The sound of rain striking the glass windows echoed faintly in the sterile hospital
room. Beeping machines, the smell of antiseptic, and the muffled voices of nurses
blended into a dull haze.
Ethan Cross lay there, his body trembling, his chest heaving like a man clinging to
the last shreds of life. He could taste iron on his tongue — blood.
Around him, the shadows of betrayal whispered.
Sophia Blake. The woman he once loved, who stood beside him when he built his
empire… she had smiled while signing the papers that stripped him of everything.
Michael Carter. His so-called business partner, who had orchestrated the hostile
takeover, selling Ethan to vultures like a lamb for slaughter.
And finally… the faceless men who had kicked down the door of his penthouse just
hours earlier, guns in their hands. He had survived the ambush, but barely. A blade
had pierced his chest. The doctors said he wouldn't last the night.
Ethan laughed bitterly, his voice cracked and broken. "So this is it? The great
Ethan Cross… reduced to a dog bleeding on a hospital bed."
His vision blurred, but in that blur he saw Sophia's face. Her cold smile. "I told you,
Ethan," she had whispered. "Love doesn't buy power. Money without loyalty is
worthless."
A burning rage swallowed the last of his fear. His eyes, once calm and calculating,
flared with madness.
"If I had another chance… if I could live again… I'd burn you all alive. I'd buy the
world and bury you beneath it."
The heart monitor screamed. His chest fell still.
Silence. Darkness. Nothing.
But then—
A spark. A warmth. His lungs filled with air. His eyes shot open.
He was not in a hospital bed. He was in a cramped apartment. His apartment. The
year was 2012.
Ethan stumbled to his feet, gasping. His trembling hands reached for the mirror on
the wall.
The reflection staring back at him was not the scarred, dying man from the hospital
bed. It was his younger self — twenty-five years old.
His eyes widened. His heartbeat thundered. His mind raced.
"This… this can't
be…"
Memories crashed into him. The stock market crashes. The rise of Bitcoin. The
scandals, the wars, the inventions yet to come. He knew it all. Every boom, every
collapse, every betrayal.
He laughed, a hollow, dangerous laugh that sent shivers down his own spine. "God
heard me. He gave me a second chance… but I am no saint."
He clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms until blood dripped onto the floor.
"This time, I will not forgive. I will not hesitate. I will not simply defeat them."
His aura thickened — heavy, suffocating. Even in the empty room, the air seemed
to tremble as if reality itself feared his rebirth.
Ethan's voice was a whisper, but it carried the weight of thunder:
"I will build an empire of wealth and blood. And Sophia… Carter… all of you… I will
make your souls regret ever crossing Ethan Cross."
The room fell silent again, but Ethan's rebirth had begun.
A tyrant was born.
⚡ End of Chapter 1 ⚡