long time, Mr. Ridge. Or should I say, the man behind Ridge Empire and Mel Consortium.”
Gibson’s eyes narrowed. Few knew the truth of his hidden identity. Fewer dared to speak it aloud.
Marcus smirked. “Don’t look so surprised. The world may think Gibson Ridge is a loyal husband with nothing but charm and good looks… but I know better. You built empires in silence. You move nations with your pen. And you chose to live as a shadow in Deborah Greenwood’s world.”
The name cut deeper than his wounds. Marcus leaned closer. “And now she’s shown her hand. She’s exposed her arrogance. The Greenwoods believe you’re dead. That makes this the perfect time for you to decide, are you a victim of betrayal… or the executioner of empires?”
The room fell into silence, broken only by the steady beeping of medical equipment. Gibson’s mind was a storm.
He remembered every smile Deborah had faked, every word dripping with contempt, every cruel glance her family gave him at dinners. He had endured it, swallowed it, all for the sake of love. For Clara.
But love had been a weapon turned against him. Slowly, he pushed himself up on the bed. Pain flared white-hot through his ribs, but his gaze was steady, alive.
“They took my daughter,” he said. “They spat on everything I gave them. They thought they could bury me.” His fists clenched until blood dripped from his palms. “They don’t know me at all.”
He looked Marcus dead in the eye. “I’ll rise. I’ll take back Clara. And I’ll destroy Greenwood Empire piece by piece, until Deborah begs for mercy that will never come.”
Marcus’s lips curved into a razor-thin smile. “Then we understand each other. Welcome back, Mr. Ridge. It’s time the world remembered your true name.”
That night, as the compound buzzed with unseen power, Gibson lay awake, staring at the ceiling. His body broken, his heart bleeding, but his will sharper than ever.
He wasn’t the man Deborah humiliated, He wasn’t the husband she mocked, He wasn’t the liability she threw away. He was Gibson Ridge. Trillionaire. King in the shadows. And now, a storm set to swallow the Greenwoods whole.
Far away, in the Greenwood mansion, Deborah poured herself champagne, smiling as if the world were hers to command. Clara sat silently beside her, clutching her teddy bear, eyes still wet from crying.
“You’ll understand one day,” Deborah whispered to her daughter. “Your father was never worthy of us.”
But outside, in the city’s veins, power shifted. Stocks trembled. Whispers spread, And somewhere, behind walls of steel and fire, a man once thought dead whispered into the night:
“Deborah… your empire is already mine.”
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Chapter 52 - War Within
The world was coming apart. Stone screamed. Steel bent and liquefied under the crimson storm bursting out of the Nexus. Columns shattered, raining molten fragments into the abyss below. But Gibson didn’t move.He should have run. He should have turned, just as Clara had begged him. Instead, he took a step forward. “Not without you,” he whispered, voice hoarse against the roar of the wind.The storm surged higher, alive and hungry. It rose from Clara’s body like a living entity, tendons of light and smoke wrapping around her, pulling at the sky.Her small frame was nothing but a silhouette inside that blinding radiance, her hair whipping like black fire. Then her voice, no, their voice, rolled through the ruins. “I told you to run, Gibson.”It wasn’t a warning. It was a test. Gibson shielded his face from the wind and pushed forward, one bleeding hand after another clawing through the debris.His ears rang with the thunder of a thousand memories, the sound of Clara’s laughter, her firs
Chapter 51 - The Poison
The air was poisoned with silence. Not the soft, comforting kind that draped itself over midnight fields, but the jagged stillness of a battlefield after the screaming had ended.Smoke curled in fractured pillars around Gibson as he dragged himself across the fractured stones, every muscle in his body trembling.His ribs burned with each shallow breath, but it wasn’t his wounds that hollowed him, it was the sight ahead. Clara.She sat hunched against the jagged wall of what remained of the Nexus, her knees pulled tight to her chest, strands of soot-dark hair plastered to her face.Her small frame looked lost against the ruins, as though she’d been reduced to little more than ash. But what froze Gibson’s heart wasn’t her fragility, it was her eyes.They glowed faintly, ember-red at the edges, fighting against the familiar brown he’d loved since the moment she opened them as a newborn. Two selves colliding in one fragile body.“Clara,” Gibson rasped. His voice broke on the name.Her hea
CHAPTER 23: BLOODLINES
The words hit her like a guillotine blade. “She was never yours to begin with.”Deborah’s breath caught, her lungs seizing as if invisible fingers gripped her throat. For a long, suspended second, her world fell utterly silent.No chains, no screens, no flicker of the overhead bulbs, just those six words, looping in her skull like a death chant.She forced out a laugh, brittle and sharp, the sound echoing off the concrete walls like broken glass. “Y-You’re lying,” she stammered, her voice cracking under its own weight. “You’re trying to… to break me. To twist the knife. Clara is mine. Mine.”The speakers crackled, alive with static, and then his voice poured through, velvet over steel.“Your daughter?” Gibson’s tone dripped contempt. “Tell me, Deborah, when was the last time she reached for you before me? When was the last time she chose your arms over mine?”Deborah thrashed against the restraints, her body jerking like a marionette cut from its strings. “Don’t! Don’t you dare twist
CHAPTER FIFTY: THE DAUGHTER WHO BURNS
Silence. Not the kind that came in moments of peace, but the kind that followed devastation. A silence so complete it rang in Gibson’s ears like the echo of a scream too loud to be heard.He opened his eyes to white. Not light, white. The abyss was gone. The firestorm erased. The endless roar silenced. He lay on scorched stone, half-buried beneath jagged rubble, his body twisted in ways bone and muscle weren’t meant to endure. Blood clung to his lips, thick and coppery, and each breath was a war. But he didn’t care about the pain. He didn’t care about the ruin. “Clara…” The name scraped out of him as a whisper, hoarse, desperate.He pushed the stone from his chest, dragging his body across the fractured ground. His arms trembled under his own weight, but he crawled forward inch by inch.Each scrape of his knee sent fire up his spine, but he didn’t stop. Not until he saw her. She lay ten paces away, still as death, her small form curled against the stone.Around her, the ground was
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: BETWEEN HEARTBEATS
The world was gone. No fire, no stone, no father’s arms. Only silence. A silence so deep it felt like sinking beneath an ocean with no bottom.Clara floated in it, weightless, her chest heavy but her body light. For the first time since the storm took root, the pain wasn’t searing.It was dull now, distant, like a drumbeat muffled by miles of earth. Am I… dead? She opened her eyes.The void stretched endless, crimson and black. Heat shimmered at its edges, but at the center, where she drifted, it was cold. “You are close, little one.”The voice rippled through her like oil spilled over water. She knew it well now, the storm, the thing inside her veins. It did not thunder this time. It whispered, calm, coaxing.Clara turned slowly, her bare feet finding ground where none existed. A shape emerged from the crimson haze: tall, obsidian-eyed, its form cloaked in fire that didn’t burn. The storm.“No…” Clara whispered, stumbling back. Her voice was thin, almost swallowed by the void.“Yes,”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: THE FALL
The ground vanished beneath him. Gibson fell. Stone, fire, and twisted steel collapsed into a screaming chasm, dragging him down with a force that tore the breath from his lungs. His arms locked around Clara’s body, her small frame convulsing in his grip. He didn’t dare let go, not even for a heartbeat.Above, the ruins of the Nexus were swallowed whole. Below, there was nothing but a burning void, endless and alive, like the throat of some ancient beast. “Clara, !” His voice ripped raw against the roar of collapsing earth. Her eyes snapped open. Not her eyes. Not anymore.They glowed with crimson fire, blazing so brightly they cut through the darkness. And when her mouth opened, the voice that answered was not his daughter’s. “You cannot keep her from me.”The words shook the abyss, vibrating through his bones. Clara’s small hands clawed at his chest, burning with fire that licked at his flesh.Gibson gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to cry out as his skin blistered under her t
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