2025-06-05 06:20:47Amanda nodded, biting her lip. “I don’t know everything yet. But maybe we’ve been blind. Maybe Jake’s hiding something huge.”
The room went silent. Diane looked at Ethan. “If that’s true, then we need to rethink everything.”
Ethan ran a hand through his hair. “We can’t afford to underestimate him again.”
Amanda’s heart beated faster. The man they’d pushed around might be about to turn the tables. “We need to find out exactly what Jake is up to,” she said. “Before it’s too late.”
Diane’s eyes narrowed. “So what, we keep pretending he’s less than us?”
“No,” Amanda said coldly. “We watch. We wait. And when the time is right, we hit.”
Ethan nodded slowly. “No more underestimating Jake, but we'll treat him like he's still sh!t, he shouldn't have a clue or think we scared, but this might be an illusion”
Amanda’s lips curved into a small, dangerous smile. “Exactly. anything that happens… we’re ready.”
The following morning, Diane sat at the head of the breakfast table, stirring her coffee, with her eyes fixed on nothing.
Jake walked in, clean but dressed in the same plain clothes. He gave a slight nod. “Good morning.”
Amanda barely looked up. Ethan was scrolling through his phone. The room was cold as ever.
Then Diane cleared her throat.
“Jake,” she said evenly. “Sit.”
Jake raised a brow but obeyed. He sat, unsure what was coming.
“I’ve been thinking,” Diane began. “You’ve been staying in this house, eating our food, living under our roof. It’s about time you earned your keep.”
Jake blinked.
“You’ll be joining Carter & Associates officially. You’ll take on a junior project manager role. Mid-level. Nothing too demanding.”
Amanda lifted her eyes, playing along. Ethan looked confused, but didn’t interrupt.
Jake straightened a little. “Seriously? I’ll be working at the firm?”
Diane nodded. “Yes. Don’t think this is some reward or acknowledgment of anything you’ve done. It’s just fair. We need more hands on the next project. It’s purely professional.”
Amanda added coolly, “Exactly. We’re not doing you a favor, Jake. Don’t misread this.”
Jake didn’t care. Inside, a flicker of pride burned. It wasn’t top-level—but it was something.
“Thank you,” he said, trying not to grin. “I’ll do my best.”
Diane waved a hand. “Just show up and don’t mess it up. That’s all.”
He stood and walked out with a spring in his step.
As the door closed, Ethan whispered, “So now what? We just let him walk into the firm?”
Diane’s smile was thin. “No. We watch him. Up close.”
Amanda added, “Let’s see what the pawn does when he thinks he’s becoming a knight.
Two days later, all hell broke loose at the Carter Group.
The boardroom was a mess. With different staff yelling, papers all over the place. Phones rang non-stop.
Diane stood at the head of the table, fuming in frustration.
“Someone inside leaked our pitch documents!” she barked. “Falcon Corp now has our entire strategy. If they present it before us, we lose everything!”
The board members muttered in panic.
Amanda stood to speak. “We can adjust our proposal and rework the angle befor……”
“It’s too late,” a senior board member cut in. “They present in forty-eight hours. The damage is done.”
Diane slammed her hand on the table. “If we lose this deal, how the hell are we going to pay the Vivian Syndicate?”
Everyone went quiet.
At that moment, Jake walked in. Quietly. Calmly. Holding a folder.
He had heard enough.
He didn’t speak right away. He simply walked over, placed the folder on Diane’s desk, and said, “I think I might be able to fix this.”
Diane narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Jake shrugged. “Just give me a few hours.”
Amanda stared at him. “Jake… what are you planning?”
But Jake had already turned and walked out.
Three hours later, Falcon Corp suddenly pulled out of the deal with no statement or explanation. Just silence.
The board members were stunned.
Amanda checked her phone again. “They actually backed off?”
Diane stared at her assistant. “Confirm this again.”
“It’s true,” the assistant replied. “Falcon Corp canceled their presentation and withdrew all interest.”
Amanda looked toward the entrance—Jake stood by the door, hands in his pockets.
Diane couldn’t avoid it this time.
In front of everyone, she cleared her throat.
“Jake… Thank you. For whatever you did.”
Jake nodded slightly. “Just wanted to help.”
Amanda looked at her mother, then at Jake again. Something wasn’t adding up.
Then he added, casually, “By the way……. We nearly lost a huge contract because someone leaked internal documents. That can’t happen again.”
Diane frowned. “And your point?”
“I want to be in charge of managing the company’s documents,” Jake said. “No one looks at anything without it going through me first. I’ll protect the files.”
Amanda blinked. “That’s a pretty big ask, Jake.”
Jake shrugged. “So is losing millions of dollars.”
Diane stared at him, thinking.
She didn’t trust him, but she also couldn’t afford another disaster.
Finally, she nodded. “Fine. You’ll work with the document management team. But don’t overstep.”
Jake stood, gave a small nod, and walked out.
“Bit by bit, I will get them,” he said.
Diane, phone buzzed on the glass table in the center of her bedroom.
She picked it up without looking. “Speak.”
“It’s done,” it was Holt's voice. “Vivian made a move.”
Diane leaned back in her chair. “What kind of move?”
“She’s named an heir. Someone to take over the Kane Syndicate.”
Diane froze.
“Who?” she asked slowly.
“That’s the problem,” Holt said. “She hasn’t said. No name. No face. Just... an announcement.”
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Chapter Six Hundred and Thirty
A hundred and fifty years after Jake Sullivan walked into the river, the canyon woke to find Jake’s apple waiting on the bare ground as it always did (perfect, red, warm).Only this year the apple was split cleanly in half, as though someone had taken one deliberate bite and set the rest back down.No one had touched it. No child had been brave enough. No elder had been curious enough.The two halves lay side by side in the grass, juice still glistening, scent drifting across the square like a memory that refused to stay buried.By sunrise the entire settlement had gathered (five, maybe six thousand now, spread across both rims and down the river valley). They stood in a quiet circle the way their great-grandparents once had around a dying silver tree.Ember Sullivan (Asha’s granddaughter, ninety-one years old, hair the color of late snow, eyes still sharp enough to map a ridge by starlight) knelt and lifted one half of the apple.She did not hesitate.She bit.The taste rolled th
Chapter Six Hundred and Twenty-Nine
Fifty-one years after Jake Sullivan was laid beneath the ordinary tree, the canyon celebrated its hundredth harvest festival.The tree (now two hundred feet tall, trunk thick as a house, roots sprawling across half the old cemetery) had become the heart of Defiance in every way. Children climbed it, lovers carved initials in its bark that vanished by morning, and every autumn it dropped Tomorrow apples by the wagonload. People no longer spoke of the silver tree except in stories told to wide-eyed young ones who thought the Maw was a dragon.Hope Sullivan died peacefully the winter before, at ninety-nine. They buried her beside her parents, and the tree dropped one perfect red apple onto her grave that never bruised, never rotted.That night, for the first time in a century, the tree spoke.Not in wind. Not in Jake’s recorded voice.It spoke aloud, in the canyon, in the dark, in a voice every soul from the oldest elder to the youngest child recognized instantly (rough, smoke-cured,
Chapter Six Hundred and Twenty-Eight
They buried Jake Sullivan on the first day of autumn, when the cottonwoods were bleeding gold into the river and the air carried the first bite of winter.The whole canyon shut down. No school bells, no hammers on anvils, no children shouting in the square. Even the goats stood quiet in their pens. Thousands walked behind the litter of woven wildflowers and cedar boughs, but no one spoke above the hush of boots on dust and the soft creak of wagon wheels. The river itself seemed to lower its voice, as if it understood the weight of the man it had carried in life and was now carrying in death.Hope walked at the front, one hand resting on the edge of the litter, the other cradling the mended violin against her chest like a child. She was seventy-eight now (the same age Jake had been when he walked away), hair silver as moonlight on water, face carved deep by sun and grief and joy in equal measure. Her eyes were dry. She had cried every tear she owned the night the runners brought him
Chapter Six Hundred and Twenty-Seven
Jake Sullivan was seventy-eight the year the Tree stopped giving.He noticed it before anyone else, because he still walked to the silver tree every dawn the way other men check the weather or their pulse. That morning the branches were bare, the fruit gone, the bark cold for the first time in fifty years.He stood there a long time, palm against the trunk, waiting for the familiar pulse of thirty-three thousand names.Nothing answered.He was not afraid.He was tired in a way that went past bone, past marrow, into the place where stories are born and end.He did not tell anyone what he felt. Not Hope, not Asha, not even the Tree itself. Some knowings are private, even from the people you love.Instead he went home, kissed Elara’s stone on the way past the cemetery, and began packing.A simple pack this time. One canteen. The knife he had carried since the Long Walk. The cracked violin Lilah had pressed into his hands the week before she died, saying, “You still owe me a song, o
Chapter Six Hundred and Twenty-Six
It happened without warning, the way the best and worst things always do.One morning in late summer, the silver tree bore no fruit.Not a single luminous orb hung from its branches. The leaves were still perfect, still shimmering, still warm to the touch, but the harvest that had fed the canyon in body and memory for three generations simply failed to appear.At first no one worried. Trees have off years. The old-timers shrugged and said they’d eat regular apples and remember on their own.But the next morning the leaves began to fall.Not the gentle, one-per-year ritual leaves that never withered. These were ordinary leaves, silver turning dull, drifting down in silent thousands until the ground beneath the Tree looked like a moonlit snowfield.By the third day the trunk had gone cold.Asha (now thirty-three, mother of two, elected to the canyon council because someone had to be) stood beneath the bare branches with her daughter Ember and felt the same chill her great-grandfather Ja
Chapter Six Hundred and Twenty-Five
Asha Sullivan was twelve the year the last person who had seen the Maw died.Old Marta (once Mrs. Guzman, once simply Marta, once no-name at all) slipped away in her sleep at ninety-four. She was the final living soul who could still describe the sky bleeding upward. They buried her beside the Memory Wall with a silver leaf tucked beneath her folded hands, and the canyon closed the circle.That spring, the schoolchildren asked Hope to tell them the story of the shadow one more time.Hope stood on the porch that had once belonged to her parents (now hers, though she still thought of it as theirs) and looked at thirty bright faces who had never known a night without stars they could trust.She told them the short version.“There was a darkness that tried to make us forget how to choose. We chose anyway. That’s all.”The children nodded solemnly, then immediately asked if they could use the trebuchet to launch watermelons instead of pumpkins this year. Hope said yes, because some lessons
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