2025-07-29 22:36:17The soft fingers of morning light crept through the cream curtains and gently kissed the edges of the king-sized bed. The warmth stirred the figure lying there—Emma Robbins, the same lady from the club, her face partially buried in a pillow.
She groaned softly and stretched her arms, still wrapped in a fog of exhaustion. Her head pounded. Her throat was dry. Her body ached in ways she couldn’t explain. The events of last night were buried beneath layers of alcohol-induced haze. She had barely begun moving when her fingertips brushed against something—skin.
Warm. Firm. Human.
Her eyes flew open. She turned slowly, dread creeping up her spine.
A man lay beside her. Deep asleep. Peaceful. And very much naked.
Emma let out a half-scream, half-gasp as she scrambled off the bed, stumbling and nearly falling before catching herself. Her wide eyes scanned the room. Her clothes were everywhere—her red dress draped over the foot of the bed, her shoes beside the minibar, and her expensive Prada purse lying open on the floor like it had been tossed carelessly.
She was also naked.
A cold shiver of humiliation raced across her skin as she snatched the bed cover to wrap around herself. She blinked rapidly, her breathing shallow, heart racing.
“What... what the hell happened?” she whispered to herself.
She stumbled into the bathroom, slammed the door shut, and leaned against it, gasping.
Who is he? How did I get here? Her mind raced, grasping for memories, but the night was a fog, fragmented and cruel.
The marble cold against her feet, and locked the door, her breath ragged. She leaned against the sink, staring into the mirror—her mascara smudged, her lips pale, her eyes haunted.
The night’s pieces flickered: arriving at the Electric Viper, her heart raw from losing the Enzogrande Corporation contract, ordering “something strong, keep it coming.”
The waiter’s hesitant warning, her stubborn insistence—she’d drowned her failure in liquor.
But after? A blank.
She looked down at herself in the mirror, inspecting the subtle signs. There was no doubt about it. Her body had shared something it hadn’t shared in a long time. A man had touched her—last night.
Unprotected.
Her mouth went dry. “You stupid, stupid girl,” she whispered, staring at her reflection. She banged her palm against the wall.
Panic settled in like a thick fog. Who was he? What did they do exactly? Did he even know who she was? Did she scream his name? Or did he just... take her?
Splashing water on her face, she dressed quickly, the red gown clinging to her like a reminder of her lapse.
She cracked open the bathroom door carefully. He was still there. Still asleep. Arms spread like a peaceful soldier finally at rest.
She watched him silently. His features were impossibly symmetrical. Chiseled jaw. Thick lashes. Soft, almost boyish lips. A face too perfect for the chaos he carried behind it.
And somehow... infuriatingly calm.
“I’m panicking, and you’re sleeping like a damn prince,” she muttered.
Her gaze drifted down his lean form, and she winced. Yup. No doubt they did it.
For a moment, she paused, struck by his beauty, a fleeting thought: If this mistake leads to a child, at least they’d be gorgeous.
She shook it off, horrified. Pregnant by a stranger?
He didn’t even look rich—too plain, too ordinary in his black shirt and jeans tossed over a chair.
Gathering her things as quietly as she could, she tiptoed out of the room, still trying not to wake him. By the time she reached her sleek Mercedes in the parking lot, her heart was pounding. Shame. Confusion. Guilt. And a tiny grain of curiosity buried in it all.
Who the hell was that guy?
---
Meanwhile, back in the room…
The same morning sun that had roused Emma now fell across Ethan’s face, lighting up the features of a man unbothered by the world.
His eyes fluttered open.
He sat up and looked around.
The room was pristine—too pristine. Certainly not where he’d fallen asleep last night. He blinked and reached for his head.
Then it came back to him in fragments.
The club. Cobra. The chaos. The fight.
The lady.
He smiled faintly. So that wasn’t a dream.
Then came the alcohol. The lounge. Drinks. More drinks. Laughter. Blurry laughter.
Then… this hotel room.
He looked down and noticed his own bare body. “Ah,” he whispered. “A one-night stand?”
He chuckled. “It’s been a while.”
It was still surreal, adjusting to a bed that wasn’t made of metal, blankets that weren’t government-issue, and silence that wasn’t enforced by fear.
Five years in Fort-tight Maximum Prison had changed his definition of comfort. But this? This was... nice.
In Fort-tight, he’d been the Almighty Master Ethan Northstrum—AMEN to those who bowed—but even his dominion hadn’t softened the prison’s bite.
Still, he couldn’t remember who the woman had been. Mela, the waitress? The woman in red? Someone else?
It didn’t matter now; no foul, no guilt.
He sighed and lay back again. savoring the mattress’s embrace, the city’s hum a distant pulse through the window.
But not for long.
By 10 AM, Ethan rose, his body refreshed but his mind sharp.
The bathroom’s marble gleamed, the shower’s hot spray washing away the night’s excess.
He dressed—black shirt, jeans, the supreme black card a quiet weight in his pocket—and sat at the room’s oak desk, his thoughts turning to purpose.
Freedom was new, raw, a canvas to paint.
Settling down beckoned—a home, a woman to share it—but his mission burned brighter.
The stolen family relic, auctioned again recently, was his destiny’s key, tied to a legacy he barely knew.
Without it, he was adrift, a king without a crown. Today, he’d start the hunt.
As he stood to leave, his foot nudged something—an envelope, half-hidden under a chair, its contents spilling.
He crouched, picking it up, the paper crisp and official.
Enzogrande Corporation was stamped across it, and his pulse quickened.
His eyebrows lifted.
Matthew Witkov’s company—the richest man in the country, who’d named Ethan heir to his $33 trillion empire.
He smiled at the memory.
Three years ago, in Fort-tight’s cold cell, Matthew had knelt, begging for help. The President had sent him, whispering of Ethan’s power to fix the impossible.
Matthew had come to him—a trillionaire in despair, Enzogrande on the brink of collapse, shareholders about to pull out.
“Help me, Master Ethan. Name your price.”
Ethan didn’t want money. He wanted legacy. And when he gave his instructions, Matthew followed them to the letter.
His advice—strategic, precise—had won Matthew Enzogrande, turning a $50 billion venture into a trillion-dollar titan. Ethan’s lips curved, a rare smile. He’d shaped empires from a prison bunk.
Opening the envelope, he found a contract proposal, its pages dense with figures and terms.
A name caught his eye: Emma Robbins, CEO, Norand Interior Limited.
“Well, well,” he said aloud. “A CEO.”
He leaned back in the chair.
So that’s who she is.
His smile widened, a spark of intrigue. The mystery woman—his one-night stand—was a CEO, not just anyone. Yet, he couldn’t recall her face. “Perhaps, it was the damsel in distress last night?”
The red gown, Prada accessories—her wealth made sense now. “Maybe she is the one,” he thought to himself.
Ethan’s mind raced; she was no ordinary fling. If she proved worthy of him—strong, sharp, a match for his fire—he’d consider her for more than a night.
Marriage, even.
Another document peeked from the envelope, but excitement overtook him. He tucked it into his pocket.
“Emma Robbins,” he whispered to himself.
“Let’s see if you’re worthy of the life I’m about to build.”
He opened the hotel door and stepped out into the morning sun.
The hunt—for legacy, destiny, and maybe love—had begun.
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Chapter 207: Visions like memories
Ethan lowered himself onto the woven mat, the coarse fibers a tactile anchor in the surreal chamber. He crossed his legs, rested his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes. The weight of the stone room, the scent of earth, the profound silence—it all pressed in, not as an assault, but as an invitation to dissolve.This was the same thing he had run away from back then that he was now finding himself performing again.But what choice had he got? He needed to complete this before he could think of facing Nathan for the sake of Emma and his unborn baby.“Breathe into the stillness,” the Grand Physician’s voice murmured, not from across the room, but seemingly from within the stillness itself. “The Quieting is not an erasure. It is a re-ordering. You will see the tapestry of your life. The threads of joy, of pain, of choice and consequence. Do not cling to them. Observe them as patterns in the weave. You will have visions. Keep an open mind. The mind that judges is the mind that suffers
Chapter 206: The sanctuary of stillness
They passed through corridors Ethan vaguely remembered, places of instruction and meditation. But the Grand Physician led him deeper than he had ever gone before, to a part of the compound that felt less like a building and more like a natural cave system that had been gently shaped. The air grew cooler, the scent of stone and damp earth replacing the incense.Finally, they entered a circular chamber. The ceiling was a natural dome of rock, with a single shaft of muted light falling from a hidden opening far above, illuminating the center of the room. In that pool of light was a simple mat of woven reeds. Around the perimeter, in deep shadow, stood nine smooth stone pillars, each carved with a single, complex symbol that seemed to shift in the low light.This was the Sanctuary of Stillness. The air itself felt thick, heavy with intention, as if sound went to die here.The Grand Physician gestured to the mat. "The place of unraveling."Ethan moved toward it, the gravity of the room pre
Chapter 205: The ‘Quieting’ Ritual
As Ethan drove to the Grand Physician’s the following morning, his hands tight on the wheel, his mind was a million miles away—or rather, decades.He wasn't navigating by GPS, but by muscle memory of a journey taken in a different life. The towering pines blurred into a green-grey wall, and with them, the present dissolved.“The focus is not to feel nothing, Ethan. That is the crude aim of a brute. The aim is to feel everything… and choose which sensation becomes action. The rest, you relegate to a silent room and lock the door.”The Grand Physician’s voice, dry as ancient parchment, echoed in his mind. He could see the austere training hall, the smell of sandalwood and cold stone. He’d been young, arrogant, flush with the early successes of the skills he’d already learned. The ‘Quieting’ had been presented as the final masterwork, the capstone. Not a new weapon, but the forging of an impregnable armory for the mind itself.And he’d walked away just before he could even get to underst
Chapter 204: Back To The Grand Physician
Ethan didn’t answer for a long moment. He pushed back from the desk, the chair rolling soundlessly on the thick rug. He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to the room, his silhouette tense against the glittering, indifferent cityscape.“I know my brother,” Ethan said, his voice hollow, stripped of all its usual command. “I know that Elizabeth Robbins would swallow broken glass before calling me for help. The fact that she did…” He bowed his head, a hand coming up to press against the cold glass. “It means she has exhausted every other option.”Ethan gave a single, jerky nod. The weight of it—the dual loss, the compounded violation—seemed to press him physically into the floor. “My brother understands currency. He understands leverage. He has just acquired the only two things in this universe I would trade the crown for. Not that I would ever be given the choice.”He strode back to the desk, not with purpose, but with a frantic, caged energy. He picked up the dead phone, s
Chapter 203: What do we do now?
Elizabeth’s phone slipped from her nerveless fingers, thudding softly onto the carpet. She didn’t hear it. All she heard was the roaring silence of a timeline that ended at seven o’clock.She was leaving.Four hours ago.The chill from the balcony was nothing compared to the glacial fear freezing her from the inside out. Every terrible possibility—the kind she’d spent years as a corporate wife learning to suppress—flooded her mind. An accident on the winding coastal road. A mugging in the city garage. Or worse, something deliberate, something linked to the crown, to the viper’s nest Emma had just been thrust into.Her gaze swept the room, landing on the family portrait from a decade ago—Richard’s arm around her, a young, smiling Emma between them. A perfect, painful lie. She was alone. Utterly alone with this terror.And then, unbidden, the most complicated, infuriating face of all surfaced in her mind: Ethan.She recoiled from the thought. Emma’s fury at him had been absolute, scorch
Chapter 202: Four hours ago
"You're operating under the assumption that Ethan and I are still connected. That I am leverage." Emma's voice was cold and sharp. "You're wrong. What happened with my grandfather severed that tie completely. I am done with Ethan. There is no loyalty to exploit, no affection to manipulate. Keeping me here is a pointless risk. Your quarrel is with him. Let me go, and you eliminate a complication. He will still come for you, for the crown. But you won't have an angry, resourceful hostage who has zero stake in his survival cluttering your operation."She delivered the speech with icy precision, every word a calculated move on this new, horrifying board. She was a redundant asset. A liability. She painted the picture with clear, logical strokes.And of course, that was what she thought. There was no point in dragging her into a sibling rivalry that she had no stakes in, and much worse, dragging her unborn child into it as well.Nathan listened, his head tilted. When she finished, he didn'
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