: THEY MOCKED THE GODFATHERS SON OR “FROM MOCKED TO GOD”.

CHAPTER FOUR

"My son had you thirty-three years ago." Solomon did not let go of his hand. "And this ring in your finger was personally given to your father by me. It is an Ancient heirloom of the Drake family.” He paused, cleaning more tears.

“The night you were born, the very first thing your father did before anything else was to take this ring from his own finger and put it on yours. He did not wait until you were old enough. He didn’t wait for you to understand what it really meant. He just put it on your little newborn fingers like he knew something that we didn’t all know. You were just three hours old." Something shifted in his voice and he held it steady with visible effort. "He wanted you to have it from the very first moment of your life."

Ethan looked down at the ring. The serpent coiled around the scepter. The same crest he had stared at for eighteen years without being able to explain.

"He knew something was wrong two days after your birth," Solomon continued. "The child they placed in his arms was sick in ways that made no sense for a healthy mother and a healthy delivery. Your father reported that this wasn’t his baby but the hospital denied everything. The nurse responsible for it had already disappeared and he spent every resource he had trying to find you. Your mother died shortly after the sick baby they put in her hands died. Your father followed six months after." He paused. "I made sure I shut the hospital down, but I did not stop searching for you. Even after they died, I never stopped."

Ethan could not find his voice.

The ring was steady and burning now as information started flooding his head all at once. He didn’t know where it was coming from, all he knew was that it wasn’t coming in pieces anymore. He was laying down on a hospital bed while he got information about financial structures, family hierarchies and the names of people who moved the world from behind closed doors. His father’s name was at the top of that list. Two hundred years of his father’s empire poured into him the way water poured into a container it had always been meant to fill. 

His blood felt different in his veins. Warmer. Like something that had been running at half pressure had finally found what it was always supposed to be pushing against.

'This is real.' He looked at Solomon's face and felt the truth of it land somewhere beneath his ribs. 'This is actually real and you have been cleaning their pool.'

"I have something for you," Solomon said.

He reached into his jacket and brought out a card. He placed it in Ethan's free hand like it was always supposed to be there. 

Ethan took it and examined it briefly. It was Black and heavier than it looked and the Drake family seal was pressed clean into its surface.

Ethan didn’t say a word.

"Tomorrow," Solomon said, "you will be introduced to the world as my heir and the next Chairman of Drake Industries. Everything that belongs to the Drake name is yours. Everything that have been built across two hundred years, every company, every alliance, every piece of this city and beyond it, is yours." He held Ethan's gaze without blinking. "You have never had a single thing that truly belonged to you. From tomorrow, you will not be able to say that, because you will own everything inside this world."

"The Cole family," Ethan said slowly. "Gerald's company."

"Has been drawing from a Drake Industries subsidiary fund for eleven years." Solomon's voice did not change even slightly. "Gerald Cole has been stealing from your inheritance without knowing whose money he was taking. When he discovers that, it will be the worst day of his life."

The door opened.

Gerald walked in with a lawyer one step behind him and the expression of a man who had rehearsed something in the car and was determined to deliver it.

"I apologize for the interruption." He addressed the room without looking at Ethan first. "I am Gerald Cole. I am this young man's legal guardian of eighteen years and I have serious concerns about who has been granted access to him and under what circumstances."

Solomon looked at him.

Gerald felt that look and kept talking because stopping would mean acknowledging that he understood that look.

"Ethan has a long history of attaching himself to people who show him generosity and exploiting that generosity for personal gain. I say this with no pleasure. I raised him and I know him. He saves a girl on a dark road and suddenly he is in a presidential facility receiving treatment and meeting privately with…"

"Gerald." Ethan said his name quietly and just that Gerald stopped.

"You kicked me in the stomach tonight when I came to you injured." Ethan's voice remained completely flat. "You have not paid me a salary in ten years. I slept in a storage closet under your staircase for eighteen years. I donated a kidney to a woman your son was sleeping with and you never once asked if I was alright afterward." He looked at him steadily. "Sit down or walk out. Those are the only two options available to you in this room."

Gerald's face tightened. "I am not going to stand here and be addressed like I am the one who has done something wrong. This man," he said to Solomon, pointing at Ethan, "is a leech. He is a puppet. He will latch onto whoever is closest and make himself seem indispensable. The moment you stop being useful to him he will move to the next person who offers him something. I have watched him do it for eighteen years and I am trying to save you the same experience."

"Mr. Cole." Solomon did not raise his voice. He simply spoke and every other sound in the room stopped existing. "I am going to ask you to leave this room. If you choose not to leave, the men standing outside that door will be happy to assist you."

Gerald looked at Solomon then he looked at Ethan. His eyes dropped to the black card in Ethan's hand and something moved behind his eyes that he could not fully control.

He did not leave, but he stopped talking.

The door opened a second time and Aria walked in. She looked even more beautiful and powerful than ever. The cut above her eyebrow had been cleaned and closed but she did not speak to anyone in the room. She crossed directly to Solomon and held out a tablet.

Solomon took it and looked at the screen.

Gerald who was dying slowly of curiosity stretched his neck so he could catch a glimpse of what might help him to understand the situation. 

The headline was a piece of news that happened thirty-three years ago. The photograph beneath it showed the ring in sharp detail, and above the photograph, the text was large, bold and simple.

DRAKE HEIR MISSING. UNLIMITED REWARD OFFERED.

Gerald looked at the ring on Ethan's finger and looked back at the photograph on the screen.

He looked at the ring again and color left his face completely. His leg weakened and his balance swayed. His lawyer put a hand on his arm to help steady him.

Gerald did not move, he did not speak. He stood in the middle of that hospital room and stared at a ring he had looked at every day for eighteen years and understood for the first time exactly what it meant and exactly what he had done. He understood exactly what was coming.

For the first time in eighteen years, Gerald Cole had nothing to say.