2025-06-05 06:19:08Jake rushed into the private elevator with his quick slice cap, he'd be meeting the syndicate inner circle and some are loyal to his dad, he opened the door of the boardroom meeting, Vivian cross stood by the door; You're late Jake, you kept us waiting.
Inside the boardroom was a long silver board table sitting under two dim lights, where three women and two men sat, Jake rushed to the table where they sat, and Vivian followed behind him behind and introduced him “He is Jake Sullivan, the syndicate heir.
We asked for the Sullivan son not a delivery boy, pizza boy run three trillion dollars?” marcus one of Jake's dad ally said as he read the cap.
“This must be some kind of joke, Vivian, the Sullivan son and syndicate heir in a worn out quick slice uniform? Laughable, staring at Jake and doubting his worth” Cassandra a lady who looked in her 40’s said.
I'm Lila Chen, a tech expertshe said and adjusts her glasses, saying nothing else but scanning Jake like a computer. Her short introduction felt like a trap.
I'm Victor Ruiz a burly logistics boss, “Holt’s already circling our ports. You better not screw this.” He’s pragmatic, not hostile.
I'm Talia Morse, a PR fixer smirks, “You’re a walking headline, Sullivan, you got the Sullivan face, but you got his guts?
Jake lowered his head in shame and took of his cap, with this he already knew the ones who smelled blood, “Laugh all you want. I’m here to stay, I’m the Syndicate heir and I just got to know that, he turned to Vivian I thought you had already promoted them about everything that happened.
“Yes I did that already but they didn't expect you to show up dressing like this with this uniform and Cap, I expected you to have resigned already what are you still doing” as she turned to the board members “Well enough of the insults, the Carter's owe our syndicate a loan and haven’t been able to pay back as they have been in a financial crisis as the board knows, their law firm has been running illegal cases and bribery and they got away with it, luckily for us and our board we've an insider there” the light dimmed to Jake.
“Me, insider?, no I'm not, Amanda already sent me divorce papers, and said I'm not a family member, she says I worth nothing and Ethan’s worth ten of me, she's been buzzing me with texts to sign the divorce papers already and her signature is in it already.
“You got married to Amanda looking like this?” Marcus who was one of Amanda's secret admirer. “Like I said we're not married anymore, I'm about to sign the papers when I get a lawyer from my syndicate”.
“You can't sign that divorce papers at least not now, and i didn't know anything about your divorce, now Holt is a threat, he killed your father and he knows about you already somehow, Vivian said as she slaps a tablet on the table, showing a port manifest—ship names, cargo codes, schedules, he smuggles drugs by ships so you need to get him you've got the Chicago army behind you, you need him before you can deal with the Carter's so you don't get killed dealing with Amanda and her family”.
“I'm going to return to the Carter family, this time as a live in son in law, I'm assigning Lila and Victor to track Holt’s drug shipments, and keep me at bay” Jake said and left the boardroom, got into his Honda to the Carter mansion.
“I’ll return to the Carter mansion to secretly gather evidence of their law firm’s corruption bribery, illegal cases, ties to Ethan Brooks, and to get my syndicate loan payback from the Carter & Associates and seize their assets for the Syndicate of they can't pay, but I must have them kneel while at it” Jake mummured to himself while driving
Jake parked his beat-up Honda at the Carter’s fancy Gold Coast mansion, staring at the unsigned divorce mail, he honked, but the gate stayed shut. He stepped out, his old sneakers hit the pavement as he walked through the iron bars. He banged the gate. “Open it. I’m Jake Sullivan, Amanda’s husband.”
The gate creaked, and Carl, the wiry gateman, stepped out, glaring. “You’re not welcome, sir. Miss Amanda’s orders. I ain’t losing my job.” His words cut, but Jake hid his anger, remembering his plan to act humble, live here, and expose the Carters’ dirty law firm secrets. “I’m still family, Carl,” he said, voice soft. Carl snorted, “You’re pathetic, chasing her. She’s with Ethan Brooks now.” Jake kept his face calm, hiding the Syndicate card in his pocket.
“Just call her,” he said. Carl grabbed his walkie-talkie, muttering, “Fool.” Jakedidn't react his ego about to kick in but he maintained his cool, ready to play the pitiful son-in-law to win.
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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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