2025-07-29 22:41:10The air in Emma Robbins’ office was thick with tension, the scent of fresh coffee mingling with the sharp edge of designer perfume. The sleek lounge, with its glass table and cream leather sofa, felt like a courtroom, the three women—Emma, Stella, and Tracy—staring at Ethan Northstrum as if he were an intruder.
Ethan’s brows lifted in slow realization—this woman in the tailored pantsuit, sharp eyes, and commanding presence… was her.
The pretty lady from last night. The one he saved from Cobra and his men. Now turns out to be the same lady he spent the night with—the CEO, Emma Robbins.
Emma, on the other hand, looked like her soul had just left her body.
Her worst nightmare, standing tall and composed right in her office.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, her voice tight with disbelief and dread.
Her friends, Tracy and Stella, turned to her instantly. “You know him?” Tracy asked, puzzled.
“Wait… Emma?” Stella chimed in. “Is he—?”
Before Emma could respond, Jennifer the PA stepped forward, but Ethan answered first, cutting clean through the awkward silence.
“I brought something back,” he said calmly, holding out the envelope. “Something you forgot last night.”
Tracy’s jaw dropped. “Last night?” She gasped, eyes darting to Emma. “Is he the guy you had—?”
Before she could finish, Stella’s voice came through sharp. She had already scanned Ethan from top to toe—clothing, shoes, demeanor—and dismissed him without hesitation.
“Impossible,” she scoffed. “Emma wouldn’t touch someone like him. Not when she has someone like Danny De Angelis begging for her attention.”
Danny, heir to a telecom empire, was Sun Industrial City’s golden bachelor, his $25 billion fortune a beacon.
Tracy shot back, “Then how do you explain him being here?”
The two began arguing while Emma remained stiff, her face betraying internal chaos. It was all too much—too loud, too fast, too damn real.
“Enough!” Emma snapped.
The room silenced.
She snatched the envelope from Ethan’s hand and tore it open. Her eyes scanned the documents—yes, they were hers. The Enzogrande Corporation proposal she’d forgotten in the whirlwind of last night.
She lowered the papers slightly and looked at Ethan again.
“Thank you,” she muttered, tone stiff, pride barely letting her speak.
Stella’s curiosity was piqued again. “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Ethan Northstrum.”
Emma’s face twitched. Before her friends could pull this in the wrong direction, she cut through the tension herself.
“Yes. He’s the guy I had a one-night stand with.”
Silence fell again. But this time, it was louder.
Ethan stood calm, his excitement hidden—he’d just learned the damsel he saved from Cobra was the same CEO he’d woken beside, a woman of power and prestige.
Tracy blinked several times in disbelief. Jennifer let out a soft “oh my God.” Stella just stared.
“You what?” Tracy asked slowly.
Emma exhaled, bracing herself.
“Tracy,” Stella whispered, “please tell me she’s joking. Emma, please tell me you were at least drunk enough not to know what you were doing.”
“I was drunk,” Emma admitted coldly, avoiding Ethan’s gaze.
Tracy’s jaw clenched. Her CEO instincts kicking in. “Okay. Mr. Northstrum,” she began sharply, crossing her legs and leaning back with judgment in her eyes, “Tell us—what do you do for a living? What cars do you drive? Where do you live? What companies do you own?”
Her questions were a checklist, her $300 million fashion empire sharpening her tone.
“Tracy…” Emma warned.
Emma knew her friends and the kind of world they all exist in. Wealth, status, power, and influence ruled. Tracy, CEO of a $300 million fashion empire.
And Stella, managing director of a top bank in the city, matched Tracy’s net worth and shared her obsession with social rank.
Ethan’s plain clothes screamed nobody to them, a stark contrast to Danny de Angelis’ tailored suits and private jets.
But Tracy wasn’t done. “Because if you’re going to casually sleep with the most powerful woman under 30 in this city, we deserve to know if you’re a billionaire prince in disguise or a regular guy with good hair and lucky timing.”
Ethan paused for a beat. Then, with zero drama or hesitation, he replied:
“I have no car. No house. No job. I just got out of prison yesterday.”
Gasps. Sharp, short, painful.
Even Emma flinched. Her heart sank deeper, her shame a chokehold.
An ex-convict?
Her mistake wasn’t just a drunken fling—it was a catastrophe.
Ethan watched their reactions, their disgust a mirror to Fort-tight’s early doubters.
If only they knew—AMEN, the Almighty Master Ethan Northstrum, who’d tamed mafia lords, advised presidents, and held a $33 trillion empire in his pocket.
One call could reverse Emma’s Enzogrande failure. One call could fulfill all their heart desires.
Danny de Angelis? He and his family would tremble before Ethan.
One push of a button in a device he had in his pocket, the entire military might of the country would be summoned to his location.
But their disdain amused him too much to reveal it.
“You’re… a what?” Jennifer echoed.
“A former inmate,” Ethan replied calmly. “Five years.”
No one spoke. The silence this time was heavier. Judging. Crushing.
Jennifer took a small step back like he was contagious. “Ms. Emma…” she murmured. “You had sex with an ex-convict?”
Emma’s heart sank deeper. She hadn’t looked up once. She could feel the weight of everyone’s disgust. All of it. Her mistake, now a live, breathing reality.
Jennifer circled Ethan, inspecting him like a threat. “Should I call security?” she asked. “Maybe he has a record. Maybe he’s trying to blackmail you or—”
“Wait,” Tracy interrupted. “Let’s not panic. Ethan…” she turned with a sharp smile, “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Ethan said. “Just came to return what wasn’t mine.”
Stella leaned into Emma. “Girl… you’re worth half a billion. You could’ve had your pick of anyone. And now you’ve slept with someone who just walked out of prison. Do you know how many billionaires would offer their entire fortunes just for one night with you?”
Emma said nothing. The shame was too much. Too heavy. Too consuming.
She sank into the sofa, her face burning, her mind replaying the night—harassed by Cobra’s thugs, saved by someone she couldn’t recall, then waking beside Ethan.
If her savior had been her fling, it might’ve softened the blow, at least she could boast of his might. But an ex-convict? She cursed her blurred memory.
Tracy rolled her eyes. “How about this—we give him a little payoff. Maybe fifty grand. He signs an NDA. Walks away. Never speaks of this again.”
Stella nodded, her eyes sharp. “Agreed. He’s fresh out of prison, broke, desperate. Probably took photos, videos—blackmail material.”
She smirked at Ethan. “Congrats, you lived every man’s dream—You had sex with the beautiful Emma Robbins.”
“Or,” Jennifer added darkly, “we lock him up and force him to sign a confession. Maybe even get him beaten a little—just to be sure. He’s an opportunist, saw Emma drunk and pounced.”
Ethan remained silent through it all, letting them unload every ounce of their assumptions.
They thought he was a scavenger. Their logic was sound—another man might’ve schemed, blackmailed, cashed out.
They didn’t know he was the A.M.E.N.—the man behind empires, the shadow benefactor of their idols, the future heir to the richest private estate in the country.
And he smiled—not outwardly, but within—because their foolishness was protection. Let them think he was beneath them. Let them cast their judgments. He didn’t need to explain himself to anyone.
“I don’t want your money,” he said at last. “I’m leaving. You won’t see me again.”
He turned and headed for the door.
Jennifer rushed forward and blocked it with her body. “You’re not going anywhere until we make sure you’re not a threat!”
Tracy nodded. “We need guarantees.”
Ethan remained calm, his expression unreadable. “Suit yourself.”
Back at the table, Emma finally gathered enough strength to flip through the rest of the documents in the envelope… just to confirm all was intact.
And then she froze.
Her breath caught.
There—beneath the contract proposal—was something she hadn’t expected to see.
A document with a red wax seal.
Marriage Certificate.
Her hands trembled as she read it.
Issued by: Harmony Creek Local Registry, Outskirts of Sun Industrial City.
Date: Yesterday. Time: 11:06 PM.
Bride: Emma Jane Robbins
Groom: Ethan Northstrum
Both names signed. Clearly.
Her own signature mocked her from the paper.
She looked up, eyes wide, her voice shaking.
“Ethan… come back.”
He turned at the door.
She handed the certificate to him.
“What the hell is this?” she asked.
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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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