Jadon stood in the center of his penthouse.
Silence.
It was 4:17 AM. Twenty-four hours had passed since the thump in the mews. Twelve hours since he had ended the 'Solomon's Spices' contract. Ten hours since he had turned off his "Barak" phone, effectively starting a silent, nuclear war on his own dynasty.
The rage from yesterday had cooled into something heavy and cold, like lead in his veins.
His penthouse, his fortress, had turned into a cage.
The space was a testament to his control: grey stone, dark wood, and floor-to-ceiling glass. It was so perfect and minimalist that there was nowhere for human emotion to hide. It felt less like a home and more like a high-end, sterile observation deck overlooking a city he owned but could not touch.
The other phone, his "Asher" phone, lay on the black marble kitchen island. It buzzed, a low, persistent vibration.
Ari.
It had been buzzing every fifteen minutes. His empire was demanding attention. His board was panicking. Le Monde wanted a photo for a new feature.
Jadon stared at the device, a sleek black slab of demands. He was the Ghost CEO, a phantom, a ruthless and efficient machine.
And the machine was broken.
He couldn't breathe. The air in his soundproofed, climate-controlled world felt too thin. Every corner of the room held a memory of Chloe. Her laughter echoed in the vast, empty space. Her scent lingered on a cashmere throw he hadn't been able to burn. Her betrayal suffocated him.
He felt trapped. Trapped by "Jadon Asher," the CEO who had to perform. Trapped by "Jadon Barak," the son expected to conform.
He refused to be either.
He walked past the buzzing phone, ignoring it as completely as he had ignored the woman in the mews. He went to his bedroom—a room as sparse and cold as the rest of the penthouse—and opened a hidden, biometric-locked closet.
Inside were not the rows of custom, thousand-pound suits he wore as Asher. This was his other life. Worn jeans, soft dark hoodies, and unmarked, anonymous boots.
He was shedding his skin.
He packed a single, soft-sided duffel bag. No laptop. No files.
He walked back into the main room and picked up the "Asher" phone. He pressed and held the power button, just as he had with the "Barak" phone. The screen, filled with notifications, went dark.
He was now officially a ghost to his entire world.
He needed air. He needed anonymity. He needed to be somewhere that belonged to neither Asher nor Barak.
Not the Cotswolds estate; it was full of family memories and his grandmother's judging eyes. Not Paris; it was full of Asher Group obligations.
He needed the one place on earth that was his, the one place he had built as his true escape hatch. The one place no one—not his family, not his assistant, not even Chloe—had ever known existed.
Manchester.
He took the private elevator, the one that bypassed the lobby, the one that required his fingerprint. It descended, not to the main garage, but to a separate, subterranean vault.
A black Rolls-Royce Ghost sat in the corner, its grille gleaming. It was the car from yesterday, a suit and a symbol of his power and rage. He looked at it with cold, detached hatred.
He walked past it to the other vehicle in the shadows.
A Range Rover. Black, yes, but anonymous. It was powerful yet quiet. It had no custom plates. It was just a truck, his invisible cloak.
He threw his duffel in the back, got in, and pressed the ignition. The engine was a low, powerful hum, a vibration he felt in his chest. He hit the remote. A slab of concrete and steel, indistinguishable from the loading dock wall, slid aside, revealing a dark, unmarked tunnel leading straight to the Thames embankment.
He blended into pre-dawn London traffic, just another dark SUV in a city of millions.
He drove. He didn't look at his penthouse, its glowing glass cage reflecting in the rearview mirror.
He got on the M6, the motorway a dark, wet ribbon heading north. He was running. He wasn't running to anything. He was running from the man who had ordered a woman's life to end. He was running from the man who had been betrayed. He was running from the ghost in the machine.
He was a 29-year-old billionaire, and for the first time in his life, he felt utterly, terrifyingly, and blessedly free.
He was just a man on a 200-mile drive, seeking a void. He had no idea the void was already occupied; the one other person in the world who was just as broken, just as "haunted," was on a coach heading to the exact same city.