Trillionaire’s Revenge: The Masked CEO

Chapter Three: The Circle Reopens

At 3:47 a.m., Lucas Sebastian sat alone in the strategy vault.

The city glittered below, but inside the room, only darkness reigned, broken by the soft green glow of security monitors and encrypted data lines flowing across the wall. The envelope from the Consortium lay open in front of him.

Inside, a card. Plain, silver-edged, unassuming, Except for three chilling words: “The Circle Awaits.”

His fingers tightened, Helena had never seen this side of him, the one buried beneath layers of business, strategy, and vengeance. But they knew him. The Consortium. The shadow syndicate that once shaped his childhood, molded his instincts, and discarded him like a failed weapon.

He wasn’t supposed to live, Let alone rule, Lucas stood, walked to a hidden panel, and entered a code he hadn’t used in twelve years. A drawer slid open. Inside, an old silver ring, engraved with the crescent moon and broken crown.

The insignia of the original heirs. He slipped it on. “I didn’t want to come back to this,” he murmured.

Behind him, Helena stepped in, barefoot and dressed in silk. “You okay?” she asked gently.

Lucas didn’t turn. “No. But I will be.”

Helena’s voice softened. “If they know you're alive… they’ll come for the boy.”

He turned then, and for the first time in days, fear flickered in his eyes. “Then we’ll be ready.”

Rachel sat across from the gloved man in a dimly lit room that smelled of ash and power, He called himself Mr. Sable, and he hadn’t blinked once since she entered. “You want revenge,” he said plainly. “We want access.”

Rachel crossed her arms. “Why help me?”

Sable smiled. “Because the man you married is now standing in the way of something far greater than your bruised ego. We were watching long before you threw those divorce papers.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”

He slid a dossier across the table. “His past. His weaknesses. His bloodline. Everything Lucas Sebastian tried to bury. We want it all.”

She opened it hesitantly. Inside were surveillance photos, encrypted family trees, even photos of Lucas as a teenager, wounded, feral, in training facilities she didn’t recognize. “What… what is this?”

“Truth,” Sable said simply.

“And what do I do?”

He smiled wider now. “You remember. You suffer. And when the time comes,  you betray him one last time.”

Lucas stood before a sealed vault in the sub-levels of Black Tower, accompanied by a man in his seventies with white hair and a stiff spine. “Do you believe they’re testing you?” the old man asked.

Lucas nodded. “No doubt. They want to see if I’m still controllable.”

“And if you’re not?”

Lucas smiled grimly. “Then they’ll try to remove me. Again.”

The man passed him a folder. “Then you’ll need this. Every detail on Project Pale Flame. And the woman your enemies just hired.”

Lucas opened it, and froze. Inside: a grainy photo of Rachel sitting across from Sable, She was making a deal.

Helena’s voice echoed in his head: “She’ll come back. Not for love. But for revenge.”

Rachel returned to her apartment to find a package waiting, No return address. Inside: a phone, a photo of Lucas holding their son, and a voice message. “Rachel. We warned you not to make this personal. Now we will.”

She gasped. Then a second message came through. This time, a video, Helena, Bound, Bleeding, Silenced.

“Make your move, or she dies.”

Rachel stared at the screen in horror, caught between the man she betrayed… and the nightmare she just unleashed.

That night, Lucas called a meeting with his top three lieutenants, Only one had ever seen the inside of the Circle. The others knew him simply as the CEO. But tonight?

He was more than that, He was the last surviving heir of the Shadow Lineage. “Target the west wing of the Consortium. Asset freeze. Legal infiltration. I want their leadership destabilized in under 72 hours.”

“And Rachel?” one of them asked.

Lucas looked at the screen showing her entering a hotel room with Sable’s men.

He stood slowly. “Let her walk into hell,” he said. “But when she starts to scream… I’ll be the one who pulls her out.”