I walked to the secure line in the hallway and pressed the intercom.
"Marcus."
"Sir," Marcus's voice came back instantly.
"Prepare the car. I'm going into the office."
"Spencer Industries HQ, sir?"
"Yes. It's time I checked in on the family business."
"Understood. Convoy ready in ten minutes."
I went to my room to change. I selected a suit that was more aggressive than my usual attire.
A midnight blue cut that looked almost black in the dim light. I checked my appearance in the mirror. Aryan Spencer stared back… handsome, wealthy and untouchable.
The arrival at Spencer Industries headquarters was an event. The building was a glass spire in Midtown, less ostentatious than Vought Tower but radiating a more dangerous kind of power.
My convoy pulled up to the curb and security personnel swarmed to clear a path.
Employees in the lobby stopped and stared as I walked through the glass doors, flanked by Marcus and three other guards. Whispers rippled through the atrium.
"Is that him?"
"He never comes in."
"I heard he was sick."
"I heard he was buying an island."
I ignored them, my face a mask of polite indifference. I swiped my key card at the private elevator bank and the doors slid open instantly.
"Top floor," I said to Marcus. "You wait outside the boardroom."
"Yes, sir. We'll sweep it before you enter."
When the doors opened on the executive floor, the atmosphere changed. It was quiet here, the air heavy with the scent of money and stress.
The boardroom was at the end of the hall. It was a secure facility, a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) designed to be impervious to bugs, lasers and electronic eavesdropping.
Inside, five people were waiting.
They stood as I entered. These were the stewards of my empire, the people my "parents" had trusted to run the machine while I played the playboy.
Jonathan Sterling, the CFO. A thin man with eyes like a calculator.
Elias Kincaid, the COO. A former logistics general with a neck as thick as a bull's.
Victoria Voss, the Head of Legal. A woman who could smile while cutting your throat with a contract.
Dr. Aris Thorne, the Director of R&D (no relation to Marcus). A brilliant scientist.
Richard Halloway, the Director of Internal Affairs. The man who knew where all the bodies were buried.
"Mr. Spencer," Sterling said, extending a hand. "This is a surprise. We weren't expecting you until the quarterly review next month."
"I found myself with some free time," I said, shaking his hand. "Please. Sit."
They sat around the long table. The room was soundproofed, the walls lined with acoustic paneling.
"So," Kincaid rumbled. "To what do we owe the pleasure? New directives for the Vought contract?"
"Something like that," I said, taking the seat at the head of the table.
I leaned back, letting my gaze drift slowly from face to face. In the deep recesses of my mind, the inherited memories of the original Aryan Spencer began to thrum with a familiar dread.
Aryan Spencer had spent five years sitting in this very chair, looking at these same five practiced smiles and feeling a cold knot of suspicion tighten in his gut every time the word 'accident' was uttered.
He had suspected them, every single one of them, from the moment the wreckage was cleared, but he'd been a powerless boy with no proof and no way to fight back.
He had been a puppet, living a life of quiet desperation while they pulled the strings. But that boy was gone and I was no longer interested in playing along.
"I've been thinking about the past," I said softly. "About the crash."
The air in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. They exchanged subtle glances… micro expressions that a normal human would have missed.
A tightening of the lips from Voss. A blink from Sterling. A shift in posture from Halloway.
"A tragedy," Voss said smoothly. "Your parents were visionaries. We miss them every day."
"Do you?" I asked.
I activated Telepathy (Tier 3).
The lack of electronic noise in the room made their minds stand out like beacons in the dark. I pushed past the walls of their professional personas and into the chaotic stream of their thoughts.
It was a cacophony of greed, fear and arrogance.
Sterling: ...why is he here? Does he know about the Cayman accounts? If he audits the slush fund, I'm dead...
Kincaid: ...kid looks softer than his old man. Should have pushed for the hostile takeover last year...
Voss: ...keep talking, keep smiling. He's just a figurehead. He doesn't know anything...
I pushed deeper. I focused on the specific memory I had mentioned.
And then I saw it.
It was a shared secret, a rot at the core of the table. I saw flashes from five different perspectives.
Halloway organizing the sabotage of the private jet's hydraulics.
Sterling authorizing the payoff to the ground crew.
Kincaid arranging the cover up with the FAA.
Voss drafting the updated wills that gave the board emergency powers.
Thorne ensuring the black box was 'damaged beyond recovery'.
The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow.
The parents of this body, James and Eleanor Spencer, had been executed by the very people sitting in this room, smiling at me, drinking my water. They had killed them to seize control of the company, to turn Spencer Industries into their own personal piggy bank while keeping me as a clueless puppet.
A white hot rage ignited in my chest. It wasn't my anger… was Aryan's. It was the memory of the man I had replaced, screaming for justice.
I stopped smiling.
"Why?" I asked. My voice was low, barely a whisper, but it carried across the table like a gunshot.
"Excuse me?" Sterling asked, his smile faltering.
"Why did you kill them?" I asked, looking directly into Sterling's eyes.
The silence that fell over the room was absolute.
"Aryan," Voss said, her voice taking on a soothing tone. "I think you're confused. The crash was an accident. The NTSB report was conclusive… "
"I'm not talking about the report," I cut her off. "I'm talking about the hydraulics. I'm talking about the payoff to the mechanic in Teterboro. I'm talking about the meeting you five had at Kincaid's estate three days before the flight, where you toasted to 'new management'."
Their faces went white. The blood drained from them as if I had pulled a plug.
"How..." Halloway stammered. "How could you possibly..."
"How do I know?" I stood up slowly.
Kincaid stood up, his face flushing red. "This is insane. I don't know who you've been talking to, boy, but these are slanderous accusations. I'm calling security."
He reached for the panic button under the table.
I flicked my wrist.
Telekinesis (Tier 3).
The heavy oak chair Kincaid was standing in front of flew backward and smashed into the wall. Kincaid was lifted off his feet, an invisible hand grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the acoustic paneling. He hung there, feet dangling, clawing at the empty air.
PS: This is the third bonus chapter for this novel. Come on guys, show some energy haha. Also, this novel is getting close to the end. I'm already at Chapter 94 on Patreon, and it will probably conclude in about 10–15 more chapters.