Chapter Eight #2
“So, they grab Luca,” Drew said quietly, “and suddenly the most powerful organization on the planet becomes untouchable.”
Kael nodded once. “That’s why they took the risk. That’s why they grabbed the wrong man.”
Luca leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “Huh.”
Marsh blinked. “That’s all you’ve got?”
Luca smiled faintly. “I always wondered who’d be stupid enough to try and steal my brain.”
Ethan didn’t smile.
Niko reached for his hand under the table, grounding himself in the contact. Ethan squeezed back without looking.
“So,” Marsh said, breaking the silence. “We’re officially on the side of preventing digital godhood.”
“Seems reasonable,” Dev muttered.
The conversation unraveled from there into tactics, contingencies, and risk matrices. Niko stayed mostly quiet, watching Ethan think in real time, watching how his questions sharpened the room, how people responded to him like gravity had shifted.
This was the man he’d loved.
This was the man he’d lost.
This was the man who had come back with fire in his eyes and a mind sharp enough to scare gods.
Eventually, the screens filled with farewells.
“Keep us updated,” Bateman said. “If this goes sideways, we’re in.”
Marsh lingered last, still looking at Ethan. “For the record,” he said, “I wasn’t flirting. But if I were, I’d be very bad at it.”
Ethan grinned back. “Thanks for clearing that up. I’m not sure I could handle that intense look on the daily.”
Dev smirked. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about you.”
The feeds cut.
The room went quiet.
Chairs scraped. People stretched. Kael stood, already talking about next steps with Victor and Drew. Luca muttered something about needing coffee.
Niko didn’t wait.
He stood, grabbed Ethan’s hand, and pulled.
Ethan laughed as he stumbled after him. “What’s the hurry?”
Niko didn’t slow down. “Watching you think is hotter than hell.”
Ethan choked on his own laugh. “That is absolutely not a sentence I ever expected to hear.”
“Too late,” Niko said, already dragging him down the hall. “I’ve waited three years to watch your brain work like that. I am not wasting the adrenaline.”
Ethan let himself be pulled, still laughing, still stunned, heart racing for reasons that had nothing to do with danger.
As Niko shoved the bedroom door open and tugged him inside, Ethan thought—very clearly—that some missions were worth abandoning strategy for.
And this one felt like the best decision he’d made all day.
****
Gregory Payne did not throw things.
He had learned long ago that rage wasted energy, that destruction for its own sake was the language of men who had already lost control.
So he stood very still in the glass-and-steel office he’d built as a monument to his own brilliance, hands braced on the edge of his desk, jaw locked hard enough to ache.
“We won’t intervene,” the voice on the secure line said again. Calm. Distant. Almost bored.
“You will,” Gregory replied, equally calm. “You owe me.”
A pause. Then, faint amusement.
“We don’t owe you anything, Gregory. I have to admit that over the years you have proved useful, and you still are—up to a point. But you’re asking us to jeopardize a future asset for a personal grievance.”
“Personal?” Gregory’s smile was thin, razor sharp. “My son is dismantling operations that benefit everyone in your orbit.”
“Yes,” the voice agreed. “And in the process, he’s proven exactly why we’re interested in the people around him.”
Gregory’s fingers curled slightly into the polished wood. “The men he’s aligning with are dismantling your operations just as effectively as Ethan is mine.”
“Yes, they are,” the voice said mildly. “The difference is we see an asset where you only see victory.”
The line went dead.
Gregory stared at the silent screen, breathing slow and measured as something cold and precise settled into his chest.
They weren’t backing him because they didn’t need him anymore.
Worse—they were waiting to see what his son would become.
He turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city sprawled beneath him like a kingdom that no longer bent to his will. Ethan had taken so much already—money, influence, routes, allies. Stripped his empire down to something fragile and exposed.
But Gregory knew his son.
Knew the shape of his guilt. Knew the fault lines beneath the brilliance.
Ethan could dismantle syndicates and bankrupt kings without blinking, but he was still the boy who loved too deeply. Still, the man who would trade power for the safety of the people he cared about.
Gregory exhaled slowly.
If the Directorate wouldn’t help him reclaim control, then he would remind them why they’d once been afraid of him.
There was one card left to play.
The last one.
The one that would force Ethan to come home, kneel, and give back everything he had taken—plus interest.
Gregory picked up his phone and dialed a number he hadn’t used in years.
“It’s time,” he said when the line connected. “Quietly. Quickly.”
He smiled as the call ended, the decision settling into place like the final piece of a long-planned move.
Because empires could be rebuilt.
Power could be reclaimed.
And blood, Gregory Payne knew very well, always answered when called.