2026-01-05 16:33:46The taxi crawled through Meridian City's morning traffic. Kai Walker sat in the back seat, watching the skyline shift from shabby mid-rise buildings to gleaming corporate towers.
The driver, a middle-aged man with graying temples, kept glancing at the rearview mirror. Finally, curiosity got the better of him.
"Zenith Corporation, you said?" He eyed Kai's plain black t-shirt and faded jeans. "You work there?"
"No."
"Job interview?"
"Not exactly. Just going to take a look." Kai's gaze remained fixed on the approaching skyscraper. "The CEO there works for me."
The driver's chuckle died in his throat. His eyes flicked to the mirror again, this time with something between pity and amusement.
Poor delusional kid. Probably watched too many CEO dramas. The driver shook his head internally. Next he'll tell me he's secretly a billionaire.
"Right. Sure he does, kid," the driver said aloud, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "And I'm best friends with the mayor. You need me to drop you at a hospital instead? Get your head checked?"
Kai didn't respond.
The driver snorted. "Look, son, I've been driving this cab for twenty years. You know how many kids like you I've seen? Walking into these big buildings thinking they're gonna be somebody? The world doesn't work like that. Those people up there?" He jerked his thumb toward Zenith Tower. "They'd step over you without even noticing."
Silence filled the cab for the rest of the drive.
When they pulled up to Zenith Tower's entrance, the driver just took the fare and drove off, shaking his head.
Kai stood on the sidewalk, tilting his head back to take in the full height of the building. Fifty-three floors of dark glass and steel. Ten years ago, Master Donovan had set this up for him. Now, Vincent had turned it into something magnificent.
He straightened his shoulders and walked through the revolving doors.
The lobby was a cathedral of marble and chrome. Water features trickled along one wall. Abstract sculptures dotted the space. Men and women in expensive suits moved with purpose, their footsteps clicking against polished floors.
Kai made it three steps before a voice stopped him.
"Excuse me, sir?"
The receptionist looked up from her desk. She was young, professional, with dark hair pulled into a neat bun. "Can I help you?"
"I need to see Vincent Shaw."
Her smile tightened. Around them, several people in the lobby turned to look. A businessman in a three-piece suit paused mid-stride. Two women near the elevator bank stopped their conversation.
"Mr. Shaw?" The receptionist's voice rose slightly. "Do you have an appointment?"
"No. But if you call him and tell him I'm here, he'll come down."
Whispers rippled through the lobby.
"—did he just say Vincent Shaw would come down—"
"—what's this kid thinking—"
"—probably doesn't even know who he's talking about—"
The receptionist forced a polite smile. "I'm sorry, but Mr. Shaw is extremely busy. Without an appointment, he won't see anyone. If you'd like to submit a formal request through our website—"
"Just call him," Kai interrupted quietly. "Tell him Kai Walker is in the lobby."
“Sir, I really wish I could, but..." Her voice held genuine regret, like she actually wanted to help but her hands were tied. "That's not how this works. Mr. Shaw has protocols. I could lose my job if I—”
"He will for me."
A businessman let out a short snort, and the whispers in the room grew louder.
The receptionist reached for her phone.
"Ms. Park."
A woman’s voice sliced through the lobby—smooth but firm, carrying unmistakable authority.
Every head turned. The crowd immediately straightened, several people offering hasty greetings.
"Good morning, Ms. Hwang—"
"Ms. Hwang, wonderful to see you—"
The woman who approached was tall, probably in her early thirties, with sharp features. Her burgundy suit was perfectly tailored, her heels adding another three inches to her already impressive height. She moved with the confidence of someone who knew exactly how much power she wielded.
Claire Hwang's gaze swept the scene and landed on Kai.
"What's going on here, Ms. Park?"
The receptionist looked visibly relieved. "This young man is insisting on seeing Mr. Shaw without an appointment. I was just explaining—"
"I see." Claire's attention fixed on Kai. She looked him up and down. "And you are?"
"Kai Walker. I need to speak with Vincent Shaw."
"Mr. Shaw doesn't take walk-in meetings." Claire's voice was cold. "Particularly not with unscheduled visitors."
"He'll make an exception."
Claire's expression hardened. She turned to Ms. Park, her voice rising just enough to carry across the lobby.
"Is Mr. Shaw someone you can see just because you want to? Should we start letting every person off the street demand his time? Today it's him, tomorrow it's someone else, what about the day after? Ms. Park, if you can't handle basic screening procedures, perhaps you'd be better suited to working in the warehouse!"
Ms. Park's face flushed. "I'm sorry, Ms. Hwang. I was just—"
"I'll handle this." Claire turned back to Kai. "Young man, I suggest you leave now. Be sensible. Walk out that door with your dignity intact."
Kai didn't move.
Claire's eyes narrowed. "The security here isn't just for show, don't make this difficult."
Kai remained where he stood.
Claire's patience snapped. She gestured sharply to the security guards positioned near the walls. "Security! Teach this man a lesson."
Three guards in dark uniforms moved forward. Their hands rested on their belts, near their weapons. The crowd pulled out their phones, some could barely suppress their excitement.
A jolt of shock rippled through the lobby. This was the kind of drama people would talk about for weeks.
Kai's expression didn't change. He stood calm and composed, his body shifting slightly as he prepared to move.
"STOP!"
The voice exploded through the lobby like a gunshot. Everyone froze.
Vincent Shaw stood by the elevators, his face pale with shock, then flushed with fury. His hand was raised, commanding absolute attention.
"Everyone," he said, his voice carrying across the marble floor. "Stop. Now."
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Chapter 278
Marcus was nine now, tall enough to reach the low branch of the tree outside the kitchen window without being lifted, something Kai still hadn’t quite adjusted to, the sight of his son reaching for a branch that used to require a boost. They were raking the same leaves that fell every year from the same tree, a job neither of them particularly loved and both of them did anyway, every October, without much discussion about whether it needed doing.Lila had gone inside twenty minutes earlier to start dinner, leaving them to it the way she usually did, and the yard had settled into the particular quiet of two people working side by side without needing to fill every minute with talk. Kai liked that about raking with him now. Marcus had stopped needing constant conversation to feel comfortable in the silence, had grown into the kind of quiet that didn’t need managing.“Dad,” Marcus said, not looking up from his own pile, rake dragging steady across the grass. “What was the proposal.”“Wha
Chapter 277
Constance had told him, on the bench outside the hospital, that there would be something coming to him eventually, not soon, not on any schedule she’d name, and that he should let it come in its own time instead of asking her about it again. He’d agreed to that, mostly because arguing with her about timing had never once worked in his favor. He hadn’t meant to count the weeks. For the first month he genuinely didn’t, busy enough with Priya’s rollout and the last of the season’s harvest that the promise sat quietly in the back of his mind without demanding attention.By week seven he’d started counting without quite admitting to himself that he was doing it.The package arrived on a Tuesday, plain padded envelope, no return address, his name in handwriting he recognized instantly even though he’d only seen it a handful of times, on margin notes in old documents, on the single page she’d signed for him once before. Eleven weeks exactly, though he only did the math after he’d already ope
Chapter 276
Constance announced her retirement in an email three sentences long, sent to a distribution list of exactly four people, no subject line flourish, no preamble, just the fact of it stated as plainly as she stated everything else that mattered.Kai read it twice at his desk before he fully absorbed what it actually said, and immediately began, in his head, planning something larger, a proper send off, the board room, catered food, a chance for the whole Institute to say what her thirty years had actually meant to the place. He called her within the hour to start arranging it.She cut him off before he’d gotten more than two sentences into the idea.“No.”“You haven’t even heard what I’m proposing.”“I don’t need to hear it. I already know the shape of it, and the answer is no.” Her voice carried none of the frailty of the hospital months earlier, sharp and entirely certain, the version of her he’d first met eighteen months ago. “I want a Tuesday afternoon in Archives. Coffee. Nothing el
Chapter 275
A year and a half in, Dahl still ran his corner of the Materials Lab exactly the way he’d run it from the beginning, technically compliant, spiritually untouched. Kai stopped by that October mostly out of habit, not expecting anything to have shifted, and found what he always found, review documentation filled out completely, correctly, on time, with all the warmth of a man filing paperwork he considered beneath him.“Everything’s in order,” Dahl said, not looking up from his bench.“I can see that.”“Then I assume you’re not here to lecture me.”“I’m not here to lecture you,” Kai said. “I stopped doing that about a year ago. I noticed it wasn’t working.”Dahl glanced up at that, something almost like amusement crossing his face before it disappeared again. “Took you long enough.”“You do the review. You do it correctly. You’ve never once missed a deadline or fudged a number.”“So what’s the complaint.”“There isn’t one,” Kai said, and meant it more than he expected to when he said it
Chapter 274
The flight out was quiet, Priya running through note cards she’d clearly written and rewritten a dozen times, Kai reading in the seat beside her and doing his best not to look like he was watching her do it.“You don’t have to sit in the back,” she said, somewhere over Ohio, not looking up from the cards. “You could sit up front. It would probably look more supportive.”“I’m not here to look supportive,” Kai said. “I’m here to be the person you can’t quite forget is in the room and also can’t lean on. Those are different jobs. The back does both better than the front.”“That’s a strange kind of support.”“It’s the only kind that’s actually useful today.”The room, when they got there, was smaller than the consortium’s glass conference room, a department library at one of the five institutions, maybe twenty people arranged around a long table with the slightly skeptical posture of people who’d been told about a framework and hadn’t yet decided whether to believe in it. Kai took a seat
Chapter 273
Lila had the folding tables set up before Kai had even finished his coffee, dragging them out from the garage while the morning was still cool enough to make the work easy.“You could’ve waited for me,” Kai said, coming out to grab the other end of the second table.“You were slow,” she said. “The tomatoes weren’t going to wait for you either.”Marcus was already at the end of the driveway when they got the tables positioned, arranging baskets in rows with the same seriousness he brought to everything in the garden these days. He’d grown a full head since the frost, since the row he’d insisted on choosing himself the winter before, and something about the way he stood now, steady, sure of his own hands, made Kai stop for a second just to watch him work.“What’s the sign say,” Kai asked, though he could already read it from where he stood.“FREE, TAKE WHAT YOU NEED,” Marcus said, holding it up like he expected an argument.“Lila mentioned you two had a discussion about a donation jar.”
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