The Whintrop estate sat in a heavy silence, the kind that lingered after a scandal. Clarissa paced the length of the marble sitting room, her silk robe trailing behind her like a shadow. Her mother lounged on the velvet sofa, wine glass in hand, her sharp eyes glittering with disdain. Matthias stood by the window, a dark figure against the night.
Clarissa's voice was high and clipped. "I can't believe this. He broke into our vault. My husband, a thief."
Her mother let out a sharp laugh, the kind meant to cut. "So not only is he useless, he's dishonourable. We should have expected as much. A man without wealth is a man without a backbone. We gave him a Whintrop name, and this is how he repays us." She sipped her wine with elegant disgust. "Pathetic."
Clarissa flinched, shame tightening her jaw. She turned to Matthias, desperate for validation. "He's ruined everything. The press will find out, they'll twist this into a spectacle. How am I supposed to hold my head up now?"
Matthias finally turned from the window. His expression was calm, his eyes reassuring. He crossed to her side and brushed his hand lightly across her arm, the perfect picture of a concerned partner.
"Clarissa," he murmured, his voice smooth as velvet, "no one will ever hear of this. Leave that to me. Ryan won't drag you or your family down any further. He's gone. And when he's found, he'll answer for this insult."
Clarissa leaned back, shaking her head. "And for what? A book? An old, worthless relic that's been in our vault for decades. If anything, he stole garbage. He humiliated himself more than us."
She gave a bitter laugh. "Fitting, then. He always was garbage."
Matthias smiled faintly, but his eyes glimmered with something sharper, colder. He concealed it behind another soft gesture, drawing Clarissa against him, murmuring into her hair. "Don't trouble yourself with him. You're a Whintrop. He's nothing."
But when Clarissa closed her eyes, taking comfort in his embrace, Matthias's gaze shifted past her, to her mother and to the darkened window. For just an instant, his composure slipped. His eyes burned, not with affection, but with hunger.
That book.
Clarissa had no idea what she'd been sitting on. No idea that the "worthless relic" was the key to unlocking a power long buried. But he knew. He had always known.
Later that night, in the privacy of his penthouse, Matthias poured himself a drink and set his phone on the desk. He dialled a number that most of the world would never believe existed.
When the line clicked open, he didn't waste words.
"He is the lost son. The wheel is already in motion." Matthias said, his tone flat and certain. "The reaper has been found. And he has taken the Book of Contracts."
The silence on the other end was thick, then a low voice replied, dark with anticipation.
"Then the game begins."
Matthias leaned back in his chair, his lips curving into a predator's smile.
"Yes," he whispered, eyes gleaming. "And this time, I intend to win."
---
The car glided through gates taller than anything Ryan had seen, iron wrought into twisting patterns like a crest. Beyond stretched a mansion that looked more like a palace, all marble pillars and endless rows of glass. When the doors opened, staff in dark uniforms lined the entrance, bowing deeply as though rehearsed.
"Welcome home, young master," they chorused.
Ryan froze in the doorway. Young master? Him? The words struck him harder than the alarms, harder than the guards chasing him minutes ago. He wanted to laugh, to deny, to curse but his throat locked.
The gentleman's hand pressed lightly to his shoulder, guiding him in. "This is yours. All of it."
They moved through endless halls, chandeliers dripping crystals. The gentleman showed him maps of companies, files stacked high with contracts, numbers Ryan couldn't begin to calculate. Grotech. Ryan's eyes snagged on the name--his wife's family had begged for years to cut a deal with them. And here, he found, they answered to him. To the Ardyn bloodline. He was the owner of it.
The weight of it made him dizzy. Riches beyond the Whintrops. A legacy greater than any boardroom could imagine.
But the question burst out anyway. "How? I'm an orphan. I grew up with nothing."
The gentleman's expression softened, though his eyes stayed sharp. "To protect you, your parents had to make you nothing. They gave you up, left you where enemies would never think to look--an orphanage."
Ryan's chest tightened. His voice scraped raw. "And them? Where are they now?"
"They are gone." A beat of silence. "Killed, long before you were old enough to understand."
Ryan's fists clenched at his sides. "Why? Why all of this? Why me?"
The gentleman watched him carefully, his tone lowering, each word weighted. "Because you are heir of Ardyn. Wealth and power are yours, yes... but so are the shadows that trail it. Demons walk this world, Ryan. They are not myths, not stories, they are things that lurk in the dark, feeding where men cannot see. It is the duty of your bloodline to hunt them. That is what your parents died fighting."
The air seemed to thicken around him. Ryan's mind reeled, the book of contracts suddenly heavier under his arm. Hunt demons? Was this man playing a joke on him? There's no such thing as that. And yet, a few days earlier, he never knew he was heir to anything.
Everything shifted. Wealth, power, enemies--none of it mattered if he couldn't survive what came for him in the dark.