BETRAYED ONCE: FROM NOTHING TO BILLIONIARE POWER

Chapter 6: The Truth

Ryan sat motionless with the device feeling heavy in his hand. The diner sounds returned, forks clattering, someone laughing, and the waitress asking another table if they wanted dessert.

Harrison, with his coffee untouched and long-cold, waited patiently.

Minutes passed, and Ryan didn't move.

"Zhou is buying Aether?" he finally spoke, and his voice didn't sound like his own.

"Next month. The final signatures are scheduled for the 15th," Harrison replied, with a quiet and careful tone. "If they succeed, everything your father built becomes theirs, including the evidence he collected."

"Evidence that could destroy them." He raised his gaze again.

"Yes,” Harrisson replied.

Ryan's hands were shaking again, not from hunger this time, but from something bitterer, heavier. Rage against Zoula, Christopher, and the hospital.

"They buried me alive," he whispered as if he were finally coming to terms with reality.

Harrison's face tightened. "I know."

“What!” Ryan looked up sharply. "You know?"

"I've been watching. For years. Your father's instructions were clear. I could only observe and report back. He never wanted me to intervene unless you were in immediate danger." Harrison's jaw tightened. Ryan could see the look of regret pass across his face as if he had failed Jim.

"When they took you to the hospital, I didn't know what was happening. Zhou restricted the outside world, and by the time I found out, you were already—" He stopped.

"Already dead?" Ryan grunted.

"Yes."

Ryan stared at him. The gray suit, the gray hair, and the gray eyes that held decades of secrets. "You watched them kill me?"

"No. My contact said you were alive the last time he reported back, and by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late."

“The paper of you being dead reached me, but I had to confirm you were really dead and were being buried. " Harrison's voice was steady, but something flickered in his eyes. "I watched them load your body onto a truck headed for an industrial farm. I followed. I watched them throw you in a hole with a dozen others."

He paused, allowing the silence to linger around them. “I thought I failed you, Father."

Ryan's blood ran cold. "But I came back."

"Yes." Harrison's eyes met his. "You came back. I don't know how. When my contact told me, I couldn't believe it, and I had to see for myself. He said you crawled out of that grave, and now I knew your father was right. You're stronger than any of them."

Ryan thought about that. About the grave. The weight. The taste. About clawing his way up through the dirt while someone above threw sand on his face.

"I didn't feel strong," he said quietly. "I felt dead, still dead, and just walking around."

"That's what strength looks like sometimes." Harrison leaned forward. "Not roaring or fighting, just getting up one more time."

Ryan looked down at his hands. The hands that had clawed out of a grave and had taken food from a stranger were now shaking.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"Now, you choose." Harrison replied, then finally reached into his briefcase Ryan didn't notice he carried with him. He pulled out a thick folder. "These are the inheritance documents. Signing them makes you the sole owner of Aether Corporation and everything that comes with it, and I mean the good and the bad."

Ryan looked at the folder and flipped it, staring at the papers inside. The signature line was empty, waiting for his name.

"What if I don't sign?" he asked, staring at Harrison once more.

"Then Aether passes to a holding company, and Zhou will acquire it by the end of the month. The evidence your father collected will be destroyed. The Volkovs will continue using Zhou to smuggle, launder, and worse." Harrison paused, holding his gaze. "You survive but with nothing and go back to the streets, running from people who see you as garbage."

Ryan thought about the bridge, then the rain, the baton, and finally the cold.

‘No,’ the words reverberated in his head.

"I'm not going back," he replied, almost certain.

Harrison's eyebrows rose slightly. "No?"

"No." Ryan's voice was stronger now. "I'm not running, not hiding, and I'm not letting them win."

Harrison studied him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he smiled. The first genuine smile Ryan had seen on his face.

"Your father said you'd say that."

"Yeah?" Ryan's voice was rough. "Does he say anything else?"

"He said you were stubborn like him." Harrison pushed the folder closer. "He also said to tell you if you choose to fight, don't do it for him. Do it for yourself, for your mother, and for the life they stole from both of you.

Without hesitation, Ryan's hand reached for the folder. Pick up the black pen resting beside it, and one signature, that's all it would take, and he'd be back in the game. The Zhou Industries had an enemy they didn't know existed, and Zoula would learn what happened when you buried a man alive.

His fingers touched the paper and then stopped. "What about the Volkovs?" he asked. "If I take this company, they'll come after me."

"Yes." Harrison didn't sugarcoat it. "They will, not immediately since they don't know you exist yet, but they will eventually come."

Ryan's jaw tightened. "And the evidence? The files you mentioned?"

"Safe and only accessible to you once you sign."

Ryan heaved a deep breath. "So if I sign, I get a target on my back and a weapon to fight back with."

"That's one way to put it," Harrison replied. "Another way: you get a company worth hundreds of millions, evidence that can destroy one of the most powerful criminal families in the country, and a chance to make them pay for everything they took from you."

Ryan looked at the signature line.

Zoula's face was calm and patient. ‘You were useful,’ her words were replayed.

‘I'm the father,' said the stranger, who wasn't one anymore.

Ryan dropped his gaze on the paper, and his eyes followed every trace of his writing.

"Ryan Wright"

The document held his name.