Chapter 3
Chapter Three ?
The apartment was small, barely more than a box with thin walls and a rattling heater that coughed instead of working. Adrian Cole—though here, he forced himself to remember the name Ethan Hayes—stood in the center of the room with his hands in his pockets, surveying the secondhand furniture the rental company had thrown in. A creaky bed, a table scarred with cigarette burns, and a sofa that looked like it might not survive the week.
Perfect.
He had spent years in spaces dripping with luxury—penthouse suites lined with glass, carpets flown in from Morocco and Italian leather that caught the light like polished stone. All of it had felt like armor, a wall between him and the world. Here, in this crumbling building that smelled faintly of old curry and damp plaster, there was no trace of his old life. Nothing except Ethan.
He set his guitar case gently against the wall, a prop he had begun carrying during his nights out as part of the disguise, whilst figuring out the best way to infiltrate his own company. The calluses on his fingertips weren’t from strumming strings but from gripping pens and contracts. Still, people saw what they wanted. A man with a hood, a guitar, and a hungry look was easy to dismiss. Exactly how he wanted it.
Adrian pulled the blinds open. From this floor, the view wasn’t of a skyline or city lights but of a narrow street where children kicked a dented soccer ball and a woman scolded them in Spanish. Laundry flapped from a balcony across the way. A far cry from the world he had been born into. He exhaled slowly, realizing with something close to relief that no one looked up at him. No one recognized him here.
For the first time in a long time, he was invisible.
Still, her face wouldn’t leave his mind. Clara. Her name had been penned at the bottom corner of her drawings. He caught himself again, jaw tightening. What was it about her? She was the girl with rain in her hair, her sketches clutched like lifelines. She had looked at him—not with pity, not with disdain—but with something he hadn’t seen in years, uncalculated kindness. That ridiculous peanut butter sandwich still sat on his counter, wrapped neatly in the wax paper she’d folded. He hadn’t touched it. Couldn’t. But he hadn’t thrown it away either.
She had no idea who he was, and yet she lingered in his thoughts. He remembered how her eyes had widened when their fingers brushed.
She would despise him if she knew the truth—that her tiny kindness had been offered to someone who could buy and sell her entire world with a single decision.
Adrian ran a hand down his face and muttered, “Get a grip.” He had no time for distractions though — especially not ones with soft brown eyes and a sandwich she couldn’t afford to give away.
Cole Global Enterprises was bleeding money—millions funneled out through carefully doctored accounts, ghost subsidiaries, and expense reports that stank of fraud. He’d seen hints of it in the quarterly numbers, enough to make him set this plan in motion. Too many of his executives were too comfortable, living far beyond their salaries, and yet no one asked questions. Perhaps they thought their CEO was too detached to notice, too busy building empires to care about the termites gnawing at the foundation.
They were wrong.
From his cramped desk, Adrian opened the battered laptop he had purchased under his false name. Its sluggish boot-up was a far cry from the sleek machines he was used to, but he didn’t need power—he needed anonymity. Through a secure channel only he and his most trusted tech operative knew, he began mapping what he already suspected: that the higher-ups were at the heart of the siphoning.
Adrian leaned back in the rickety chair, eyes narrowing. He would remain Ethan. He would play the poor man, the invisible shadow, until he had his answers. Until the embezzlement ring was torn apart from the inside.
He would find them. And when he did, he wouldn’t simply fire them. He would ruin them.
For now, he would wear invisibility like an armor. And when the time came, they would never see him coming.