Ethan Blackwood was not born into power but he clawed his way into it with bloodied hands and an iron will that never bent.
His father, Victor Blackwood, had been a mid-level enforcer in one of New York's oldest Italian-American families until he got too ambitious and too sloppy. When Ethan was fourteen, his father had tried to stage a coup against the boss, but it failed spectacularly and the retaliation was swift and theatrical: Victor was dragged into an abandoned warehouse in Red Hook, tortured for three days, then executed in front of his wife and son as a message. Ethan las watched every second from a locked closet with the door cracked just enough for him to see. His mother didn't survive the night, she took her own life with Victor's service pistol before the cleaners even arrived.
That single night had forged Ethan, there were no more illusions about loyalty, family, or mercy, because the world rewarded only one thing; Absolute control. Orphaned and marked as the son of a traitor, he should have been erased but instead, he vanished into the city's underbelly. And for the next six years he had survived on the streets; running errands for low-level crews, stealing, fighting, learning every dirty secret the city hid. He changed his last name twice, built fake identities and never stayed in one place long enough to be found. By the age of twenty, he'd saved enough to buy into his first underground fight ring. He didn't just bet, he also fought and had never lost. The money from those brutal nights funded his first legitimate venture, a small import-export company.
By thirty, Blackwood Enterprises had become a sprawling conglomerate with clean fronts in real estate, tech, shipping and a shadow empire that controlled significant slices of the Eastern seaboard's black market. He was nicknamed "The Hammer" not because he liked violence, but because he ended things decisively, with no loose ends or second chances and beneath the cold precision was something colder still.
A void where empathy should have been because Ethan didn't trust easily, didn't trust at all, really. To him, people were assets, liabilities, or obstacles and he saw emotions as weaknesses to be exploited in others, so he never indulged in it himself.
The acquisition of Black Star wasn't just business; it was personal. The syndicate had once been tied loosely, through old blood debts to the network that ordered his father's death. So buying it simply meant rewriting history on his terms, turning the knife that had cut him deepest into one he now wielded. He had only just returned from Puerto Rico, where the private auction had unfolded exactly as planned. The hammer had fallen in his favor. Black Star was his.
Now, three days after that quiet, high-stakes dinner at the Sky Lounge, where a certain Mrs. Carson had slid into Booth Four with proof of her in-laws' fraud, he found himself thinking about her again. This time not sentimentally but strategically.
Emilia Wallace-Carson was beautiful, staggeringly so. Yet somehow this woman had landed in the middle of a nightmare and gotten married to a bloodthirsty monster like Derek Carson, he knew something was deeply wrong. Ethan had turned the thought over in his mind as he pushed through the doors of Le Bernardin, where he went to close another business deal.
"You're out already, boss?" Jack, his driver, asked with a grin, already swinging the rear door of the black SUV open.
"Went fine. Take us straight home, Jack. I'm exhausted," Ethan replied, sliding onto the leather seat. The door closed with a soft, expensive thud.
The SUV pulled away from the curb as it's tires whispered over the wet asphalt. Ethan leaned his head back with his eyes half-closed, letting the Las Vegas city lights streak across the tinted windows. He told himself the woman was none of his concern and arranged marriages were currency in his world. To him it was a beautiful collateral, traded for power, silence, or survival. He'd seen dozens, even been offered more than a few but he had walked away from every single one of them.
But her face just kept resurfacing behind his eyelids: her wide eyes that didn't blink fast enough, a smile that never reached them and the faint tremor in her fingers when she lifted her wine glass earlier. It was filled with resignation laced with calculation.
It was the same look she'd worn in Booth Four when she'd met his gaze without flinching and called his bluff.
He exhaled through his nose.
"Ethan! Let it go." he groaned
His phone buzzed once in his coat pocket, sharp, insistent, but he ignored it.
Then it buzzed again.
And again.
Jack caught his eye in the rearview mirror. "You gonna check that, boss?"
His eyes snapped open as he pulled the device out. It was an unknown number. A single message waited on the screen.
Congratulations on Black Star.
She was never the bride.
She's the payment.
And the debt is now in your name.
Attached to the message was a photo.
It was her, Emilia standing in a dimly lit room that looked like an old vault or safe house, her wrists bound loosely in front of her with black silk ribbon. There was no struggle in her posture, it was just calm, almost serene. She stared directly into the lens, lips curved in the faintest ghost of a smile.
In the background, barely visible on the concrete wall behind her, someone had painted a single line in dripping red:
YOUR MOVE, HAMMER
"What the heck is this?" Ethan whispered as his grip tightened on the phone until the edges bit into his palm.
He stared at the image, his mind already dissecting it. The lighting was professional,studio-grade, not amateur phone flash. The ribbon wasn't rope; it was deliberate, almost theatrical. And that smile… the same one she'd given him in the booth.
A slow, cold certainty settled in his gut, this could be her move. She'd already come to him once, dangling proof like bait. Now this? Taunting him with his old nickname, the one only people in the deepest shadows still whispered. Or was she playing both sides? trying to make it look like the Carsons were escalating, thereby forcing his hands knowing he'd never let a direct challenge stand? Or was this Derek's work? Derek trying to warn him off the woman who'd already slipped out of his control?
Either way, the message was clear; involvement meant entanglement and entanglement meant risk. He hated risks he didn't control.
If he helped her it would be clean on paper and also leverage against the Carsons, who'd tried to sabotage his acquisitions before. Their fraud was real and her evidence was solid. He could dismantle them quietly, absorb whatever assets survived, and walk away richer and even more feared.
But business didn't explain why her face lingered in his thoughts. Why the tremor in her fingers at dinner had registered more than it should have.
Or why the idea of her bound in that photo whether staged or real made something dark and possessive coil in his chest.
He crushed the impulse immediately. Sentiment was poison, he'd learnt that lesson after watching his mother's blood pool on the warehouse floor but still if this was her play, she was bolder than he'd given her credit for. And if it wasn't, if it was really the Carsons that escalated to this level of provocation, then ignoring it would be a weakness.
Ethan exhaled slowly, his thumb hovering over the reply button but he didn't press it. Instead, he locked the screen and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
The city blurred past the windows, indifferent and glittering.
But inside the car, the silence had teeth and for the first time in years, Ethan Blackwood felt the faint, unwelcome stir of curiosity that bordered dangerously close to something else.
He told himself it was a strategy.
He almost believed it.