Chapter 4 - Resurrection of the Monster
The smoke cleared, and there he stood.
My father.
William Miller was older, his silver hair cropped military-short, a jagged burn scar running down the left side of his jaw—the memento from the plane crash he had so carefully orchestrated to fake his own death and escape federal embezzlement charges. He looked like an apparition of pure malice standing in the wreckage of my glass office.
“Well, well, Jason,” my father drawled, his voice carrying that familiar, bone-chilling condescension that had haunted my childhood nightmares. “You always were a brilliant strategist when it came to stocks. But humans? You never understood human leverage.”
Behind him, Claire wrenched her arm free from my grip, coughing from the smoke, and scurried over to stand by his side like a faithful hound.
I didn't flinch. I slowly backed up toward the couch where Liam and Lucas were huddled in terror, their little hands clutching each other. I stepped in front of them, using my own body as a human shield against the four assault rifles trained squarely on my chest.
“You’re a coward, William,” I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the wailing emergency sirens. “You couldn't beat me in the open market, so you hide behind fake deaths, corporate espionage, and kidnapped children?”
My father chuckled, a dry, grating sound. He walked forward, kicking a piece of shattered glass aside with his polished leather shoe.
“Kidnapped? No, my boy. I simply collected what belonged to the Miller bloodline. You see, when you walked away from our family dynasty five years ago to play house with a penniless street artist, you broke the covenant. I tried to pay her off. I offered her a million dollars to abort you both—err, to leave you behind and vanish. But the stubborn girl took the twins instead. She raised them in secret, teaching them to love, to feel, to be weak.”
He sneered at the boys hiding behind me.
“And look at them. Pitiful. But they make exquisite bait, don’t they?”
“Where is Emma?” I demanded, keeping my stance wide, my muscles coiled like a spring. I was calculating every exit, every angle. The private panic room was behind the mahogany bookshelf, but it required a retinal scan—and my hands were currently occupied keeping the boys safe.
“Oh, she’s breathing,” my father smiled cruelly. “For now. She’s tied to a chair in a warehouse down by Pier 54, waiting to see if her precious billionaire ex-boyfriend cares more about her life or his stock certificates.”
He pulled a sleek black tablet from his trench coat and tossed it onto my desk. It landed right beside the remnants of the children's breakfast.
“Sign over eighty percent of Miller Meridian Capital, Jason. Right here. Right now. Biometric authorization using your thumbprint and retina. Do it, and I’ll text the coordinates of where Emma is bleeding out. Refuse, and these two little boys join their mother at the bottom of the river before sunrise.”
Liam peeked out from behind my leg, his tiny voice trembling.
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“Daddy? Are the bad men going to hurt us?”
Something inside my soul snapped. The cold, calculating corporate machine died permanently in that exact second. In its place stood a father ready to tear down the gates of hell itself.
