Chapter Five #2
That nearly broke him.
“She lived longer than they expected,” Ethan said. “Long enough that my father kept me exactly where he wanted me. Close. Useful.”
He swallowed.
“While she was dying, and hell, from the first day I could upon my return to the fold, so to speak, I planned. I didn’t run. I waited. I built a fucking empire.”
“Your tech,” Luca said, interest sharpening.
"Yeah, a lot of it," Ethan said. "Security was what I did most and best, and a few AI systems."
Luca sat forward. “The AI systems. You don’t mean Aegis Vector, do you?”
Ethan’s mouth curved faintly. “That’s one of them.”
Luca let out a low breath. “I use Aegis Vector’s routing and counter-surveillance architecture. It’s ... fuck, it’s elegant. Adaptive, predictive. I assumed it was a black lab or a government ghost project.”
"Nope, just me," Ethan admitted with a shrug. “Six months. That’s all it took to start building capital once I could move freely.”
Drew frowned slightly. “Six months to get all of this up and running? The company, the systems, the infrastructure?”
Ethan shrugged one shoulder. “The bones were already there. I just finally had the courage to build without caring too much about the fucker standing over me with a leash.”
Luca went still. “That’s dangerous.”
“It was meant to be,” Ethan replied.
“And Pyre?” Victor asked.
Ethan exhaled. “A mask. A necessary one.” He lifted his gaze, meeting each of them in turn before it finally settled on Niko. “If Phoenix is the rebirth, Pyre is the end.”
That earned a surprised reaction, which Ethan found he didn’t mind.
“I stayed invisible all the time I was with my father,” he said. “I built this place. Staffed it. Made sure my daughter would never be collateral in anyone's fucked up war.”
“So, it’s just you and Poppy now,” Niko said.
Ethan finally met his eyes. “Yes. My brother, Marcus, is almost eighteen and just about to finish high school. I sent him out of state for his final two years. I needed to get him away from my father as well.”
The rest of the room faded out.
“The rest of this,” Ethan said quietly, “is just for you and me.”
He stood and used the intercom to call down. “Lucy? Could you show everyone to the guest wing?”
She appeared moments later. When the others filed out, Ethan didn’t move until Niko did.
“Will you come with me?” Ethan asked.
“Yes,” Niko said without hesitation.
Ethan turned toward the hallway, heart pounding, knowing with absolute certainty that whatever came next could cost him everything—and that he was finally done running.
****
The house had burned exactly the way it was supposed to.
Gregory Rhodes stood in the quiet of his study, a crystal tumbler clenched in his hand, watching the footage replay on a wall of screens.
The explosion bloomed outward in a violent, beautiful rush of fire and debris—structural failure cascading, glass and steel turning into nothing but heat and smoke.
Except it meant nothing.
Because the bastard hadn’t been there.
Gregory set the glass down hard enough that the liquor inside sloshed dangerously close to the rim. His jaw tightened, fury coiling low and sharp in his gut.
A ruse.
They had been so certain. The analysts. The contractors. Everyone who had assured him that the house in Oregon was Ethan’s. That they had finally cornered the problem. That the leash was back within reach.
Instead, his son had been watching.
Waiting.
Gregory moved closer to the screens, eyes narrowing as he scrubbed back through the feeds. He watched Black Tide flow through the property like a surgical strike. Watched them split, adapt, dominate.
And then he watched Ethan vanish.
Again.
“Pyre,” Gregory said aloud, tasting the name with contempt.
He’d known.
The moment the reports started stacking—operations collapsing, money bleeding out of channels that had been stable for decades, allies going dark or turning up dead—he had known it wasn’t a coincidence. No one dismantled an empire like that without understanding how it was built.
Only Ethan had that understanding.
His son had taken so much.
Billions in lost revenue. Years of influence undone. Carefully cultivated power structures reduced to ash.
And worse—Ethan had done it quietly. Methodically. With patience.
Gregory’s grip tightened until his knuckles went white.
He had tolerated rebellion before. He had crushed it.
This was different.
This was personal.
“I want him found,” Gregory said, voice calm despite the rage burning behind it. “I want every asset we have moving. I want eyes on every system he’s touched, every company he’s hidden behind, every person he’s ever trusted.”
A voice crackled over the line. “And if we can’t bring him back?”
Gregory’s smile was thin and joyless.
“Then kill him,” he said. “Take back the money. The tech. The power. Make an example of what happens when my son forgets who owns him.”
He turned away from the screens, already planning the escalation. Brute force hadn’t worked.
Fine.
He would apply pressure where Ethan couldn’t ignore it.
Gregory paused, eyes flicking once more to the frozen image of fire consuming the false house.
“You don’t get to burn down what I built,” he murmured. “Not without burning with it.”