The King Of Crystal Diamond Is Back

004-The Shadow In The Mirror

The big doors of the entrance hall had just closed when the quiet of the house was broken by fast, happy footsteps coming down the large stairs.

"Dad!"

Chay stood still, his fingers tightening around the edge of the golden master tablet in his hands.

He turned toward the stairs just as thirteen-year-old Leo came rushing around the curved railing.

The boy's face was flushed with a healthy color, his eyes bright and wide. He wore a soft cotton sweater that smelled a little like fresh air and clean clothes.

Before Chay could take a step forward, Leo launched himself across the stone floor, throwing his arms around his father’s waist and burying his face deep into Chay's chest.

Chay dropped the tablet onto a small table with a soft top, and hugged his son very tightly, so tight it felt like his own chest might break.

He buried his face in Leo's soft hair, breathing in the clean smell of life and health. He closed his eyes tight and felt Leo's strong, steady heartbeat beating right against his hand.

The cold, hard shell he wore as a king, the shell that had helped him survive being locked up alone, being betrayed, and a year of mental torture, broke apart instantly from the warmth of a human hug.

"You're here," Leo mumbled, his voice muffled against Chay’s dark coat as his small hands gripped the fabric of his father's shoulders as if letting go would make him vanish.

"The doctors told me you were coming, but I couldn't believe it. I thought I was dreaming, Dad. I thought I was still in that dark room."

"You're not dreaming, son," Chay whispered, his voice cracking slightly. "I'm right here. And I am never, ever leaving you again."

Leo pulled back just enough to look up into his father's face, a brilliant, beautiful smile breaking across his features.

"It was Miss Kim," Leo said, turning his head to look over toward Kimberly Shelton, who stood quietly by the base of the staircase with her hands clasped before her.

"Every night, when the machines were beeping and the nurses turned off the lights, she sat in that hard plastic chair right next to my bed. She read to me, brought me warm soup, and told me that my father was a great man who was coming back to take us home.”

Chay looked up from his son and across the big, sunny entrance hall toward Kimberly.

The global Diva stood still, her eyes shining with quiet emotion.

Chay did not speak.

Instead, he gave Kimberly a slow, deep nod, a look of true, deep gratitude that meant more than a thousand promises.

Kimberly bowed her head slightly in acknowledgment, her fingers placed lightly over her heart.

Minutes later, inside a high office that looked out over the big winter gardens and the far-off city, Chay stood in front of a glowing screen on the wall.

His mother sat behind a huge desk made of dark glass, her fingers tapping steadily on it while a live video from a drone was projected in the middle of the room.

The screen showed the front gates of the Pentagon family manor.

Three plain police cars and two dark government vans were blocking the iron gates, their flashing red and blue lights bouncing off the stone pillars.

"They've just realized you're missing from the Chevron isolation cell," his mother said, a cold smile curving across her lips as she watched the desperate movement of security guards through the camera zoom.

"The provincial warden tried to cover it up for three hours, but the automated federal audit flagged the mistake at sunrise. Paris and Beatrice are now standing on their front steps screaming at the lead investigator, demanding to know how a condemned prisoner vanished without a trace."

She leaned forward, her eyes flashing with lethal anticipation.

"Shall we issue the directive and leak the indicting recording tape from the cell, Your Excellency?”

“With a single stroke of our financial pen, we can freeze their corporate accounts, strip the Pentagon Winery of its export licenses, and drive their petroleum stocks into bankruptcy by sunset."

Chay stared at the screen, watching Paris Pentagon toss her hands into the air in a fit of hysterical rage on the live feed.

A slow, terrifyingly calm smile formed across Chay’s face.

He slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, turning away from the glowing monitors as he let out a dry, dangerous chuckle.

"Where is the fun in a quick execution?" Chay asked, his voice dropping into a quiet, chilling register that made the air in the room feel several degrees colder.

"If we crush them now, they learn nothing. They will just blame bad luck or market fluctuation. Let them live in their sweet, arrogant delusion that they are touching the heavens."

He turned back to face his mother and Kimberly, his eyes burning with tactical brilliance.

"Let the Harrisons and the Pentagons host their grand wedding. Let them expand their lines of credit, buy out every rival vineyard in the province, and toast to an empire built on sand.”

“Let them climb all the way to the top of their glass ladder, breathing the thin air of absolute victory. That is the exact moment when the glass breaks. That is when we pull the rug."

His mother let out a low, approving laugh, her posture firm with immense pride.

"The mind of the Crystal Diamond," she murmured. "So how do you propose we move through the capital while the entire ministry is hunting for a ghost?"

Kimberly stepped out from the dark curtains, her face becoming serious and sharp.

"If the corporate world believes Chay Patrick is a hunted fugitive hiding in the criminal slums, we give them a shadow to chase," Kimberly proposed, her voice ringing with clear, calculated strategy.

"We let the public narrative be that Chay is entirely irrelevant, a broken, penniless ex-convict begging for survival. Publicly, you will wear the uniform of my personal chauffeur and executive assistant."

She walked closer, laying out the architecture of the deception.

"You will carry my briefcases, open my limousine doors, and stand quietly in the background of every high-society boardroom across the district.”

“To the Pentagons and Harrisons, and to the entire board of directors, you will be nothing more than a nameless servant carrying heavy bags. But to us, to the core of this empire, you will be the hand holding the knife."

Chay looked at Kimberly, then down at his hands.

The plan was brilliant in its absolute humiliation of his enemies.

They would look right through him, treating him like dirt while he smoothly dismantled every brick of their foundation.

"Arrange the fleet," Chay commanded, his voice echoing off the glass walls with absolute sovereign authority. "It's time to visit the boardrooms."

Forty miles away in the city, inside the fancy glass-walled meeting room at the top of Harrison Tower, Richard Harrison leaned back in his leather chair.

He held a phone loosely to his ear, his face twisted into a smug, mocking smile.

He had just gotten off the phone with a scared prison worker who called from a throwaway phone, stammering that Chay Patrick's cell was empty and that the official transfer records had been changed.

Richard snorted loudly, tossing his phone onto the fine conference table where it clattered against a stack of multi-million-dollar merger contracts.

He looked around the table at a group of eager junior workers who were already laughing just to please him.

"A prison break?" Richard sneered, shaking his head and fixing his silk tie.

"Come on. Who cares about a broke, helpless nobody who couldn't even afford a good lawyer a year ago?”

“He's probably freezing in some dirty alley downtown, begging for scraps of bread and hiding from the police.”

“He should never waste my time with trash news about a broken convict when we're closing the biggest deal of the century today.”

The whole boardroom burst into fake laughter, the executives nodding eagerly and praising Richard Harrison for his smart business sense.

Not one person in that bright room had any idea that the man they were laughing at was already working behind the scenes, holding the sharp strings that would soon choke them.