The air left Ethan in a rush, like someone had just slammed into his ribs. His father. Alive. Those three words hit him hard—fifteen years of grief, anger, and obsession collapsing into a single impossible instant. Every sleepless night, every careful step toward revenge balanced on one fragile, filthy lie.
"That can't be right," he croaked, but the papers in his hands said otherwise. Corporate registrations from last year. Bank transfers are three months old. Property deals closed weeks ago. The signatures were all the same. David Park. Alive. Active. Real.
"Ethan?" Luna's fingers touched his arm, soft and tentative. "You okay?"
He couldn't make his mouth work. His chest felt hollowed, as if someone had scooped out the middle of him. "I watched him die," he whispered. "I was there. The funeral. The body."
"You saw a body," Marcus said, clinical and cruel in its logic. "Not proof."
Ethan was twelve again: small and stunned while Sienna ran the show. Papers, phone calls, and the arrangements were handled with a cold efficiency. The chapel choked on flowers. The low, mechanical hiss of the crematorium. "Sienna," he said, and the name was cut. "She knew."
"You don't know that." Luna shook her head, but uncertainty trembled at the edge of it.
"Yes." His voice was thin and frayed. "She set the trap. That's how she knew about the Singapore files. She's been working with him."
He called Sienna. One ring. Two. Then the sterile, automated voice disconnected. The phone left his hand like it had been thrown; it slammed into plaster and shattered into a scatter of glass. Uncle Harris flinched at the sound.
"I didn't know he was your father," Harris said, small and stunned. Ethan closed off, hard as stone. "Tell me everything," he barked.
Harris swallowed, brittle. "Six months ago a man came to me. Mr. Park. He had evidence on Robert—crimes. Missing money."
"What did he want?" Ethan asked.
"Access. To Harris Tech. To Luna. To the inheritance."
Harris's voice splintered. "He said he'd make us rich if I helped. If I refused, he'd expose everything."
"And you believed him?" Ethan pushed.
"He had proof." Harris kept staring at the folder on the table like it might bite.
Ethan turned the pages. Financial ledgers, Park Textiles: massive transfers—huge sums—routed to Robert Harris. "Those are bribes," he said, quieter now. "Your father wasn't the villain. He was being blackmailed."
Luna went pale. "My father was paying your father?"
"Paid under duress," Ethan corrected. "For years."
Marcus leaned forward, his face a map of accusation. "Your father trafficked in classified information. He sold secrets. When Robert found out, he paid to keep it quiet."
"To protect me," Luna breathed, as if saying it aloud might make it true.
"And when the payments stopped," Ethan said, "my father destroyed Park Textiles, framed Robert, and disappeared."
"Why fake his death?" someone asked, incredulous.
"To rebuild in the shadows," Ethan said, the word rough on his tongue. "And to turn his children into weapons."
The name Kay rose bitter in his mouth—head of security. Gone. An SUV abandoned on a rain-slick road. His team was erased. "They weren't protecting me," he said. "They were watching me."
Luna squeezed his hand. "Now you know."
"And now I have nothing," he said, bitter, the loss suddenly enormous.
"Except you." Her reply was steady, like a promise.
She shoved a USB into the laptop; her fingers moved strangely calmly. Files blinked open: property holdings, long lists of addresses. Dozens of locations. Then three recent purchases: a penthouse, a warehouse, and a private estate in Pathum Wan.
"That one," Marcus said, pointing, "it's a fortress."
Ethan read the address twice. "I've driven past it a hundred times," he murmured, like a man who'd walked by a ghost every day and never noticed.
An hour later they had made an ugly war room in a nameless hotel: a hacker with hollows under his eyes, a lawyer who tapped his pen as if it steadied him, and a private investigator who smelled faintly of stale cigarettes. Dark web chatter lined up with the paper trail: a major operation tied to the Bangkok First Tower gala.
"Five hundred guests," Min said, flat. "Weapons-grade money moving."
"My father's planning mass murder," Ethan said. The silence afterward pressed at their eardrums.
"We will stop him tonight," he added. Not a question.
Luna stepped forward. "I'm coming."
He saw something like steel beneath her grief and nodded.
At midnight they moved. Security was lighter than expected. Ten minutes. Guards taken out, stairwell by stairwell—breath held, lights low—until they were in front of the final reinforced door. Min worked the lock like a man who'd done this before: a soft curse, a gentle click, and it swung.
David Park sat behind a massive desk as if he'd been expecting them. Calm. Collected. "Hello, son," he said.
Ethan leveled his weapon. "It's over."
David's laugh was small and without humor. Screens flashed across the walls: camera feeds, maps, and schematics. Explosives were plotted through the Bangkok First Tower. Red dots bloomed like a bad constellation.
"Tomorrow night, they all die," David said, voice flat. "Everyone who watched me fall."
"Innocents, too?" Luna snapped.
"There are no innocents," he replied. And he meant it.
He looked at Ethan. "Everything you did served me."
Ethan's hands shook. "You used me."
"I created you," David said, with a clarity that made the room cold.
The door behind them clicked. Sienna stepped through, a gun leveled at Luna. Her smile was patient and merciless. "Ready to choose, little brother?" she asked.
Ethan froze. The gun in his hand suddenly felt absurdly heavy. Sienna's finger tightened on the trigger. One second. One impossible choice. Luna's life—and whether the family finally devoured itself—hung in that breath.
Cliffhanger: The room seemed to inhale. Ethan realized too late that whatever he chose next would shatter someone forever—and that David Park had planned this moment from the very beginning. Because this choice would decide who lived, who fell, and who ruled.