THE KASTELLAN HEIR.

“Ronan, sign it! You don’t have a choice anymore!” Margaux, Ronan’s mother-in-law, snapped as she slapped a piece of paper down on his desk hard enough to rattle his coffee cup.Ronan’s face drained of color. Staring at that document, his heart didn’t just beat, it pounded against his chest like something trying to break free. His eyes flicked toward the door of his cramped office, which had swung open. The space was barely more than a cubicle on the ground floor of the huge corporate building, and the scene Margaux and her son were causing had already pulled in a crowd.“Please, not here!” Ronan whispered sharply, his voice tight with panic. Neither of them moved an inch. “Come on, Margaux, don’t do this at my job.”She glared at him, her lip curling with contempt. “Did you think we’d just drop this? We’ve chased you around long enough playing this game. Now sign the divorce papers and let my daughter go from this awful marriage right now!”Ronan knew in that moment his already fragi

Ronan stood still in the rain, holding his small bag close to his chest. He looked around the empty street, but no one else was there. The old man was watching him closely.“Get an umbrella over him now!” the old man called out over the sound of the storm.A guard appeared beside Ronan almost instantly. The rain stopped hitting him as a wide black umbrella opened above his head.“Let’s get out of this rain, young master,” the old man said, his voice calm but firm.Ronan shook his head and stepped back into the rain. “Young master? I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know why you keep calling me that. You’ve got the wrong person. My name is Ronan. I’m nobody. I’m not who you’re looking for.”The old man didn’t seem bothered. He walked closer, his boots splashing through the puddles. He grabbed Ronan’s wrist, his grip firmer than expected. “Let’s talk in the car. You shouldn’t be standing out here in this weather. Trust me, Ronan, you’re safe with us. Safer than you’ve been in a long

The change was anything but slow. His grandfather had pushed hard, forcing Ronan to soak up decades of business knowledge and family history in a brutal two-week span. Ronan finally understood the rush. Two weeks after the night that flipped his old life upside down, he stood in the private garden once more. But he wasn’t there to grieve his parents this time. A fresh grave sat there, the dirt still dark and loose.The last of the Kastellans was gone. Even though their time together had been short, the fierce, caring way the old man had treated him gave Ronan something he’d never felt before: a sense of belonging. His grandfather had spent his final days shaping him into a weapon.This was Ronan’s empire now. The company, the influence, the sheer, frightening weight of the Kastellan name belonged to him. Still, staring at the gravestone, a hollow ache settled in his chest. His grandfather’s last words echoed through the quiet garden, a kind of mantra for the man he now had to become.

Preston and Vivienne climbed out of the vehicle, but their gaze skipped past Ronan entirely at first. They were fixed on the machine parked a short distance off. Ronan had traded the Lamborghini for something rarer still, pulled straight from the Kastellan collection: a Pagani Huayra.Barely a hundred of these existed on the planet, each one worth millions. It didn’t look like a car so much as a low, sleek predator crouched and ready to strike.“Man, would you look at that thing!” Preston blurted, unable to hide the greed in his stare.“Don’t dwell on what we’ll never have, sweetheart,” Vivienne said, resting a hand on his sleeve. “We’ll only end up wanting it.”They finally pulled their attention off the car, and that’s when they noticed Ronan standing there. He leaned casually against the porch rail, wearing a calm, unsettling look. He’d caught every second of them gawking at his possession, and he savored it fully.“Would you look at that, the golden couple,” Margaux said, her tone

Ronan felt some relief that the board meeting wrapped up faster than he’d braced for. Every executive around that huge, round table had looked at him like he didn’t belong. Their surprise was obvious: the new heir to the Kastellan family was way younger, and looked far less important, than they’d pictured.The capital office was a huge glass tower rising over the whole city. With each new building he visited, his sense of amazement grew stronger. The second the meeting ended, he stood. A man with a perfectly trimmed white beard and matching white hair caught his hand in a tight, dry shake.“Care to join us tonight for a small get-together we’re throwing just for you, Mr. Kastellan?” the man asked. His pale green eyes crinkled with a polished grin. “It would mean a lot to have you there this evening.”A party thrown in his honor? His confidence, bruised for years by Vivienne’s put-downs, buzzed with a new, dangerous energy. He kept his cool, nodding slowly. “I’ll try to stop by, Mr…?”