Chapter 5: The Betrayal
He reached for his tanto—
CRACK.Rook's skull exploded.Brain matter painted the pod's window. His massive frame crumpled like felled timber.
"ROOK!" Wraith screamed, knives flashing.
THWIP-THWIP. Two suppressed rounds punched through her throat. She gagged, drowning in her own blood.
Nyx backed toward the cockpit, hands raised. "Whoa, easy! I'm just tech—"
BANG. A bullet between her eyes. She dropped.
Aris whirled, searching for the shooter just as a stun-baton rammed into his spine.
ZZZT-KRACK!Agony lit every nerve. He crashed to his knees, convulsing. Through blurred vision: Combat boots stepping over Nyx's body—custom Vibram soles. Wraith's favorite. A gloved hand snatched Estelle's locket from his neck. Before he could look up, the baton struck his temple.Darkness
Aris woke to the scent of antiseptic and old money.His head throbbed—a drumbeat of pain behind his eyes. Silk sheets. Velvet drapes. His bedroom in the Thorn estate.
Shadows moved.
He blinked. Focused.
The room was crowded.Atticus Thorn stood at the foot of the bed, cane gripped like a scepter, eyes volcanic.Uncles. Aunts. Cousins. A wall of cold faces.And on the floor, draped in a bloodstained sheet, Silas's Bloods. "You killed kin, Aris," hissed Lysandra, his sharp-tongued aunt. "The one law we never break."
Aris lurched upright. "No—I kidnapped him, I didn't—"
Atticus slammed his cane.CRACK.The room froze.
Evidence unfolded like a poisoned flower:
Security Footage: Aris dragging Silas from the Leviathan's brig, tanto drawn.
Ballistics Report: Silas's skull crushed by a blunt object matched to Aris's tanto pommel.
Time-Stamped Photo: Silas's corpse in the C-130, Aris's gloved hand gripping his hair.
The Murder Weapon: Aris's own tanto, placed neatly on his nightstand, dull spine crusted with blood and gray matter.
"Wraith testified," Atticus said, voice gravel scraping steel. "She saw you beat his brains out mid-flight. Said you whispered, 'This is for Estelle.'"
Aris's blood turned to ice. Wraith. The knife. The frame."She's lying! Grandfather, the Fulton extraction—the neuro-blocker!"
Cousin Marcus sneered, waving a flight log. "No record of any 'Fulton.' Just a private jet you chartered to Iceland. Where Silas's body was dumped."
Atticus stepped forward. Dawn light cut through the window, carving his face into stone."You were my heir. My masterpiece. But kin-killing is a rot that can't be carved out."
He nodded to the family.
Votes were cast in cold silence.Thumbs down. Down. Down.
The Verdict:"Aris Thorne," Atticus pronounced, "you are cast out. No title. No resources. No name. If you're seen within 500 miles of any Thorne asset after sunrise…"He didn't finish.He didn't need to.
Two guards hauled Aris from bed.No belongings. Just the clothes he'd slept in.
At the door, he locked eyes with Atticus."I didn't do it. I am being framed grandfather.?"
Atticus's gaze didn't waver."I prepared you to lead wolves. Not become one."
As they dragged him down the marble stairs, Aris saw it—Wraith, standing in the gallery above.She held his nanny's locket.Smiling.
The estate gates slammed behind him.Dawn bled across manicured lawns he'd trained on since childhood.They'd left him nothing:
No money. No weapons. Even Estelle's locket is gone.
But in his pocket—one thing Wraith missed.The neuro-blocker injector.Silas's DNA is still in the reservoir.
Aris Thorne looked back at the house of knives. He realized he was played and now he had nothing. Picking himself back up, he realized he had nowhere to go, and he was kicked out of the family. His enemies and business rivals will use the opportunity to get their revenge on him.
Thinking back. He realized there were things he did not understand.
Silas and Estelles' deaths
Wraiths' betrayal and somehow evidence that just proves he was there when Silas died and his family just used it to push him out. Looking at it he thought:
"Silas is not smart enough to put this off."
"Someone must have planted the thought in his head using him to kill his maid, because a hit like that should not have missed." "I was never the target to begin with." "The person behind this just wanted a reaction and I took the bait."
Wraith planned all of it. The planes, the Leviathan's location and the drop zone and I believed her.
But the burying question lingered. "Who was smart enough to plan this, even going as far as to use wraiths in their plans?", sighing as he looked at the gravel road bled by mist. Thorn haven's spires vanished behind ancient oaks. Aris stopped walking.Cast out. Kin-killer. Heir to nothing.
The cold seeped through his thin shirt, but it was the silence that truly bit. No whispers on the walls. No poisoned smiles in the hall. Just the wind, and the crushing weight of truth: He'd never been safe. Not once.
Looking back at this life as old memories begin to surface
His parents' death flashed as screams that weren't his own. A room thick with blood and antiseptic.
His mother's voice, fraying: "Is he… whole?"
The nurse's nod. His first breath drew as her last sighed out.
Atticus's voice, cold as the marble floor: "The line continues. Prepare the Windsor wedding." His father, Elias Thorn, became a ghost haunting his own life. Aris only knew him through fragments: a cradle glimpsed through a half-open door. Elias's hollow eyes starred at him.
"You look like her," Elias slurred once, bourbon heavy on his breath, pistol loose in his hand. "My beautiful failure."
The muffled bang rang out two weeks later after the wedding to Natalya Windsor.
The "gas leak" that claimed Elias Thorn. Natalya stormed Thornhaven like a blizzard, her hand clamping Aris's five-year-old shoulder. "You survived, boy," she hissed, glaring down at Atticus's guards.
"I decide when you die."
Then she took care of me since that day and protected my birthright for my families clutches. Till I was old enough to start my heir training with my grandfather. It was hell. I learned how to fight and do a lot of things and my grandfather, seeing I am a fast learner, drilled me more with the help of his associates to who I am now.
I have nothing. It is funny how I trained my life to rule this family, but now I am cast out with nothing.