The mansion was a fortress of silence. The kind of silence that didn't just settle in—it lurked. Like a shadow that knew where all the secrets were buried.
Ethan sat in his room, the DNA report still on his screen. His eyes had scanned the page at least twenty times. "No biological match." It echoed in his mind like a verdict.
That night, while lying in bed, memories began to surface. Not memories, really—fragments. Feelings. Reactions. Conversations that didn't make sense before but now clicked into place like pieces of a shattered puzzle.
He remembered the first time he showed his parents a simple app he built at twelve. A chatbot that responded with sarcasm. Harmless fun. He was proud.
His mother, usually poised and polished, had gone pale.
"That's… interesting," she'd said, voice tight. "But you should focus on finance. Or diplomacy."
His father poured himself a drink. "Yeah, don't waste your brain on lines of code," he muttered. "It never got anyone anywhere."
That wasn't true, Ethan thought. Tech was everywhere. Every rich person they knew was tech-based. So why the avoidance?
Years later, when he built a web tool that caught the attention of a venture fund, his mother had pulled him aside after the dinner celebration.
"Ethan," she whispered, almost shaking, "please don't chase… that world."
"That world?"
"The world of coders and tech people. It's full of snakes. You don't know what it's like. They steal. They lie."
He had laughed then, thinking she was just being melodramatic. But tonight, he remembered the fury behind her eyes—how her voice trembled, how she seemed transported to another place entirely.
And then there was his father, Russell.
He wasn't violent. Not physically. But he drank.
Usually quiet, the alcohol made him sloppy. Looser. Once, Ethan had walked into his father's study late at night, finding him staring into a tumbler of whiskey like it held ghosts.
"You know what they did to us, E?" he'd slurred.
"Who?"
"Those damned Neals… all smiles and neckties and... sharks underneath. Took everything. My code. My future."
Ethan had chalked it up to old man ramblings. A drunken fantasy. But now… he wasn't so sure.
Who were the Neals?
His thoughts drifted to the locked cabinet in the basement. He had only been down there a few times, mostly to sneak wine. But he remembered an old filing cabinet, dusty, locked, untouched.
That weekend, while his parents were at a fundraiser in Zurich, Ethan found the key. Hidden in a hollowed-out tech manual from the 90s—ironic. Inside the cabinet were old hard drives, documents, pitch decks, even a half-destroyed business plan. It was called "SeedSpark"—a startup idea centered around adaptive learning algorithms for children. Almost two decades ahead of its time.
One name on the proposal stood out.
Russell Blake – Founder/Lead Developer
Below that, another name had been crossed out in red ink: Jonah Neal – Business Partner
The surname slammed into Ethan like a truck. Neal.
Ethan had met the Neals once—family friends of his parents. They were billionaires. They had created a tech empire centered around education software. Ethan's high school even used their platform. He'd shaken hands with Jonah Neal. His real father?
But the file… the proposal… it was dated before the Neals' company was founded.
Heart pounding, Ethan opened one of the USB drives from the cabinet and loaded it onto his encrypted laptop. Code.
Tens of thousands of lines.
Variable names and structures that mirrored—no, matched—features in the NealTech platform Ethan used at school.
His hands shook.
Had Russell—his "drunken, failed father"—been the actual inventor? Was it his code that built a tech empire? And the Neals… did they steal it?
And worse—did they steal him to make up for everything else they lost?
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To be continued