The silence in the penthouse was absolute, a polished, expensive void where even the ghosts seemed to tread quietly. Elias Thorne stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, a crystal tumbler of forty-year-old Macallan hanging from his limp fingers. Below him, the city was a sprawling jewel box of light, a kingdom he had carved out for himself with ruthless efficiency. He had everything the world said mattered. Money, power, a name that inspired fear and respect in equal measure.
And it was all ash.
The news had come hours ago, a sterile, formal email from a law firm he'd never heard of. Eleanor Shaw had passed away. Peacefully, in her sleep. The notification was a courtesy, as she had listed him as her emergency contact decades ago, a relic from a life he had systematically dismantled.
Eleanor.
The name was a shard of glass in his heart. He hadn't seen her in twenty-five years. He'd built his fortress, brick by golden brick, and she had been on the outside, the one piece of his past he could neither acquire nor erase. He'd heard she'd become a teacher, that she'd never married. He'd told himself it was for the best. He was a storm, and she was a quiet garden; he would have only destroyed her.
Now, standing in the pinnacle of his success, he knew the truth. He had destroyed her anyway. By leaving. By choosing ambition over the girl with the sun-drenched smile who believed in the boy he used to be.
The tumbler slipped from his fingers, shattering on the marble floor. The sound was like a gunshot in the profound quiet. He didn't flinch. He just stared at his reflection in the dark glass—a man in his late forties, hair silvered at the temples, eyes the colour of a winter sky and just as cold. A king in a castle of his own making, dying of thirst.
"A second chance," he whispered, the words raw and unfamiliar on his tongue. "God, or Fate, or whatever the hell is out there… just one. I'd give it all back."
A strange pressure began to build in the air, a hum that was felt rather than heard. The city lights outside the window seemed to stutter, then stretch into impossible, luminous strands. A vertigo unlike any he had ever known seized him, a sensation of being unraveled, pulled apart at the seams. The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of fractured memories—the scent of rain on hot asphalt, the feel of a well-worn paperback in his hands, the sound of Eleanor's laughter, bright and unburdened.
Then, nothing.
***
Consciousness returned with the brutal assault of sensation. A hard surface dug into his back. A cacophony of shouts, squealing brakes, and distant music filled his ears. The air was thick, humid, and smelled of cut grass, gasoline, and… teenage angst.
Elias groaned, pushing himself up. He was on a lumpy, twin-sized mattress covered in a faded blue comforter. His hands, splayed on the fabric, were not his own. They were younger, slimmer, the knuckles prominent, the skin unmarked by the scars of business deals and time.
He scrambled off the bed, his movements clumsy, his centre of gravity all wrong. He stumbled towards the mirror hanging on the closet door. The face that stared back at him stole the breath from his lungs.
It was the face of Eli Thorne, aged seventeen. A shock of dark, unruly hair fell across his forehead. The eyes were wide, a summer blue, not yet hardened to winter ice. The line of his jaw was softer, the promise of the man he would become, not the grim reality. He was wearing a faded T-shirt for a band he hadn't thought about in decades and a pair of ripped jeans.
"No," he breathed, the voice higher, laced with a vulnerability he had spent a lifetime eradicating. "This is a dream. A stress-induced hallucination."
He spun around, taking in the room. It was a shrine to his adolescent self. Posters of grunge bands and sports cars were tacked to the walls. Textbooks were piled haphazardly on a cheap desk, next to a chunky, beige computer monitor. On the nightstand was a dog-eared copy of *Slaughterhouse-Five*.
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, youthful rhythm. He stumbled to the window and pulled back the curtain. The view was not of a glittering metropolis, but of a quiet, tree-lined suburban street. A kid on a skateboard wobbled past. A station wagon was parked in a neighbour's driveway.
It was 1998.
The reality of it crashed down on him, a tidal wave of impossible, terrifying wonder. He had gotten his wish. He was back.
The initial shock began to recede, replaced by a cold, sharp, and utterly familiar clarity. This was not a dream. This was a battlefield. And he knew the terrain intimately.
His eyes fell on the calendar tacked to the wall beside his desk. A red circle, drawn with the desperate hope of a lovesick boy, marked a date. Tomorrow.
The Senior Year Kick-Off Party at Jason Miller's house.
The night everything changed.
The night he, fueled by ambition and a misguided desire to run with the "in-crowd," had publicly humiliated Eleanor Shaw. He'd made a cruel, calculated joke at her expense, a joke that had severed their friendship and set him on the path to becoming the man in the penthouse. The man who died alone, surrounded by ghosts.
A slow, fierce smile spread across his young face, erasing the last vestiges of confusion. The cold CEO, the master strategist, was awake inside this teenage shell.
He looked at his reflection again, meeting the eyes of the boy he had been.
"Okay, Eli," he said, his voice a low murmur, laced with the steel of the man he would choose to become. "Let's play this differently."
The game, he knew, had just begun. And this time, he was playing for keeps.