The world came back to him in shards.
Not in a full sweep of consciousness, not in a cinematic gasp, but in slivers—like broken glass glinting in dust-filtered light. The first thing he knew was pain, a dull and immense pressure behind his ribs, spreading through his torso in bruised heat, as though hands were still gripping him in the echo of a beating. The second was cold. Not the metallic cold of restraints. Not the cold of terror. It was a sterile cold, the kind that clings to hospital tiles and military-grade flooring.
Somewhere close to him, someone was murmuring into a radio.
"…subject stable… repeating, subject stable…"
A different voice, steadier, older: "He'll live. Get the medic."
He didn't understand the words, not at first. They were muffled, like he was underwater. His eyelids twitched; his body remained unwilling to obey. He was still lodged in that twilight state between unconsciousness and waking—between death and life—where memory crawled back in slow, brutal increments.
The beating.
The ropes.
The basement that smelled of wet cement and sweat.
And worst of all—the voices.
Not the ones that threatened to break his fingers, not the ones that laughed when he begged for water. But the whispers that filtered through when the kidnappers thought he had passed out.
"They're dead. Whole car flipped. Happened on the interstate. They rushed it, trying to bring the ransom."
"You sure?"
"Positive. The old man and the wife—gone."
"So the job's pointless now."
"He doesn't need to know until we're done with him."
He'd lain there, face swollen, ribs cracked, barely able to breathe, and still he'd tried to deny it. His parents? Atlas and Lysandra Harrington? Impossible. They were… they were forces of nature, hurricanes of intellect and ambition. They were untouchable. They were pillars. They were the axis around which every one of his spoiled, directionless days revolved. They couldn't just—
He gasped, a sharp involuntary choke, and pain detonated behind his eyes.
Someone noticed. Footsteps rushed.
"He's awake."
"Get him on his side. Go slow. He's still in shock."
He tried to open his eyes, but the world blurred, smeared, darkened again. Then he felt a warm, gloved hand lift his shoulder, steadying his breath.
"You're safe," a voice said—not unkind, but clipped with professionalism. "We're with the Agency. We extracted you two hours ago. Just stay calm."
He didn't stay calm.
The moment the word Agency reached him, he lurched forward, body convulsing, mind sprinting straight back to the memory of that hissed rumor in the darkness.
"My… my parents…" His voice cracked like broken bones grinding. "Where… where are they—where—"
The man holding him paused. A second person stepped close.
"Don't push him," a woman murmured. "He's concussed. He doesn't understand yet."
But he did. Some part of him—the part that had been a frightened child under the bravado of entitlement—already knew. And deep inside, beneath the panic, an unbearable heaviness coiled. A truth rising like a black tide.
His breathing quickened. His nails dug into the stretchersheet beneath him.
"Tell me," he rasped.
The agents exchanged a brief, grim look. They didn't have to answer. The silence was answer enough.
His heartbeat became a pounding roar. His throat tightened. His stomach twisted, threatening to turn inside out. Everything in him—every childish defense, every layer of spoiled indifference, every delusion of invincibility—cracked like porcelain dropped from a rooftop.
"No." The word tore from him, soft, almost childish. "No… no, they can't… they wouldn't… they're not…"
"We recovered the reports," the agent said quietly. "Their vehicle crashed en route to the ransom location. The circumstances were… suspicious. We're still investigating."
Suspicious.Crashed.En route.
The words fell one by one, heavy, merciless, final.
Something inside him plummeted—some core of identity, some axis of privilege, some unspoken belief that money and influence could shield him from the cruelties that tormented ordinary people. For the first time in his life, he understood what true helplessness felt like—not the panic of losing a luxury, not the irritation of being denied a whim—but the bone-deep, throat-closing helplessness of irreversible loss.
His parents were dead.
And he hadn't been able to call them.He hadn't been able to apologize.He hadn't been able to say I'm sorry for wasting so much of their time, for making them worry, for pushing them with his irresponsibility until they tried to scare him into maturity.
They tried to help him grow.
They died on the way.
His breath fractured. Tears he didn't remember granting permission slipped down his swollen cheeks. It wasn't a dramatic sob. It wasn't a cry fit for fiction. It was a quiet, trembling collapse from a young man who had never been allowed to feel real consequences before.
The female agent placed a steady hand on his shoulder—not comforting, but grounding.
"We'll get you to a secure location. Then we'll brief you. You're safe now."
Safe.
The word felt poisonous.
Safe, while his parents lay under white sheets in a morgue.
Safe, when the ransom they rushed to deliver was for him—the son who had wasted years drinking, flirting, failing to take anything seriously.
His vision blurred again. He shut his eyes, not to sleep but because the weight behind them was too much to keep open.
In the drifting haze that followed, he saw flashes—his mother in her immaculate suits, brushing lint off his blazer before a gala he never appreciated; his father scolding him for skipping board briefings, but ruffling his hair afterward like he was still ten; their tired smiles, the kind that hid disappointment but not love.
They had been trying to shape him. Trying to give him something more than the hollow pleasure of inherited wealth.
And he had ignored them.
His pulse slowed. His mind sank back into darkness, but this darkness was different—tight, suffocating, filled with the echo of the last words he had shouted at them before storming out to a party.
"Stop controlling me! I'll live how I want!"
He would remember those words forever.
Hours later—maybe many, maybe just a few—when consciousness returned again, he was being transferred through a cold corridor lit with harsh white lights. Metal doors hissed open. Boots echoed.
He heard fragments of conversation drifting around him:
"—media doesn't know he's alive—"
"—inheritance implications—"
"—potential assassination motive—"
Inheritance.Assassination.Motive.
His parents had been killed because of him.Because someone believed he'd been cut out of the succession.Because their enemies thought the Harrington throne was unclaimed.
His body twitched involuntarily, as though rejecting the idea with the last vestiges of denial.
But the truth was already a blade embedded in his chest.
They died because they tried to save him.
He was alive because they loved him.
The stretcher slowed. A heavy vault-like door unlocked.
"He'll process it later," one agent murmured. "Shock first. Then the implications. Then the reality of what he's inheriting."
Reality.
He wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or break.
What was he inheriting?A company larger than empires.A fortune heavier than nations.A legacy forged in brilliance and sacrifice.
And he was the least worthy person alive to carry it.
The world receded again, but this time, not into unconsciousness—into a cold, hollow resolution forming in the marrow of his bones.
He would never be able to undo what happened.
But maybe—maybe—he could become someone they would have been proud of.
Not the piggish heir who wasted privilege like water.Not the spoiled princeling who needed to be scared straight.Not the idiotic boy who caused the crash that stole the only two people who had ever truly wanted him to rise.
Something shifted in the darkness of his mind, quiet but seismic.
A seed.A fracture.The violent birth of a new man.
And through the ringing silence, he whispered—barely audible, barely coherent, but burning:
"I'll fix it. I'll fix everything."
The CIA didn't hear the vow.
But the future did.