The Conglomerate Heir Awakens

3

Ethan surfaced with a gasp, the cold night air scorching his lungs. Waves tossed him violently, but he stayed afloat as if instinct guided every movement.

Somewhere in the darkness, the thrum of engines grew louder.

Lights cut across the water.

A black rescue vessel surged toward him, sleek and unnervingly quiet. Armed figures stood on its deck — helmets, armored suits, no visible insignia.

Not police.

Not coast guard.

Something else.

A metallic voice rang from the loudspeaker:

“Subject located. Prepare for extraction.”

Ethan tried to swim away, but the waves betrayed him, pushing him back toward the boat. Two divers plunged into the water, reaching him in seconds.

“Stay calm,” one said, grabbing his arm firmly. “You’re safe.”

Safe?

Nothing felt safe.

He tried to pull away, but the diver’s grip tightened with trained precision.

“You’re the heir,” the other said quietly. “We’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”

Ethan barely had time to protest before they hoisted him up onto the deck. He collapsed onto the wet metal floor, coughing seawater.

A man with storm-grey eyes approached him, kneeling down.

“Ethan Vale,” he said softly.

“Welcome home.”

The rescue vessel glided through the hidden cove entrance, waves echoing softly against the steel hull. Ethan sat wrapped in a thermal blanket, mind still raw from the impossible reality unfolding around him.

The grey-eyed man finally removed his mask, revealing a face carved with age and duty.

“I am Rowan,” he said. “Grand Steward of the Vale Conglomerate.”

Ethan swallowed. “I don’t… understand. Why are you calling me that?”

Rowan exhaled slowly.

“Because you are the last surviving blood heir of the Vale lineage — the dynasty that controlled the most powerful conglomerate in the world.”

Ethan blinked, stunned. His voice cracked.

“That’s impossible. I grew up in an orphanage. I wasn’t—”

“You were supposed to grow up with us,” Rowan interrupted softly.

Ethan’s breath caught.

Rowan’s gaze lowered. “Twenty-four years ago, your family was exterminated in a coordinated attack. Your father and mother were killed in the purge. A few loyalists managed to smuggle you out — a newborn with the bloodline crest around your neck.”

Ethan’s fingers touched the pendant unconsciously.

“But something went wrong.”

Rowan’s face tightened with grief.

“The transport team was ambushed. Several died trying to protect you. In the chaos… we lost you. The vehicle overturned, and by the time reinforcements arrived, the crash site was empty. No child. No trace.”

His voice thickened.

“We searched for years. We assumed the enemy took you… or that you didn’t survive.”

Ethan felt the room tilt slightly. “Then… how did I end up in an orphanage?”

Rowan nodded, almost relieved that Ethan asked.

“That part we only discovered recently. Our investigation found that a local woman — a civilian — came across you after the crash. She thought you’d been abandoned. She took you to a small, underfunded orphanage and raised you there herself.”

Ethan’s heart squeezed painfully.

He remembered her gentle smile.

Her rough hands.

The lullabies she hummed when the power went out.

“She saved you,” Rowan said quietly. “If not for her, you would have died before we ever found you.”

Ethan stared at the pendant glowing faintly at his chest.

“You were never hidden from us,” Rowan finished. “You were lost. Stolen by fate. And we have been waiting for the day your bloodline awakened… praying you were still alive.”

The truth settled over Ethan like a second skin — strange, heavy, and irrevocably his.

He wasn’t meant to be nobody.

He was born into a world of power… and torn from it.

Now, finally, the world wanted him back.

After the introduction made by Rowan, Ethan was led to a quiet medical bay. He expected exhaustion to flatten him instantly.

Instead, he felt… alert.

Too alert.

He could hear footsteps from rooms away.

He could smell the salt on the wet suit of a guard who’d passed by minutes earlier.

He could see details in the dim light that should have been invisible.

Rowan observed him carefully.

“Your blood has begun to shift,” he explained. “Vale heirs possess a dormant power — strength, senses, reflexes beyond normal human limits. It’s been locked away inside you since birth.”

Ethan flexed his fingers.

His hands felt the same… yet different.

Denser.

More purposeful.

He reached for a metal tray on a nearby table — and nearly flung it across the room with how easily it lifted.

Rowan chuckled softly.

“You’ll have to learn control.”

Ethan swallowed.

He didn’t ask why this was happening.

He asked the only question that mattered:

“…How do I use this to destroy the people who tried to kill me?”

Rowan didn’t flinch.

He simply nodded once.

“With time, you will be able to achieve beyond any human’s capabilities.”

…

The next morning, sunlight spilled into the stone chamber where Ethan stood looking outside through the mansion.

He felt different, stronger, and his senses were more sharper than before. He was like a blade that had finally been unsheathed.

Behind him, Rowan approached quietly.

“Your documents are prepared sire. A new identity. A clean slate. No one in the city will know you survived.”

Ethan nodded slowly, jaw tightening.

“I want it that way.”

“You plan to go back?”

Ethan closed his eyes briefly as he recalled Clara’s betrayal, Granger’s hand on her hip. His daughter’s name on his lips as he was pushed down the cliff.

“I’m not going back as their victim,” he said calmly.

“And not as Ethan Hayes.”

He touched the pendant around his neck, his mind now registering the significance and importance of it.

“I’ll return as the man I was meant to be.”

The last heir of the Vale Family.

The awakening of a fallen dynasty.

And the beginning of someone his enemies would never see coming.