The city spread out endlessly beneath Harper Nolan's office window, a vast tapestry of glass and steel woven together by ambition. From this vantage point, the streets resembled veins of light, throbbing with the energy of commerce and influence. He leaned back against the glass wall, tall and broad shouldered, dressed immaculately in a navy suit tailored to perfection. To the outside world, he seemed untouchable; to the people working under him, he was more than a man he was a force to be reckoned with.
Suddenly he had a flash back, Azalea had been five. He remembered because that night she had begged him not to leave. She'd been sitting cross legged on her pink carpet, braiding her doll's hair, her little face tilting up with pleading eyes.
"Stay, Daddy," she had said" "Don't go work tonight."
He had bent down, then kissed her forehead, promised he would be back before she woke. To her, he was going to work. To his wife, he was meeting investors. To himself, he was marching toward betrayal and blood. Then he left leaving a kiss on his wife's forehead
The warehouse smelled of rust and oil, the rain outside pounding on its tin roof. Five men were tied to different poles, the men who had once been his partners, the ones who had started Nolan's Enterprises with him when it was nothing but an idea and desperation. They had shared victories, losses, secrets. For years, they had been brothers in ambition. But greed is a disease, and Harper could see it in their eyes.
You've gotten too powerful, Harper," Clark spat. "This company doesn't belong to you alone."
"Doesn't it?" Harper's voice had been calm, steady, chilling. "When the banks turned you down, who convinced them? When suppliers walked away, who brought them back? When failure stared us in the face, who stood tallest? It was me. And don't ever forget it."
"You don't get to erase us," Timothy snapped, veins bulging on his temple. "We built this together."
Harper almost pitied them. Almost. But he was so selfish and corny he wanted all for himself and his family alone.
In the corner of the warehouse, shadows moved. Men Harper had hired weeks earlier, men with no faces in official records. Guns rose silently, and before his partners could process the betrayal, the air cracked with gunfire.
The echoes bounced against steel walls, drowning out screams, cutting lives short in seconds. Blood spread across the concrete floor, dark and glistening under the flickering light.
When the silence returned, Harper stood untouched at the center, his breath even. He walked around the table slowly, looking at the lifeless bodies of men who once called themselves his equals.
"This empire is mine," he had whispered. "And no one will ever take it from me."
By dawn, it was as though the men had never existed. Records disappeared. Families were silenced with money and threats. Reporters who sniffed around were bought or broken. And Harper returned home in time for breakfast, his daughter running into his arms as though he had been gone for years.
She never knew. She never would.
The knock on the door snapped him back to the present, "come in" he said it was his work assistant Emily.
"Sir everyone is waiting for you in the boardroom" she said and left without waiting for a response.
When he entered the boardroom that morning, the chatter had died instantly. Conversations about markets, stock reports, and politics stopped as if someone had cut the air itself. Every eye turned toward his direction looking at him, and like always Harper walked in as though he owned not just the room, but everyone in it.
"Good morning," he said, voice smooth.
The executives straightened, adjusting ties, setting down pens, offering polite smiles that masked fear. Harper took his seat at the head of the long mahogany table, folding his hands with deliberate calm.
"Let's begin," he said.
The next hour unfolded with the precision of a symphony. Charts and figures were presented, projections analyzed, cautious suggestions offered. But no decision was final until Harper spoke. When he leaned forward, tapping a finger against the table, silence rippled across the board.
"You see numbers," he said, his eyes sweeping the room, "but I see futures. Where you hesitate, I act. That is why Nolan Enterprises doesn't follow trends we set them. And those who cannot keep up His gaze lingered on a young executive, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat, " are left behind."
Murmurs of agreement followed. No one dared challenge him. No one ever did.
To them, Harper was the empire. To his daughter, Azalea, he was simply "Dad." But Harper Nolan carried truths no daughter, no executive, no publicist would ever hear.
However, after school, Azalea's black sedan rolled up the curved driveway of the Benett estate. Her driver, Mr. Joshua, a man in his late fifties with kind eyes and graying hair, stepped out and opened the rear door with his usual polite bow.
"Home, Miss Azalea," he said warmly.
I slipped out, still in my school uniform, my backpack slung casually over one shoulder. Though I had grown up surrounded by wealth, thats why I always carry myself with a simplicity that startled those expecting arrogance from the billionaire's daughter.
"Thank you, Joshua," I said with a small smile before heading toward the front entrance of the sprawling mansion.
Inside, the ever diligent butler, Mr. William, greeted me with a deep bow. His formal black suit and crisp white gloves gave him an air of timeless precision. "Welcome home, Miss Azalea."
I dropped my bag on the marble console table and turned to him, my youthful face lighting with curiosity. "Are my parents back yet?, I asked "
"Not yet, miss," William replied in his even, composed tone. "But they should be home in no less than an hour."
I nodded, my lips curving into a thoughtful pout. "Alright then. For dinner, I'd love to have Chinese noodles tonight."
"Very well," William answered promptly. "Shall I serve it in the dining room?"
I shook my head quickly, making my hair to bounce lightly around my shoulders. "No, I'd prefer to eat in my room tonight."
"As you wish, Miss Azalea," William said, bowing again before making a note for the kitchen staff.
She started up the sweeping staircase, her footsteps echoing softly against the marble. From the outside, it was a simple request a daughter choosing to dine in her comfort zone which is her room . But little did anyone in the household know that while Harper Nolan believed his past was buried and safe, the storm meant for him would one day find its way not to his empire, but directly to Azalea's door.
Meanwhile, in a tall white mansion located in another estate, a man stood on the balcony of one of the many rooms as he stared at the stars, his broad shoulders framed against the open air. He was putting on a pair of black cooperates pants, His jaw was tight, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles whitened. To him, the skyline wasn't beauty it was a battlefield.
He remembered the night his father never came home. He remembered the silence that followed, the hollow stares of his mother, the whispers he wasn't supposed to hear. He had been a boy then, small and helpless, but he had grown in the shadows, hardened by loss and hunger. Every day of his life had been fueled by one truth Harper Nolan had stolen everything.
And now, after years of waiting, the time for silence was over.
Aiden didn't care about Nolan's Enterprises. He didn't care about the billions or the boardrooms. His father had been one of those five men erased, forgotten, buried under Harper's empire.
And revenge, he knew, would not come by destroying Harper's company. It would come by destroying Harper's heart.
Azalea.
The name slipped through his mouth like a promise and like a threat. He had watched her in photographs, in the glossy features where she smiled with the practiced openness of someone born into light. He had watched her on balconies and at charity galas, a small figure framed by chandeliers and applause. Harper loved her the way kings love crowns: adorning, protecting, polishing for public view. That love would be his instrument.
He her name again this time with a whisper,So the name Azalea tasted like fuel and like keys. He said it softly, then louder, letting it settle in the room and in himself. He would not take her from Harper with violence or with spectacle. He would take the certainty Harper had in her "the certainty that nothing could touch what he loved and he would dismantle it until the man who once erased his father understood, in the bone deep way only loss teaches, what it meant to be unmade. Suddenly he picked up his phone then he sent a text saying
"ITS SHOW TIME"