BETRAYED ONCE: FROM NOTHING TO BILLIONIARE POWER

Chapter 7: Signed

"What if I..." Ryan struggled for the words. "What if I make the same mistakes? Trusting the wrong people? Building something that gets taken from me again? What if I'm not the man my father thought I was?" 

Harrison leaned back in the booth. For a long moment, he didn't speak. When he did, his voice was quieter than Ryan.

"Your father asked me the same question once."

Ryan looked up. "What?"

"Thirty years ago. He was sitting in a diner not unlike this one. Different city, different decade, but the same question." Harrison's eyes were distant, seeing something Ryan couldn't. "He'd just gotten out of a bad situation. The Volkovs had him cornered. He'd lost everything, his wife, his son, his freedom. And I came to him with an offer. A chance to build something new and a future."

Ryan's hand tightened on the pen. "What did he say?"

"He said exactly what you just said. Harrison's lips twitched. "'What if I'm not ready? What if I fail? What if I'm just the man they made me?'"

Ryan waited, as if waiting for some sort of revelation to build him.

"I told him the truth." Harrison leaned forward, eyes sharp now. "You're never ready, and the men who think they are are fools. The men who wait until they're ready always wait forever. You just have to start, and that's all your father did. Now look at what he built."

Ryan stared at the paper. Aether Corporation was worth hundreds of millions but was built by a man who wasn't ready, who wasn't sure, who just started.

His father's handwriting on the document and his legacy are all waiting for him.

He stared at Ryan Wright. The same name they'd tried to erase, buried in a mass grave, but now owned a company worth more than Ryan could comprehend.

He set the pen down.

The weight of it didn't hit immediately. It was like anesthesia. The reality would come later, when the numbness wore off.

Harrison exhaled. Whether in relief or something else, Ryan couldn't tell.

"It's done," Harrison said. He pulled the document toward him, examined the signature, and nodded. "Almost official, but there are a few more steps, some legal formalities, and verification of identity, but yes, you're the owner of Aether Corporation."

Ryan said nothing but nodded his head.

Harrison reached into his briefcase. Pulled out a black phone whose design Ryan hadn't seen before and then slid it across the table.

"This is yours, the Aether's flagship model one, by only the head. It is encrypted, untraceable, and impossible to hack. My number is on the speed dial."

Ryan picked up the phone. He felt its weight, cold, solid, and real. A far cry from the nothing he'd had hours ago.

Then Harrison pulled out something else. A black card with no numbers visible. It caught the diner's fluorescent light and threw it back like a mirror.

"This is also yours," he said and then slid it across the table. "It's a black card, and it has unlimited credit, which is already in your name with a corporate account.” 

Ryan panned his gaze at the rectangular structure as if he didn't know what to do with it.

“Use it for whatever you need." Harrison's voice broke through his thought. “Clothes, shelter, transportation, anything. The will reading is tomorrow at 10 AM at Aether headquarters. You need to look like the owner of a billion-dollar company, not someone who crawled out of a grave three days ago."

Ryan stared at the card.

A few hours ago, he'd been pulling himself out of a hole full of corpses with nothing attached to his name. Now he held unlimited wealth in his hand.

The irony wasn't lost on him. It sat in his chest like a cold stone.

Harrison watched him for a moment. Then his expression shifted. Something darker flickered behind his eyes.

"One more thing," he said quietly. "Before tomorrow, you need to know something about your family."

Ryan's eyes snapped up. "My mother's dead, my father's dead, and there's no one else."

Harrison's face didn't change. "There's your sister.