The velvet curtain of evening had fallen over the city, and as I finally emerged from the glass towers of Umbrella, the air was thick with the scent of impending rain and ozone. The streets below were a frantic mosaic of light and noise, but my mind remained a fortress of silent calculation, layered with the contingencies of the three-phase plan that would soon rewrite the digital landscape of the world.
I stepped into the cavernous, shadowed expanse of the underground parking lot, the rhythmic echo of my own footsteps the only sound—until a voice cut through the gloom.
"Aryan."
I turned, my senses—honed by the silver-grey fog of the Castle—immediately tightening.
Sharon stood a few meters away, illuminated by flickering glow of an overhead lamp. She was holding two cups of coffee, the steam rising delicately.
"I didn't know how you took it," she said, her voice carrying a warmth that felt dangerously out of place in this concrete tomb. She raised one cup slightly. "So I guessed. Black. No sugar."
I stared at the offering. My mind immediately scanned for intent, for the poison of a hidden agenda. "I didn't ask for coffee."
"I know," she replied, her expression calm, "You never do."
The answer irritated me. It suggested a level of observation that I had not authorized. "I have somewhere to be," I said.
She walked closer, bridging the distance until the aroma of the brew reached me. She handed it to me anyway. "Then drink it on the way."
I took the cup because the cold logic of efficiency dictated that refusing would only prolong this unwanted intimacy. "Thank you," I said.
She smiled, as if that solitary word was a hard-won victory. We walked in silence for several paces, the sound of our footsteps out of sync.
Finally, she said, "You remind me of him."
I stopped. The air seemed to grow thin. "…Of whom?"
"Your grandfather."
My fingers tightened around the paper cup until it groaned. "Looks like you knew him quite well."
She smiled, but it was a smile tinged with the bittersweet grey of a memory.
In that moment, a memory surged from the depths of my mind, triggered by the bitter scent of the coffee. It was not coffee I remembered, but black tea. Strong. Slightly bitter.
I was younger then, still a student, still burning with an adolescent impatience to conquer the world. I had returned home late, my heart filled with the petty irritations of a long day, only to find my grandfather sitting under the yellow, amber glow of a table lamp.
He looked up, and smiled. "Aryan," he had said, "have I ever told you about someone I know from the FBI?"
I remember my frown. "You know people everywhere, Grandfather. What is special about this one?"
He had chuckled, closing his leather-bound book. "She's… different. She's young. Brave. Perhaps too brave for her own good." He poured me a cup of tea I hadn't asked for. "She works dangerous jobs. Jobs where people don't come back. And yet, every time she does, she visits. She sits in the garden. Sometimes she doesn't say much at all."
"So you adopted her too?" I had asked, half-joking.
My grandfather had looked at me for a long moment, his eyes filled with a weight I couldn't then measure. "If she needed it," he said quietly, "I would."
Before I had gone to my room that night, he had added, almost casually, "If you ever meet her, be kind."
I looked back at Sharon now, standing in the dim light of the garage.
Her persistence. Her familiarity with the inner workings of my company. The way the veterans in the lobby looked at her with a quiet respect. I realized then that she wasn't approaching me as an agent of SHIELD, seeking to dismantle a rising power. She was approaching me as the carrier of a promise made to a dead man.
She was an inheritance—a responsibility passed down like an unspoken will. My grandfather had known our paths would cross. He had trusted her enough to ask, without ever saying the words: Watch over him. Do not let him walk alone.
That didn't mean I trusted her. Trust was an expensive currency, and I was a miser. But I understood her now. She was dangerous in a way I hadn't prepared for—not because of her training, but because she genuinely cared.
"Why are you really here?" I asked, "At my side. In my company."
"Because I chose to be. I could have stayed where I was. Safer. Cleaner."
"Yet you applied to be my secretary."
"Yes."
"That doesn't make sense."
She laughed quietly, "Not everything does, Aryan. You don't trust me. I know that."
"I don't trust anyone," I replied. "It's efficient."
"It's lonely," she countered. She stopped and turned to face me fully, "Aryan... do you ever actually grieve?"
I felt a flash of cold anger. "That is none of your concern."
"It becomes my concern," she said, "when the man I work for looks like he's carrying a coffin inside his chest."
The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. I could have intimidated her. I could have invoked the power of the Castle to crush her spirit. Instead, I spoke. "Grief is a distraction."
"So is denying it," she whispered.
I was the first to look away. That annoyed me more than the coffee. We reached my car, and as I opened the door, she spoke one last time.
"He was proud of you. But he was worried, too. He said you were brilliant—but alone. He wanted you to live, Aryan. Not just build."
The words landed with the weight of a physical blow. I closed the door slowly and looked at her. "You are either very brave, Sharon... or very careless."
She smiled faintly. "Occupational hazard."
I studied her for a long moment, searching for the lie. If she was acting, her performance surpassed the greatest sorceries of the fog. "Get some rest," I said finally, my tone softening by a fraction. "Tomorrow will be busy."
Her eyes widened slightly at the lack of a dismissal. "Good night, Aryan."
As I drove away, I watched her in the rearview mirror. She didn't reach for a radio to report to her superiors. She simply stood there in the shadows, holding an empty cup, watching me leave.
P.S. If you're enjoying the journey through the mist and can't wait to see what happens next, consider supporting my work on Patreon! You can unlock 10 Advance Chapters right now and stay ahead of the curve. Your support helps me keep the updates coming daily!
Read ahead here: www.patreon.com/Drrajnovel