2025-07-26 16:30:39The wind howled like a warning across the Goodman Estate, but the mourners only clutched their black coats tighter and turned their tearless faces toward the casket.Richard Goodman,the titan, the tycoon, the tyrant,was finally dead.
A polished mahogany coffin sat beneath the white silk canopy. Gold-trimmed roses lined the velvet, and mourners lined the earth like vultures dressed in Prada.
Press cameras flashed beyond the wrought-iron fence, catching every solemn nod and practiced frown. The scene was perfect.Too perfect.
A black Bentley pulled up to the estate gates, its arrival unnoticed amidst the carefully choreographed grief. But when the door opened, and a tall figure stepped out in a long black coat, everything stopped, Conversations died mid-sentence.
Chins turned slowly, one after another, like dominos falling in a chain of disbelief.And then someone whispered it, like a curse, or a ghost story resurfacing, “Jeffrey. ”His name cracked through the silence like a gunshot.
Jeffrey Goodman hadn’t been seen in six years, Not in the boardroom, Not in the will, Not in the obituaries or society pages he was a ghost, burned from every Goodman record after the infamous fallout with his father and stepmother.
But now, that ghost walked again.He adjusted his cufflinks, the glint of a black obsidian ring flashing briefly in the weak morning light. His jaw was sharper, his presence heavier, as if time hadn’t just aged him,it had forged him.
Zane Goodman, the late Richard’s younger son and now-proclaimed heir, staggered one step backward from the gravesite. “What the hell is he doing here?” Zane hissed.
His mother, Eleanor, didn’t blink. Her red nails curled around the diamond handle of her umbrella. “Hold your ground. ”But Jeffrey didn’t look at either of them. His eyes, cold and cutting, were fixed on the casket.
“Did he die clean?” Jeffrey asked suddenly, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Murmurs broke out. The minister paused, confused.Jeffrey walked forward, slicing the air with each step. He reached the casket and stared at it for a long moment. Then, he pulled a black rose from his coat pocket and dropped it on top.
“I wonder how many of you were already planning his death before he hit the ground,” he said softly.
Gasps followed. Eleanor stepped forward, lips curled. “You weren’t invited,” she said. “You don’t belong here.”
Jeffrey finally turned to face her. “Neither did his killers,” he replied.
Zane lunged forward, rage overtaking reason. “You son of a... Jeffrey moved faster than anyone expected. In one fluid motion, he caught Zane’s wrist mid-swing, twisted it behind his back, and forced him to his knees.
The security guards hesitated. Eleanor raised her hand to stop them. Jeffrey’s grip on Zane tightened “Still weak,” he murmured in Zane’s ear. “All these years, and you’re still the coward hiding behind your mother’s skirts.”
Zane groaned in pain. “You can’t just walk back in here like you own the place!”Jeffrey released him with a shove. Zane fell to the grass.He stood tall again, scanning the crowd. Dozens of eyes darted away from his. Fear. Uncertainty. Recognition.
Jeffrey nodded slightly, satisfied“I’m not here to grieve,” he said. “I’m here for the truth.”
He turned his gaze back to the coffin. “My father didn’t die of natural causes. He was murdered.”
The minister stumbled back. Several guests whispered furiously. One woman clutched her pearls, Eleanor took a step forward. “You have no proof.”
Jeffrey didn’t answer her. Instead, he pulled a small black USB from his pocket and held it between two fingers “This contains video footage from inside the Goodman mansion, Not tampered,Not doctored. Dated two nights before the heart attack.”
A flicker of something passed over Eleanor’s face, Not surprise, fear, Jeffrey smiled. “Daddy didn’t die in his sleep, he died begging for air.”
He tossed the USB to the minister. “Do your duty,” he said. “And bury him knowing the truth will be exhumed with him if you don't.”
With that he turned on his heel and walked away, the crowd parting like waves before him. No one dared stop him.No one dared speak.But Eleanor’s voice rose sharply as he reached the Bentley again. “You’ve made a mistake returning, Jeffrey. You don’t know what you’ve started.”
He looked back over his shoulder. “I didn’t come back to start something,” he said coolly. “I came to end it.”
The car door slammed, and the Bentley peeled away, tires screaming against the gravel as it vanished down the winding road. Back at the gravesite, the USB slipped from the minister’s trembling fingers and landed in the grass. Unnoticed, Unclaimed, Unplugged, But not for long.
Jeffrey stood in the rain, watching a man bleed. The informant’s hands were tied behind his back, mouth stuffed with cloth, eyes wild with fear. Victor Kael, Jeffrey’s second-in-command and longtime ally, leaned against the alley wall, arms crossed.
“You sure about this guy?” Victor asked. “He was your father’s bookkeeper, not a hitman.”
Exactly why he knows where the bodies are buried,” Jeffrey replied, He stepped forward, crouched in front of the gagged man, and pulled the cloth from his mouth.
The man gasped. “I didn’t have a choice! Eleanor said,said she’d kill my family.”
Jeffrey held up a hand. “I’m not here for your excuses. I’m here for the list.” The man looked up, broken. “What list?”
“The ledger,” Jeffrey said. “The one that disappeared the night my father died. I know he trusted you to keep a second copy.“I.....I don’t know...,”
Jeffrey nodded once. Victor reached into his coat and pulled out a syringe. “No! Please!”Jeffrey crouched lower. His voice dropped.
“She killed him. You think she’ll let you live once the dust settles? I’m your only chance now. Give me the ledger, and I can keep you breathing.”The man’s lips trembled. Then he nodded.
“Safe house, East Harbor, Red brick building, third floor, Behind the false wall in the closet. It’s all there.”Jeffrey rose and stepped back, Victor holstered the syringe.
“We good?” he asked.
Jeffrey’s gaze didn’t leave the informant. “One more thing, ”He walked up, leaned close.
“Who ordered the hit on me six years ago?”
The man went pale. “I… I don’t know.”
Jeffrey’s eyes narrowed. “I swear! All I know is,it wasn’t your father. He tried to stop it.” A beat of silence.
Jeffrey stood slowly, digesting that.Victor tilted his head. “Then who did?”
The man whispered, “Ask Zane.”
Before Victor could speak, a shot rang out from the rooftop. The informant’s head snapped back,blood sprayed the alley.Jeffrey dove behind a dumpster, drawing his gun. Victor pulled his weapon too, scanning the rooftops.
“Sniper!” Victor shouted.
But the shooter was already gone.Rain hit the concrete in heavy, rhythmic taps.Jeffrey stared at the lifeless body. “Son of a bitch,” Victor muttered. “That was too clean. Pro.”
Jeffrey’s face was stone.“They knew he was going to talk.”
Victor looked at him. “What now?”
Jeffrey slid his gun back into its holster. “We go to East Harbor. And find that ledger before it gets burned.” He turned to the alley’s exit, but his phone buzzed in his coat.One message.
You’re playing a game you don’t understand. Stop digging, or you’ll end up in the next coffin.Jeffrey stared at the screen.Then he deleted the message.And walked into the rain.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 57 – The Man Who Returned Was Not the Same
The night split open. Camilla staggered back as fire swallowed the skyline, a column of molten light roaring upward from the ruins below Goodman Tower.It wasn’t just destruction, it was proclamation. The city itself seemed to bow beneath the force of it. Windows shattered for miles. Car alarms wailed. Every living soul felt it in their bones.And then, through the smoke and fire, he rose. Jeffrey Goodman. But not the Jeffrey she remembered. His body was wreathed in fire that did not consume him but crowned him.His eyes glowed gold, so bright they were blinding, and strange sigils crawled across his skin like living scars. His every step melted stone; the ground trembled beneath his feet.Martin fell to his knees, choking on the smoke, whispering like a man in prayer. “It’s him. He survived. God help us… he survived.”Camilla clutched the balcony rail, her breath caught in her throat. Her heart screamed recognition, this was the man who had once held her, once bled for her, once whis
Chapter 56 – Baptism of Fire
Jeffrey Goodman was burning. But the fire did not kill him. It remade him. The abyss was endless, a storm of black and crimson flames that hissed and shrieked like living things.Chains twisted in the inferno, lashing around him, piercing his skin, threading through his veins like molten wire. Every heartbeat was an explosion, every breath a scream, every nerve a battlefield between destruction and rebirth.He tried to fight. He tried to claw upward, but the fire dragged him deeper, devouring. It tore memories from him, the sound of his mother’s laughter, the warmth of Camilla’s touch, the echo of his father’s cold eyes, and burned them to ash. In their place, it whispered.“You are not man. You are fire. Fire consumes. Fire rules. Fire bows to no one.”Jeffrey’s body convulsed, flames boiling out of his mouth, his eyes, his wounds. His flesh split, only to seal again in burning threads of gold and black. His scream became a roar that shook the abyss itself.And in that roar, he reali
Chapter 55 – The Crucible of Chains
The world was gone. There was no sky, no ground, only chains. They swarmed like serpents in the dark, rattling with a sound that sank into bone.They dragged Jeffrey down through fire, through smoke, through the black pulse of the abyss until he no longer knew if he was falling or being devoured.His chest seared where the molten tears had burned him. His sword was gone, torn from his hands, his flames smothered by the coils around his arms.Every breath was ash, every heartbeat a hammer against the cage of chains. And then, sudden stillness.He hit ground that wasn’t ground at all but a shifting surface of steel links, stretching endlessly into black. The Crucible. “Here, the heir will be tested.”The Third Shadow’s voices rolled through the dark, three mouths speaking from nowhere and everywhere.Chains slithered, forming walls, a dome, a prison. Within it, shapes stirred. Figures. Shadows coalescing into forms Jeffrey knew too well. The first to step forward made his blood run cold
Chapter 54 – The Third Shadow
The sky was breaking. Every soul in the city looked up, frozen beneath the rain of chains that screamed like falling blades.The rift above gaped wider, tearing the heavens apart. Fire bled into blackness, and blackness pulsed like a living heart.Jeffrey’s knees buckled beneath him. He was slick with blood, barely standing, his sword trembling in his hand. His vision was ash and fire, but his instincts screamed what his mind refused to accept.This wasn’t over. It had never been about the Doppelgänger or the Beast. They were gatekeepers. And the true horror was still behind the door.“The heir has awakened. The seals are broken.”The voice rolled through the city like an earthquake, rattling windows, shaking steel, making children scream and soldiers drop their guns.Camilla stopped mid-run, clutching her ears as blood streamed from her nose. Her body crumpled, but still her lips formed his name.Jeffrey staggered toward her, each step tearing his muscles raw. He reached her in time t
Chapter 53 – The Ashen Veil
The world was fire. Jeffrey’s lungs burned, his skin flayed by molten air. Darkness pressed in from all sides, pierced only by violent flashes of red and white.He tried to move. His body didn’t respond. Then, voices. Whispers, endless, writhing. They slithered through the inferno, caressing his skull like smoke.Child of flame. Son of ash. You are not broken. You are becoming. Jeffrey’s eyes snapped open. He wasn’t in the courtyard anymore. He wasn’t anywhere human.The ground beneath him was charred bone. The sky above was a ceiling of fire, cracking, bleeding light. Chains hung down from nothing, rattling with no wind, stretching into infinity.And between them, two shadows. The Doppelgänger. The Beast. Alive. Waiting. The Doppelgänger loomed, his molten form reduced but no less menacing, heat dripping from his limbs. His eyes burned, twin suns locked on Jeffrey.The Beast crouched opposite, its body darker than void, its eyes two smoldering embers. Chains slithered from its skin,
Chapter 52 – Chains of the Abyss
The giant’s grip was closing. Jeffrey’s ribs buckled, vision tunneling, blood rising in his throat. The Doppelgänger’s molten fist was a coffin, searing, suffocating, inevitable. And then came the chains.They tore up from the fractured earth, red-hot and clanging, each link thick as a carriage wheel. They coiled around the titan’s arms, burning into molten flesh, dragging him backward toward the yawning abyss below.The Doppelgänger howled, his colossal body thrashing as though hooked by the hands of hell itself. And then, from that abyss, eyes ignited. Twin infernos, vast and hungry. The beast.The same abomination Jeffrey had chained in the underworld, the same monster he had bled and broken to prove his dominion, alive, reborn, hungrier than ever. Its roar split the heavens.The Doppelgänger reeled, momentarily distracted, and his grip slackened just enough for Jeffrey to gasp a ragged breath.Pain lanced through every bone in his chest, but he forced his arm to move, his blade to
You may also like
Return of the son-in-law
Chessman75.9K viewsThe Consortium's Heir
Benjamin_Jnr1.7M viewsRise Of The Sole Heir
Estypen78.0K viewsThe Ruthless Son-in-law
Bella Starr138.0K viewsThe King of War Powerful Return
MDW7.9K viewsThe Return of The Richard Dwayne
Dragonix Loki65.9K viewsThe Prisoner God of War
Penforge933 viewsHis Possession
Renglassi269 views