The boardroom of Grotech was quiet, but not comfortably so. Ryan sat at the head of the long mahogany table, his expression unreadable as the partners went back and forth over projections, expansions, and risk assessments.
But he wasn't listening.
There was something else tugging at him. A current in the air that had no business being there. A thickness that clung to the edges of the room, brushing over his senses like a shadow sliding along the walls. His jaw tightened imperceptibly.
He could feel a demonic aura.
It was faint--so faint he almost questioned whether he was imagining it. His eyes swept the room, moving from face to face. All of them were men and women he knew in this life of industry and profit, but the aura slipped between them like mist. It clung without revealing a source.
His brow furrowed. Were his powers fluctuating? He had never once misread the presence of such a thing. To doubt his senses was to doubt himself, yet the room gave him nothing to anchor that instinct to.
"Mr Ardyn," one of the younger partners was saying, but Ryan didn't answer. His eyes had settled on the far end of the table where an older man sat, his thin hands folded neatly before him.
Mr Harlan Greaves.
One of the longest-standing partners of Grotech. A man whose mind was sharper than the knives the younger generation carried in their ambition. His grey eyes held a depth that always seemed to pierce the noise of lesser men. When the younger executives tripped over numbers, it was Greaves who corrected them. When the board threatened to lose itself to greed, it was Greaves who steered them back.
And now those same grey eyes found Ryan.
"I knew your father," the old man said, his voice hoarse yet steady, "he was a great man. One of the finest this city has ever seen. He built this empire not only with strength but with vision. I have lived long enough to see giants rise and crumble, but your father… he was no ordinary man."
The words settled heavily on Ryan's chest.
Ryan forced his expression to remain composed, but inside, something twisted. His father--a man he could only imagine through stories and whispers. His mother--nothing more than a shadow cut too early from his life. He had been barely a child when death stole them away, left to grow under a sky that had no warmth.
He wondered, not for the first time, what it would have been like to know them. To have a mother's voice steady him, a father's hand to guide him. Instead, their absence had carved him into something harder.
He gave Greaves the barest nod, and the meeting continued, though Ryan's mind was elsewhere.
---
On the way home, rain slicked the city streets, turning glass towers into wavering mirrors of themselves. The sound of it drummed against the car windows, soft yet insistent.
"Drop me off here," Ryan said suddenly.
Morgan's hands tightened around the steering wheel. "Sir, we're not--"
"I said here."
The weight in Ryan's tone left no room for negotiation.
Morgan's mouth tightened, but he pulled the car to the curb. He wanted to argue--Ryan could hear it in the silence that stretched--but Morgan knew better. Orders were orders.
He eased the car toward the curb, rain streaking the windshield in shimmering lines.
Ryan stepped out, the storm greeting him without hesitation. The chill cut into his tailored suit, but he ignored it.
He walked.
Through streets that blurred with water and light, past strangers hurrying under umbrellas. He walked until the noise of the world dulled and it was only him and the rain. Thoughts clawed at him--about his parents, about the paths life had forced him down.
By the time he reached a worn bench tucked beneath the dim halo of a streetlamp, he was drenched. He sat anyway, letting the rain beat against him as if it could wash something loose from his soul. His shoulders sagged, his head tilted back, and for once he allowed the weight he carried to simply rest heavy without fighting it.
---
Thelma nearly drove past him.
Her SUV rolled slowly down the street, when she noticed him through the rain-streaked glass. A man sitting hunched on a bench, water running down him as though he hadn't the sense to move.
But there was something about his profile that made her heart stutter.
Surely not. Surely it couldn't be--
Ryan Ardyn. Owner of Grotech. The very man her father had spoken of with a strange reverence.
What was he doing here, drenched like a vagabond, sitting in the storm as if the world had discarded him?
She pulled over before she could think better of it. The door of her SUV opened, and the rain swallowed her in an instant. She hurried across the pavement, her heels clicking against wet stone, until she stood before him.
"Are you--are you Ryan Ardyn?" she asked, her voice caught between disbelief and urgency.
He lifted his gaze to her. Water clung to his lashes, his sharp features slick with rain, but his eyes… his eyes were steady. "Yes, I am."
Her brow arched.
"Right. And I'm the Queen of England. Do you expect me to believe the great Ryan Ardyn--CEO, mogul, walking headline--spends his free time brooding on park benches like a drowned rat?"
His expression didn't flicker. If anything, the corner of his mouth twitched, as though her barb had landed precisely where he allowed it.
Thelma folded her arms. "You look like you should be begging for change, not running a corporation."
"And yet," Ryan said mildly, "here I am."
She stared at him, exasperation and unease tangling together. He was either the most convincing impostor she'd ever met or exactly who he claimed.
Thelma shifted on her feet. She had come here with purpose, not to argue identities with a drenched stranger. Her father's face flashed in her mind--his frail body, his weakening voice whispering the name Reaper with a faith she couldn't understand.
Her chin lifted. "Then come with me. Reaper. Your skill is called upon."
Thelma felt her cheeks flush, half-expecting him to laugh in her face. The words sounded ridiculous, ancient, like something stolen from an old book. Yet she would do anything--anything--to give her father a chance.
Ryan studied her, rain dripping down his jaw
He wasn't sure she realised the full weight of what she had just said, yet somehow… someone knew him. Knew the other life he had thought stayed buried behind walls of secrecy.
"Reaper."
The title stirred something in him, a recognition he could not dismiss. Perhaps it was a fluke. Perhaps she didn't know what she was asking. But there was an honesty in her eyes, a plea she hadn't spoken aloud.
She had asked for his help and he could not refuse.
Ryan rose from the bench, tall and commanding even in the storm. Without another word, he followed her to the SUV and slipped inside.
Her home was a sprawling estate on the city's edge, its walls heavy with age and memory. She led him through echoing corridors until they reached a room bright with sterile lights.
Doctors filled the space, moving with quiet urgency. At the centre of it all lay a man on a vast bed, his body thin beneath the sheets, his breath shallow.
Ryan stopped.
It was Greaves.
The very man who had spoken of his father hours earlier in the boardroom.
The aura slammed into Ryan's senses with brutal clarity now, no longer faint. It clung to Greaves's body, slithering beneath his skin, alive and malignant.
The old man turned his head weakly, his eyes half-lidded yet sharp with recognition. His lips curved faintly into a smile.
"Welcome, Reaper," Greaves rasped.
And Ryan knew, in that moment, that the rain had washed him into the centre of something far larger than he had ever imagined.