2025-07-29 22:42:16The black BMW pulled into the private lot of Luxe Vault, the most exclusive designer boutique in the city. Its clients were CEOs, celebrity wives, tech moguls, and high-ranking officials—people who knew their way around silk-threaded Italian blazers and six-figure heels.
Ethan stepped out behind Emma and Jennifer, drawing attention the moment they entered. Not because of what he wore—his clothes were plain—but because of how he carried himself. Calm. Unbothered. As though he owned the place.
The shopping began.
Emma walked beside Ethan, scrolling on her phone while the store attendant guided them through suits. Ethan ran his fingers across a navy Armani tux. Sleek. Tailored. The kind of fabric that felt like status itself.
“Perfect cut for your frame,” the attendant smiled. “This piece is limited edition. Forty thousand dollars.”
Before Ethan could say a word, Jennifer stepped in.
“Ah, no. That’s… too much. Bring us something cheap. Under ten grand,” she said with a tight, forced smile.
The attendant blinked, surprised. “Of course… if that’s what you prefer.”
Ethan said nothing. He noticed Emma was too distracted to react.
Soon, the attendant returned with a suit priced just under ten thousand. It looked good—but nothing like the first.
“This is fine,” Jennifer said, inspecting it half-heartedly. “Actually, even cheaper would be better.”
Ethan ignored her and took the suit gently, examining the fabric. Jennifer leaned in close, lowering her voice to a sneer. “Don’t think you’re fooling anyone. You’re an opportunist, using Emma for status.” Her eyes raked his plain clothes, her voice low but cutting. “You’re nothing.”
“Even if you don’t have evil plans, everything about you disgusts me.”
He turned to her, calm as ever. “Why?”
“Look at you,” she hissed. “You’re just… a good-looking nobody. No money. No status. No assets. And let’s not forget—you just left prison.”
He arched a brow. “And that makes me less than others?”
Jennifer smirked. “You’re the most inferior man I’ve ever seen. You shouldn’t be in this place, breathing the same air as us.”
Ethan let out a small chuckle. “You sound like someone who thinks prison defines a man.”
“It does,” she snapped. “In fact, there are people in prison with more influence than you. I bet you were just locked away in one of those small town jails. If you’d been in Fort-tight Maximum Prison, I’d at least have respected your survival instinct. But you? You’d never survive in a place like that.”
Ethan smiled quietly. If only she knew—Fort-tight, the world’s deadliest prison, had bowed to him, its mafia lords and murderers calling him AMEN, the Almighty Master Ethan Northstrum.
He’d ruled its frozen halls for five years, shaped trillion-dollar empires with a word.
But Jennifer didn’t know that. No one did. And he had no plans to tell her.
“Fort-tight, huh?” he said, voice light. “Think I could survive it?”
Jennifer scoffed, mistaking his smile for weakness. “You? You’d be eaten alive.”
She noticed his smirk. “What? You think I’m wrong?”
Before he could reply, Emma stepped in.
“That’s enough, Jennifer.”
Jennifer froze.
“He is still my husband. Temporary or not, he deserves your respect. Don’t forget that.”
Jennifer opened her mouth to argue, but Emma didn’t give her the chance. She turned to the attendant.
“Put that ten-thousand-dollar thing back. Bring us the first one. The forty-thousand-dollar suit. That’s the one I want for my man.”
A slow clap came from behind.
“My man?” a mocking voice echoed.
They all turned.
Strutting through the boutique entrance was Loretta Stanley, in a wine-red designer gown that shimmered with every step. Her golden heels clicked with deliberate elegance. Daughter of the powerful Stanley family, and Emma’s former university coursemate, a rival since their university days, had always thrived on one-upping her..
“Emma Robbins,” Loretta said with fake delight. “Did I just hear you say ‘my man’? That can’t be right.”
“Loretta,” Emma said, forcing a smile, her voice tight. “What are you doing here?”
Loretta’s laugh was light, venomous, her heels clicking as she posed, a hand on her hip. “Shopping, obviously. What else do queens do?”
Emma bit her lip. Classic Loretta—vain and venomous.
Her eyes flicked to Emma, her mock sympathy dripping. “Heard about Enzogrande—such a shame. I came to… console you.” Her smirk betrayed her glee, gloating over Emma’s failure.
Emma’s jaw clenched. “I don’t need your sympathy, Loretta. I’m fine.”
Loretta’s laugh rang out, sharp as glass. “Fine? Sweetheart, last year’s reunion, everyone fawned over your company, that Enzogrande deal. Now? Your firm’s bleeding—fifty million to stay afloat, or the board boots you. Your family’s furious. How’s that fine?”
Her words cut, each a reminder of Emma’s teetering empire, her grandfather’s looming judgment.
Emma’s eyes flashed. “Leave it, Loretta. I’m skipping the reunion this year—focused on saving my company.”
“You shouldn’t,” Loretta giggled. “Nothing to show for yourself anymore.”
She gestured dramatically around the boutique. “Meanwhile, I’ll be attending as a soon-to-be Enzogrande partner. My family’s already in talks.”
Her eyes gleamed, savoring Emma’s pain.
Ethan, silent till now, stepped forward, his voice calm but firm. “Ignore her, Emma. She won’t get that contract.”
Loretta blinked.
Jennifer gasped and looked like she’d seen a ghost. “What did you say?”
Ethan remained composed. “She won’t get it. Simple.”
Jennifer turned to him like she was ready to explode. “Do you know who she is? Her family owns this city. They get what they want—always. You think just saying it means something? You’re just… you’re just… shut up when people above your class are speaking!”
Emma tried to calm the rising tension. “Let it go—”
But Loretta was staring at Ethan now, lips curled into a cruel smile.
“I was wondering who the mutt was,” she said. “But now I know.”
She turned to Emma. “I overheard Jennifer earlier. He’s an exconvict. Unemployed. No background. Nothing to his name.”
She turned back to Ethan. “And now, this little flea thinks he can challenge me? You’re a cockroach I could crush under my heels.”
Ethan’s calm held, his eyes glinting with quiet amusement. Loretta, her family, her boasts—they were ants to him. Enzogrande was his, its $1 trillion empire willed to him by Matthew Witkov, to be announced any moment. One call, and Loretta’s dreams would crumble.
If only she knew that she was the insect to him. The contract she bragged about? He owned it now. She’d be licking boots to get a meeting, and still, he’d deny her.
But he said nothing, his silence enraging her further.
Loretta stepped closer, raising her hand with fire in her eyes, her diamond bracelet flashing. “You dare disrespect me? Let me show you what happens to insolent little rats—”
Her slap was intercepted.
Emma had stepped between them, grabbing Loretta’s wrist.
“Don’t you ever try that again,” Emma warned coldly. “That’s my husband.”
Everyone froze.
Even the store attendant paused in the middle of folding a tie.
Jennifer’s jaw dropped.
Emma defending Ethan—publicly—was a twist no one expected.
Ethan looked at her, a flicker of surprise and something deeper flashing in his eyes. Gratitude. Maybe admiration.
Loretta yanked her hand back and began laughing—loud, mocking, theatrical.
“Husband?!” she cried. “You married him?!”
Her laugh grew louder. “Oh my God. This is too good.”
She turned to Jennifer. “You hear that? Emma Robbins—our legendary campus queen, the golden goddess, Miss Most Likely to Marry a Billionaire—is now married to a… a pauper! A prison reject! My God.”
She wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “Our class reunion this year is going to be historic. I can’t wait to tell everyone.”
She gave Emma one last pitiful look. “From goddess… to gutter. This is the fall of Emma Robbins.”
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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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