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Home / Urban / THE RETURN OF THE FORGOTTEN SON / CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 50
Author: JAXON STEELE
last update2025-10-28 21:48:29

The docks smelled like old money and new rot. For a while after the shooting, Adrian moved through the city with his senses sharpened to the size of a ledger line small, exact, counting failures and the price of each. The child’s cry had followed him like a promise: an insistence that the world would not be allowed to forget what had been done in its name.

They could not stay in safe houses forever. The city was too small, too porous. Claire insisted on movement and ritual: different cars, staggered departures, no predictable routes. Lucas built short-term caches where devices could be swapped. Marta watched faces in crowds and carried for them a kind of fierce, discreet disapproval for the men who made their living in the gray. The Professor slept in the day and woke up the last hour before dusk, compiling notes as if writing a will.

Adrian’s wounds ached in the light. He slept in fits. When he closed his eyes, the other Adrian’s silhouette visited like a slide show: the salute, the
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  • CHAPTER 107

    THE WOMAN WHO BUILT THE LIESThe flight to Berlin was silent—too silent. The cabin lights were dimmed, casting a tired amber hue over everything. Adrian sat by the window, his jaw clenched as the clouds rolled beneath them. The reflection of the stormed city was still in his eyes, echoing like ghosts. Elena sat across from him, her fingers fidgeting against her knees, restless, afraid, but unwilling to let it show.Between them, a single file lay open on the small table. A name scrawled in black ink across the top: Clara Weiss.The woman who had built the foundation of his nightmare. The woman who had rewritten him.Elena finally broke the silence. “You haven’t slept.”Adrian didn’t look up. “I can’t.”“Because of her?”He let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, but too hollow to carry warmth. “Because of me.”She watched him carefully. There was something fragile about him now—not weak, but human in a way she’d never seen before. The man who once ruled boardrooms and enemi

  • CHAPTER 106

    THE GHOST IN THE SYSTEMThe storm hadn’t stopped. It clawed at the city with restless fingers, the wind shrieking against the penthouse windows as if the sky itself wanted in. Adrian sat at the edge of the desk, the dim lamplight carving lines of exhaustion across his face. His hands were steady, but his eyes—they betrayed him. They carried the weight of betrayal, blood, and questions that refused to die.Elena stood a few feet away, arms folded tightly around herself, her clothes still damp from the chaos. She watched him in silence as he connected the black drive Dominic had given him to his encrypted terminal. The screen came alive with static, then symbols—lines of code she didn’t understand, but which made Adrian’s expression tighten.“What is it?” she whispered.He didn’t answer immediately. His fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard, breaking through firewalls and security layers that should’ve been impossible to bypass. Every click echoed like a countdown.Finally, the screen

  • CHAPTER 104

    THE CONFESSION THAT CHANGED EVERYTHINGThe clock ticked past midnight, but the air in the penthouse refused to rest. The rain pressed against the windows in a steady rhythm — almost like it was warning them that time was running out.Elena sat on the edge of the sofa, fingers locked together, her eyes lost somewhere beyond the glass. Adrian paced behind her, one hand on his jaw, the other clutching his phone. It wasn’t ringing anymore, but the memory of Dominic’s voice still burned through the silence between them.“He’s alive,” Adrian said finally, almost to himself. “After all these years—”Elena turned toward him, her voice small. “You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”He stopped pacing. His eyes met hers — sharp, tired, and trembling with something she couldn’t name. “You don’t understand what this means.”“I understand enough,” she said quietly. “It means the past isn’t finished with us.”The words hung in the room like smoke.Adrian rubbed the back of his neck, the

  • CHAPTER 103

    WHAT REMAINS BETWEEN USMorning came slow, gray, and heavy with the kind of stillness that made the air itself feel fragile. The city outside Elena’s window began to stir — faint horns, the low hum of the waking streets — but inside her apartment, time seemed reluctant to move forward.Elena stood by the counter, her hands wrapped around a mug of untouched coffee. Steam curled upward, soft and ghostlike, then vanished into nothing. Adrian was sitting at the table behind her, his elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed somewhere distant — maybe on her reflection in the glass, maybe on his own regret.Neither had spoken since the night before. They’d said enough to change everything, yet too little to know what would come next.Elena finally turned, her voice barely above a whisper. “Do you ever think about how it could’ve been?”He looked up, startled by the softness of her tone. “How what could’ve been?”“Us.” The word fell between them like something sacred and broken all at once. “If we

  • CHAPTER 102

    THE WEIGHT OF SILENCEThe sound of rain had long faded, but it lingered in Adrian’s memory — a rhythm he couldn’t escape, like the pulse of something unresolved. By the time he returned to the city, dawn had risen pale and colorless over the skyline. The streets were still wet, reflecting fractured glimpses of his car as it moved between empty intersections.He drove without music. The hum of the engine was enough, and silence — true silence — felt almost sacred after the storm inside him.When he stopped, it wasn’t at his penthouse, not at the office, not at any of the places he was supposed to belong. Instead, his car rolled to a slow halt in front of Elena’s building.He didn’t plan it. He didn’t even know why he was there until the engine stopped and he saw her window — lights off, curtains drawn, a faint shadow behind them. Maybe she hadn’t slept either.For a long moment, he just sat there, fingers tightening around the steering wheel. He could leave. He should leave. He’d said

  • CHAPTER 10

    ASHES DON’T LIEThe night stretched endless, a black expanse stitched with the faint shimmer of dying stars. Adrian drove without direction for hours, his headlights cutting through the mist-slicked highway like thin blades of light. Every mile carried him farther from the city — from the boardrooms, the headlines, the ruin he had set in motion. Yet no matter how far he went, the ghosts followed.By the time he reached the outskirts, dawn was only a smear of gray on the horizon. The place waited for him at the end of a narrow dirt road — the house that once belonged to his father. Or what was left of it.The fire years ago had taken everything. The structure still stood, but only barely — a skeleton of charred beams and fractured walls. Moss had begun to creep over the ruins, softening the memory of violence with time’s quiet patience. The air smelled of wet earth and decay.He stepped out of the car and stood in the silence, the cold wind wrapping around him like a warning. His breat

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