They Chose The Fake Heir

Chapter 4

The words hung in the air like a lethal toxin.

"Ethan? Our Ethan?" Eleanor’s voice shrieked, hitting a note so sharp it cracked. She grabbed the assistant by his wet lapels, shaking him. "You’re lying! He’s a good for nothing! He doesn't even know how to balance a checkbook without throwing a tantrum! How could he buy Horizon Group?!"

The assistant only shook his head miserably, staring at the floor. "The legal filings were pushed through thirty minutes ago, ma'am. His signature is on the eviction notice. It’s him."

Charles staggered backward, his hand slapping against the wall to keep from collapsing. The grand foyer of his multi-billion-dollar estate suddenly felt like a tomb. For eighteen years, he had looked at Ethan with utter disappointment. He had forced the boy to sit at the foot of the dinner table, denied him a car, and treated him like a shameful secret.

And all the while, Ethan had been quietly holding the leash to the city's largest conglomerate.

"Dad, this is a psychological play," Julian said, his voice tight as he stepped between his parents. His mind was furiously calculating the damage. "Ethan must have been acting as a front for a foreign investment group. There is no way a teenager builds that kind of capital alone. He’s using Horizon to scare us into making a mistake."

"A mistake?!" Chloe wailed, ripping off her diamond earrings before a federal agent could demand them. "Julian, they just locked us out of our own headquarters! We don't have a business anymore! All my trust funds are tied to Vance Group stock, and it’s trading at zero!"

Just then, Veronica Sterling’s phone buzzed. She looked down at the screen, her breath catching. It was a text from her father, sent from inside the Sterling Conglomerate boardroom.

'Get away from the Vances immediately. Horizon Group just blacklisted our entire supply chain. If you are seen with Julian Vance by midnight, I am removing you from the family will. The boy we threw out wasn't a nobody, Veronica. He was the sun, and we just stepped into total darkness.'

Veronica’s phone slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the marble floor. She looked at Julian, then at the crying Eleanor, and finally at the shattered Charles. A suffocating weight of regret pressed down on her chest.

She remembered three months ago, when she had caught cold and Ethan had driven across the city in a torrential downpour just to bring her medicine from a specific traditional pharmacy she liked. She had mocked him for it, calling him a pathetic chauffeur who had nothing better to do with his life.

He wasn't doing it because he had nothing better to do, she realized with a horrific, nauseating clarity. He was a god playing human for me, and I traded him for a snake.

Without saying a word to Julian, Veronica turned on her heel and walked out of the mansion, ignoring Julian’s calls as she vanished into the rainy night.

"Let her go!" Chloe hissed, though her voice lacked any real venom. She was too busy watching the federal agents wheel out the safe from her father's study. "What do we do now, Dad? Where do we go?"

Charles didn't answer. He looked at his hands, trembling with age and sudden, absolute ruin. "We need to find him," he whispered.

"What?" Eleanor gasped.

"We need to find Ethan!" Charles roared, his eyes bloodshot as he turned on his wife. "If he controls Horizon, he can stop the regulators! He paid off our debts before, Eleanor! Those anonymous multi-million-dollar wire transfers we received during the pandemic liquidity crisis? The ones we thought came from a government bailout? It was him! It had to be him!"

Julian’s face darkened significantly. He couldn't let them crawl back to Ethan. If the Vances reconciled with Ethan, Julian's mission for the Murano Syndicate would completely fail, and his handlers didn't tolerate failure.

"Dad, if you go to him, you're begging a traitor," Julian said coldly. "He leaked your tax documents. He wanted you in a prison cell."

"He did it because we threw him out like a dog!" Charles shouted, tears finally spilling over his wrinkled face. "I am his father! He took my name! He will listen to me!"

Across the city, high above the clouds on the 88th floor of the Horizon Tower, the atmosphere was entirely different.

Ethan stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass window, watching the tiny headlights of cars crawl through the gridlocked streets below. The rain struck the glass with a rhythmic, soothing pattern.

"Young Master," Sebastian said, stepping into the room with a fresh digital tablet. "The Sterling family has officially issued a public press release. They have formally dissolved the engagement between Veronica Sterling and Julian Vance, citing 'irreconcilable differences in corporate alignment.' They are currently begging for an audience with our chief operating officer."

"Deny it," Ethan said without turning around. "Let them sweat for forty-eight hours. When a man is drowning, he will promise you the world just for a twig. I want the Sterling Conglomerate completely dependent on our logistics infrastructure before I speak to them."

"Understood," Sebastian bowed. "Furthermore, the Vance family has been officially evicted from the estate. The property is registered under a holding company that Horizon acquired last year. They are currently staying in a mid-tier airport hotel."

A small, amused smirk played on Ethan's lips. From a multi-billion-dollar mansion to a three-star airport hotel in less than two hours.

Suddenly, Sebastian's secondary phone rang—the secure line reserved only for direct inquiries to the Chairman's office. Sebastian looked at the caller ID and his eyebrows shot up. He handed the device to Ethan.

"It's Charles Vance, sir. He's calling from a burner phone."

Ethan took the phone, pressing it to his ear. He didn't say a word.

"Ethan? Ethan, is that you?" Charles’s voice came through the speaker, completely stripped of its former arrogance. He sounded small, desperate, and broken. "Ethan, please don't hang up. Your mother and I... we were confused. The shock of Julian's return made us act irrationally. We raised you for eighteen years, Ethan! You are a Vance!"

Ethan let out a soft, dark chuckle that sent a visible shiver through the line.

"A Vance?" Ethan asked, his voice smooth and terrifyingly cold. "Mr. Vance, when I was twelve, I broke my arm falling from the terrace while fixing your satellite dish. You refused to pay for the private hospital because you said an adopted child shouldn't waste family resources. I set the bone myself in my bedroom."

"Ethan, I—"

"When I was fifteen," Ethan continued, his tone completely flat, as if reciting a grocery list, "Chloe blamed me for scratching her sports car. You made me kneel on uncooked rice in the kitchen for ten hours without water. It turned out Julian's syndicate handler had orchestrated the scratch from the outside to test my psychological resilience."

On the other end of the line, Charles choked on his breath. "What... what are you talking about? What syndicate?"

"You brought a viper into your house, Charles, and you threw out the only shield you had," Ethan said, dropping the 'Mr. Vance' entirely. "Julian isn't your son. He's a corporate assassin sent by the Murano Syndicate. And the funniest part? The biological son you’ve been looking for all these years... the one you thought was Julian..."

Ethan leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window, his eyes burning with an intense, vengeful light.

"He died ten years ago, Charles. But the blood test you ran on Julian was faked by the very doctors I paid off to keep you blind. You threw away your actual savior for a ghost."

"Ethan... what do you mean? Who are you?!" Charles screamed into the phone, his voice echoing with absolute horror as the pieces of a puzzle he didn't understand began to clash violently in his mind.

"I am the man who owns your future," Ethan whispered. "And tonight, I'm canceling your subscription."

Before Charles could reply, Ethan hung up and tossed the phone to Sebastian.

"Sebastian, activate the second phase," Ethan ordered, his eyes tracking a black SUV that had just pulled into the underground garage of the Horizon Tower on his security monitor. "The Murano Syndicate is getting desperate. They're sending their cleanup crew to my building."

Ethan slowly reached into his desk drawer, pulling out a sleek, custom-designed matte black handgun. He checked the magazine with a practiced, lethal efficiency.

"Let's show them how the Ghost handles a hostile takeover."