[Ethan’s POV]

The rain in New York was coming down in sheets, slicking the tarmac of the private airfield in a layer of freezing, reflective black.

I stepped out of the town car, pulling the collar of my trench coat up against the biting wind. Fifty yards away, the matte-black Gulfstream G650 sat waiting, its twin Rolls-Royce engines already whining with a low, hungry hum. The Vanguard Holdings crest had been scrubbed from the tail two years ago. To the FAA, this was just an anonymous charter jet owned by a shell company in the Caymans. To me, it was the only lifeline we had left.

I walked up the airstairs, my duffel bag slung over one shoulder. The weight of the Glock 19 holstered at the small of my back was a familiar, comforting pressure. Two years ago, the idea of carrying a loaded firearm would have made me sick to my stomach. Now, I didn’t leave my apartment without it.

I stepped into the luxurious, dimly lit cabin and hit the button to retract the stairs. The heavy door sealed shut with a pneumatic hiss, cutting off the sound of the storm outside.

"Get us in the air," I called out toward the cockpit. "Maximum thrust. We need to be over the Atlantic twenty minutes ago."

"Copy that, sir," the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom.

I dropped my duffel bag onto one of the plush leather seats and walked straight to the wet bar. My hands were shaking. Just a slight tremor in the fingers, but enough to piss me off. I grabbed a crystal tumbler and poured three fingers of neat bourbon. I needed to steady my nerves. I was flying into Eastern Europe, completely off the grid, to chase a ghost.

"Pour one for me, too."

I froze.

The voice came from the back of the cabin, emerging from the shadows of the private sleeping quarters.

I dropped the glass. My hand snapped to the small of my back, drawing the Glock in a fraction of a second, my thumb flicking the safety off as I leveled the barrel at the darkness. My heart hammered against my ribs.

A figure stepped out of the shadows, raising both hands in a slow, placating gesture.

"Easy, Ethan. It’s just me."

I stared down the iron sights of my weapon, my brain struggling to process what I was seeing.

It was Claire.

But it wasn’t the Claire Montgomery from our college days. The girl who used to sit in the library with color-coded flashcards, the girl who used to look right through Jake Hart before he became a king, was gone.

The woman standing in front of me looked like she had been forged in the same brutal crucible we all had. She was wearing dark, tailored slacks, a fitted black turtleneck, and a lightweight trench coat. She didn’t look like a commando—she looked like a ruthless corporate executive, sharp, capable, and entirely out of place on a rogue rescue mission.

I slowly lowered the gun, my finger moving off the trigger, but my heart rate didn’t slow down.

"Claire? What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded, my voice harsh in the quiet cabin. "How did you even get past the perimeter security?"

"I manage the payroll and logistics for Aldridge Global’s private contractors, Ethan," Claire said, walking forward and calmly picking up the bottle of bourbon I had abandoned. She poured herself a glass. "The guards outside work for me. I just told them I was doing a surprise audit of the flight manifest. They opened the gate."

"Get off the plane," I said, pointing toward the sealed door. "Tell the pilot to abort the taxi. You are not coming with me."

Claire took a sip of the bourbon, not flinching at the burn. She looked at me, her eyes hard and unyielding. "You got a ping. From Jake."

"How do you know that?"

"I don’t have your spy toys or Nia’s hacking skills, Ethan," Claire said, stepping closer. "But I audit the black-book accounts. When you authorized a massive, untraceable fuel requisition for a ghost flight to Eastern Europe at three in the morning, my terminal flagged it. You wouldn’t burn that kind of capital and break protocol unless you found him. So I got here first."

"Claire, listen to me," I said, stepping into her space, trying to use my height to intimidate her. It didn’t work. She didn’t back down an inch. "This isn’t a corporate audit. This isn’t a boardroom negotiation. We are flying into a blind spot in Romania. Isabella Vane has eyes everywhere in Europe. If she catches us, she won’t sue us. She will put bullets in the backs of our heads and dump us in the Danube."

"I know the risks," Claire said, her voice terrifyingly calm. "I’ve known the risks since the day Jake walked into that gala and took over Vanguard. I’ve spent the last two years watching Victoria and Sofia slowly lose a war of attrition. I’ve watched you turn into a paranoid insomniac. Jake is out there. He’s alive. And I am not sitting in an office in New York while you go find him."

I stared at her. I remembered the girl who used to ignore Jake when he brought her coffee. Then I remembered the girl who had sat in the library basement with us, helping Jake study, slowly realizing that the "invisible guy" was the most dangerous man in the room. She had never been one of his conquests. She had never been part of the harem of billionaires and deans that Jake had subjugated.

She was his friend. One of his anchors to the real world. And looking at the fierce, desperate determination in her eyes, I realized something else.

She wasn’t doing this for the empire. She was doing this for him.

The floor of the cabin tilted sharply as the Gulfstream accelerated down the runway, the G-force pushing us both back. It was too late. We were in the air.

I let out a long, exhausted sigh and holstered my weapon.

"If you get shot," I muttered, walking back to my seat and collapsing into the leather, "Sofia is going to kill me."

"If I get shot, I’ll bleed on your expensive shoes," Claire retorted, taking the seat across from me and pulling a sleek laptop from her bag. "Now, sit down and look at the data. We have a lot of work to do before we land."

I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes as the plane pierced the cloud cover, leaving the storm behind.

Having Claire here was a liability. But as I felt the familiar, cold knot of anxiety tightening in my stomach, I couldn’t deny that I was glad I wasn’t doing this alone.

Because I knew exactly what it took to survive in Jake’s world now. I had the scars to prove it.

...

Flashback - Eighteen Months Ago

The taste of copper flooded my mouth.

I hit the padded mat hard, the breath exploding from my lungs in a violent rush. For a second, the fluorescent lights of the underground training facility spun in dizzying circles. I tried to push myself up, my arms trembling, but a heavy combat boot planted itself firmly in the center of my chest, pinning me to the floor.

"You’re dead," Darius rumbled.

The massive former linebacker stood over me, his chest barely heaving despite the fact that he had just spent the last twenty minutes beating me into a pulp. He was wearing tactical pants and a sweat-soaked grey t-shirt.

"I... I blocked the left hook," I gasped, spitting a glob of blood onto the mat.

"You blocked the distraction," Darius corrected, stepping back and letting me sit up. "While you were looking at my left hand, I swept your leg and dropped you. If I had a knife, your throat would be open right now. Get up."

I groaned, my entire body screaming in protest as I forced myself to my feet. My ribs felt bruised, my lip was split, and my knuckles were raw.

"Darius, man, I’m an economics major," I panted, wiping the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. "I run background checks. I do corporate espionage. I don’t do... this."

Darius didn’t smile. His face was a mask of absolute, terrifying seriousness. He walked over to a bench, grabbed a towel, and threw it at my face.

"Jake is gone, Ethan," Darius said, his voice echoing in the cavernous, concrete room. "He went to Geneva to fight the Sovereign, and he vanished. His network is dark. His intel is gone. We are flying blind."

"I know that," I snapped, frustration boiling over. "That’s why I’m running the surveillance grid! That’s why I’m trying to track him!"

"And what happens when you find him?" Darius asked, taking a step toward me, his sheer size casting a shadow over me. "What happens if you track him to a safehouse in Moscow, or a slum in Berlin, and Isabella Vane’s private security gets there at the same time? Are you going to throw a spreadsheet at them?"

I went silent.

"Jake built an empire," Darius said softly. "He conquered billionaires. He stole from the shadows. But the people he stole from? They don’t play by boardroom rules. They hire killers. They hire ghosts. If you want to be Jake’s right hand, if you want to be the guy who goes out into the dark to find him... you can’t be a frat boy anymore, Ethan. You have to be a weapon."

Darius walked back to the center of the mat and raised his fists.

"Again," he commanded. "And this time, don’t look at my hands. Look at my hips. Watch my center of gravity. If you want to survive the people who took Jake, you have to learn how to see the things they’re trying to hide."

I looked at the giant of a man. I thought about Jake, the guy who had pulled me out of mediocrity, the guy who had shown me what it meant to actually rule the world. He was out there somewhere. Alone.

I dropped the towel. I raised my fists.

"Again," I said.

...

Present Time

"Ethan."

I blinked, pulling myself out of the memory. The dull ache in my nose—a permanent reminder of the time Darius had actually broken it during a sparring session—throbbed faintly.

I opened my eyes. Claire was leaning across the aisle, her laptop screen glowing in the dim cabin light. She had pulled up the coordinates I had forwarded to my own tablet.

"I pulled the municipal and economic data for the coordinates your system flagged," she said, her voice strictly professional. "Sector 4, Bucharest. It’s a slum. High poverty rate, cash-only economy, zero corporate infrastructure."

I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and looked at the map on her screen. The red dot was blinking in a maze of narrow, unmarked streets.

"Why there?" I muttered. "If Jake was on the run, why wouldn’t he go to one of our safehouses in Western Europe? Why hide in a Romanian slum?"

"Because Isabella Vane controls the banking sector in Western Europe," Claire said quietly, tapping the screen. "If he used a credit card, accessed a modern financial grid, or stepped into a high-end hotel in Paris or London, her algorithms would flag his financial footprint in seconds. He went to the one place where money is untraceable."

I looked at Claire. The soft glow of the screen illuminated the sharp, determined lines of her face.

"He’s been out there for two years, Claire," I said, the reality of the situation settling heavily over me. "Without his network. Without his resources. Without his money. If Isabella Vane broke his mind... we might not be finding the Jake we knew."

Claire looked down at the keyboard, her jaw tightening. For a fraction of a second, the hardened executive facade slipped, and I saw the raw, agonizing fear of a woman who was terrified of what she might find.

"I don’t care what state he’s in," Claire whispered, her voice fierce and unwavering. "He didn’t give up on us when we were nothing. I’m not giving up on him."

She closed the laptop with a sharp snap.

"We land in three hours," she said, leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. "Get some sleep, Ethan. When we hit the ground, we’re in the dark."

I looked out the window at the black expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Somewhere out there, in the shadows of a forgotten city, the Emperor was wandering in the dark.

Hold on, Jake, I thought, resting my hand on the grip of my weapon. We’re coming.