If you are planning to drop the book. I would suggest read atleast the first 2 chapters before deciding! Thank you for giving this book a chance!

Author's POV

New York doesn't sleep. It breathes in the rhythm of stock tickers and the hum of late-night traffic, exhaling ambition through the steam vents that rise from its ancient subway tunnels. But at 4:47 AM, when the city is caught between the ghosts of yesterday's transactions and the hunger of tomorrow's deals, there is one place where silence reigns absolute.

The Hawthorne Tower.

Ninety-three floors of steel, glass, and the kind of wealth that doesn't need to announce itself. It stands at the edge of Manhattan like a blade pressed against the throat of the financial district, its darkened windows reflecting nothing but the cold indifference of a structure built to outlast empires. Most of the building is empty at this hour—accountants and analysts won't arrive for another three hours—but on the ninety-third floor, in a penthouse office where the walls are nothing but floor-to-ceiling glass, a single light burns.

Not electric. Not warm.

The blue-white glow of seven monitors arranged in a perfect semicircle, each one streaming live data from markets that never close: Tokyo, London, Singapore, Dubai. Numbers cascade down the screens in rivers of green and red, a language most men spend lifetimes trying to decode. But the man standing before them doesn't need to try.

Ares Hawthorne was fluent in the dialect of destruction before he could legally drink.

He stands in the center of the glass sanctum, his back to the city that kneels sixty stories below. The skyline of New York sprawls behind him like a kingdom waiting for orders, but Ares doesn't look. He doesn't need to. The city is a fact, like gravity or death, and facts don't require his attention unless they're about to change.

His body is a study in controlled violence. At twenty-four, Ares has the build of a man who treats his flesh like a weapon that must be maintained with the same precision he applies to his stock portfolio. Broad shoulders taper into a torso carved from years of Kung Fu, Karate, and Kickboxing—disciplines he didn't learn for sport, but for survival. His abs are a ridged landscape of muscle memory, each line a testament to the ten thousand hours he's spent turning his body into something that can't be broken.

He's shirtless, the air conditioning set to a temperature that would make most men shiver, but Ares's skin is dry. No sweat. No tremor. Just the slow, deliberate rise and fall of his chest as he moves through the opening sequence of Tai Chi.

The movements are liquid. Deceptive. To an untrained eye, Tai Chi looks like meditation in motion, a gentle practice for the elderly seeking balance. But in Ares's hands—large, calloused, capable of crushing a man's windpipe with the same ease he'd use to sign a merger—the ancient art becomes something else entirely.

Each shift of weight is a calculated transfer of power. Each extension of his arm is a strike that could shatter bone if he chose to accelerate. He moves through the form called "Grasping the Sparrow's Tail," his hips rotating with the kind of fluidity that only comes from muscle memory so deep it's carved into the nervous system itself. His dark hair, usually swept back with the kind of product that costs more per ounce than most men earn in a day, falls forward across his forehead. He doesn't brush it away.

Control is knowing when not to act.

Behind him, one of the monitors flashes red. A notification. The Tokyo market has detected irregular trading in a subsidiary of Knight Enterprises—the social royalty of New York, a family whose name appears on museum wings and charity galas, whose influence is woven into the fabric of Manhattan's upper echelon like gold thread through silk.

Ares doesn't turn. Doesn't break the form. His ice-blue eyes remain fixed on the glass wall in front of him, where his own reflection is barely visible in the darkness. He completes the sequence, his body returning to the neutral stance with the kind of precision that suggests he could do this blindfolded, underwater, while reciting the quarterly earnings of every Fortune 500 company.

Only then does he acknowledge the alert.

He walks to the monitors, his bare feet silent on the polished black marble. His movements are unhurried, efficient. Wasted motion is wasted time, and Ares Hawthorne doesn't waste anything. He taps a key, and the screen expands, revealing a cascade of data that would take a team of analysts hours to parse.

Ares reads it in ninety seconds.

The Knights are trying to offload assets quietly, hiding the transactions behind a shell corporation registered in the Caymans. It's a desperate move, the kind of financial maneuvering that reeks of a family trying to cover losses they can't afford to admit. Old money pretending it still has the weight to throw around.

A lesser man might smile. Ares's expression doesn't change. Emotion is a liability, and he was taught long ago that liabilities get you killed.

He reaches for the phone on his desk—a sleek, matte-black device that connects to a network so secure it makes government encryption look like a child's toy. He doesn't need to look up the number. It's muscle memory, the same way his body knows how to execute a roundhouse kick without conscious thought.

Three rings. A voice answers, male, groggy with sleep.

"Hawthorne. It's four in the—"

"Sell." Ares's voice is low, barely above a whisper, but it carries the weight of an executioner's blade. "Every Knight asset we hold. Flood the market. I want their stock price bleeding by the opening bell."

There's a pause. The man on the other end is awake now, the grogginess replaced by the sharp focus of someone who knows exactly what's being asked. "That'll crash their valuation by at least thirty percent. The family will—"

"They'll what?" Ares's tone doesn't rise. Doesn't need to. The question is rhetorical, a scalpel pressed against the throat of dissent. "Fight back with what? The influence they borrowed? The reputation they inherited? Execute the order."

The line goes dead. Ares sets the phone down, his fingers resting on the cool surface of the desk for exactly three seconds before he moves to the next screen. The Knights are already a solved problem. They just don't know it yet.

This is what separates the Hawthornes from the rest of New York's so-called elite. The Knights have their galas and their memberships at clubs that require five generations of pedigree just to be considered. The Browns have their rising wealth, their new money desperation to buy their way into the rooms where the real power brokers congregate. But the Hawthornes? The Hawthornes don't need rooms. They own the buildings the rooms are in. They own the air the elite breathe.

Ares's grandfather, Ambrose Hawthorne, built the empire on a simple principle: control the foundation, and the structure above it becomes irrelevant. While other families fought over seats at the table, Ambrose bought the table. Then the restaurant. Then the block. By the time anyone realized what was happening, the Hawthornes weren't just players in the game—they were the ones who decided when the game started and who got to play.

Ares learned this lesson before he learned to read.

He returns to the center of the sanctum, his body settling back into the opening stance of Tai Chi. The city is beginning to wake now, the first hints of dawn turning the sky from black to the deep purple of a bruise. Far below, headlights snake through the streets, early risers heading to jobs that will never make them rich, chasing dreams that were designed to keep them exactly where they are.

Ares moves through the next form, "White Crane Spreads Its Wings," his arms extending in a motion that looks graceful but is, in reality, a strike designed to break ribs. His breathing is controlled, each inhale filling his lungs to exactly seventy percent capacity, each exhale measured to the millisecond.

This is meditation for a man who doesn't believe in peace. This is prayer for someone who knows God is a myth designed to comfort the weak.

The monitors continue their silent vigil, numbers shifting, fortunes rising and falling in the digital ether. Somewhere in the building below, the first security guard is making his rounds, the sound of his footsteps a distant echo that doesn't reach the ninety-third floor. The Hawthorne Tower is soundproofed to military specifications. Ares demanded it. He can't afford distractions.

At 5:23 AM, his phone vibrates. Not a call. A message. He completes the form before checking it, because discipline is the only thing standing between him and the chaos that lives in the back of his mind, the place where the memories of the crash still flicker like a film reel that won't stop playing.

The message is from his grandfather.

"The contract is ready. Brown has agreed to the terms. Dinner tonight. Wear something that reminds them who they're dealing with."

Ares reads it twice, not because he needs to, but because the words carry implications that require consideration. The Browns are new money, a family that clawed their way up from the construction business to the edges of Manhattan's financial district through a combination of luck, leverage, and Arthur Brown's willingness to make deals that older families wouldn't touch. They're desperate to solidify their position, to marry into the kind of power that can't be bought with cash alone.

And Ambrose, in his infinite strategic genius, has decided that the Hawthornes will allow it.

Not out of generosity. The Hawthornes don't do charity. This is a transaction, pure and simple. The Browns get the legitimacy of the Hawthorne name. The Hawthornes get... what, exactly?

Ares sets the phone down, his jaw tightening. He doesn't like variables he can't control, and his grandfather's motives are the one equation he's never been able to fully solve. Ambrose operates on a level of strategic foresight that borders on prescient, moving pieces on a board only he can see in full.

The marriage contract specifies "a daughter of the Brown family." Ares knows the family has two. Elara Knight—technically Elara Brown, though she refuses to use the name—is the obvious choice. She's the socialite, the one who's spent years cultivating the right connections, attending the right parties, wearing the kind of dresses that cost more than most people's cars. She's beautiful in the way that magazine covers and charity galas demand: polished, perfect, utterly artificial.

Ares has met her twice. Both times, she looked at him the way a starving woman looks at a feast, her eyes cataloging his net worth before his face. She wants the Hawthorne name the way a drowning person wants air, and that desperation makes her predictable. Useful, even.

The other daughter is... irrelevant. Ares has only heard whispers, rumors that Arthur Brown keeps a second child tucked away, some bastard daughter or servant or—the details don't matter. She's not part of the social circuit, which means she's not part of the equation.

Ares walks to the glass wall, pressing his palm against the cold surface. The city is waking in earnest now, the sky turning from purple to the pale gray of pre-dawn. He can see his reflection more clearly in the glass now, a ghost of a man superimposed over the kingdom below.

Ice-blue eyes stare back at him. His father's eyes. The last thing he remembers about Alexander Hawthorne is the way those same eyes looked in the seconds before the crash, wide with a terror that turned to resignation in the space of a heartbeat. Ares was seven. Old enough to understand that something was wrong. Too young to do anything about it.

The smell of gasoline. The hiss of rain on a burning engine. His mother's hand, inches from his, going still.

And in the distance, through the cracked windshield, a pair of headlights. Just sitting there. Watching.

Ares's jaw clenches. He pulls his hand away from the glass, leaving a faint print of warmth that fades in seconds. He doesn't allow himself to think about the crash. Thinking is dwelling, and dwelling is weakness. The past is a fact that can't be changed. The only thing that matters is the present, and the future he's building with his own hands.

He walks to the desk, opening a drawer and pulling out a crisp white button-up shirt. Armani. Tailored to fit his frame so perfectly it might as well be a second skin. He buttons it with the same mechanical precision he applies to everything, each button sliding through its hole with a soft click that's almost rhythmic.

Black trousers. Italian leather belt. No tie. Ares doesn't wear ties unless the occasion demands absolute formality, and dinner with the Browns doesn't qualify. They're beneath that level of respect.

By the time he's dressed, the sun has crested the horizon, spilling weak morning light across the city. The Hawthorne Tower casts a shadow that stretches for blocks, swallowing entire buildings in its wake.

Ares checks his watch—a Patek Philippe that costs more than most people's homes—and sees it's 6:47 AM. He has twelve hours before the dinner. Twelve hours to dismantle the Knights, review the quarterly projections for the Hawthorne subsidiaries, and decide which Brown daughter he'll tolerate as a wife.

The word tastes foreign in his mind. Wife. It implies partnership, companionship, some level of emotional investment. Ares doesn't do emotion. Emotion is what got his parents killed. Emotion is what makes men weak, predictable, easy to destroy.

This marriage will be a contract. Nothing more. He'll sign the papers, attend the requisite social functions, and ensure that whoever he chooses understands the terms: she is a Hawthorne in name only. She will live in his house, wear his ring, and stay exactly where he can see her. In return, she'll have access to a level of wealth and power that her family could never achieve on their own.

It's a transaction. Flesh for empire.

Ares returns to the monitors, pulling up the financial profiles of both Brown daughters. Elara's spending habits are a matter of public record—charity galas, designer boutiques, spa memberships at places that charge five thousand dollars for a facial. She's exactly what he expected: a woman who measures her worth in Instagram followers and invitations to exclusive events.

The other daughter doesn't have a profile. No social media presence. No credit card transactions that ping the luxury markers his algorithms are designed to detect. It's as if she doesn't exist outside the walls of the Brown estate.

Curious.

Ares makes a note to have his security team pull a full background check. He doesn't like blind spots, and a daughter who's managed to stay this invisible is either extraordinarily boring or extraordinarily good at hiding. Either way, he needs to know which.

His phone buzzes again. This time, it's his assistant, a woman named Victoria who's worked for the Hawthornes long enough to know that Ares doesn't tolerate inefficiency.

"Your 8 AM is here early. Should I send him up?"

Ares glances at the clock. 7:14 AM. The meeting isn't for another forty-six minutes, which means whoever it is either doesn't value their own time or is desperate enough to grovel for his.

"No. Make him wait."

He doesn't need to explain why. Victoria knows. Making someone wait is the first move in a negotiation. It establishes the hierarchy, reminds them that Ares's time is the most valuable commodity in the room.

He spends the next forty-six minutes reviewing the Knight assets, watching in real-time as the sell-off he ordered begins to execute. The stock price dips, then drops, then plummets. By the time his 8 AM walks through the door, Knight Enterprises will have lost thirty-seven million dollars in market value.

And Ares won't have raised his voice once.

At exactly 8:00 AM, Victoria's voice crackles through the intercom. "Mr. Hawthorne, your appointment is ready."

Ares doesn't respond. He simply stands, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt with slow, deliberate movements. The man who enters is in his fifties, balding, sweating despite the arctic temperature of the office. He's carrying a briefcase that trembles in his grip.

"Mr. Hawthorne, thank you for seeing me—"

"You're here to beg." Ares's voice cuts through the pleasantries like a scalpel. "Save us both time and tell me how much you need to keep your company alive."

The man's face goes pale. He stammers, tries to salvage some dignity, but Ares has already turned back to the monitors. The conversation is over before it begins. By the time the man leaves—twenty-three minutes later, with a loan agreement that will cost him everything he owns if he defaults—Ares has already moved on to the next problem.

This is the rhythm of his life. Problem. Solution. Execution. Repeat.

By noon, he's destroyed two companies, approved the acquisition of a third, and sent a message to the Browns confirming his attendance at dinner. The city below continues its frantic dance, millions of people moving through their routines, unaware that the man in the glass tower ninety-three floors above them has just rewritten the financial landscape they'll wake up to tomorrow.

At 4:00 PM, Ares leaves the office. His driver—a man named Marcus who's been with the family for fifteen years and knows better than to attempt small talk—pulls the Maybach to the curb exactly as Ares steps out of the building. The car is black, sleek, armored to withstand anything short of a military-grade explosive. Ares slides into the back seat, and the door closes with the kind of solid thunk that only German engineering can achieve.

"The Brown estate," he says, and Marcus nods.

The drive takes forty-seven minutes. Ares spends it reviewing the dossier his security team compiled on the mysterious second Brown daughter. Her name is Celeste. Twenty-three years old. No college degree. No employment history. The file is frustratingly thin, but there's one detail that catches his attention: a police report from eight years ago, a wellness check requested by a neighbor who heard "screaming" from the Brown residence.

The report was dismissed. No evidence of abuse. Case closed.

Ares's eyes narrow. He doesn't believe in coincidences.

The Maybach pulls through the gates of the Brown estate at exactly 6:47 PM. The house is a monument to new money trying desperately to look old: columns that serve no structural purpose, a fountain that's too large for the courtyard, landscaping that's been manicured to within an inch of its life.

Ares steps out of the car, buttoning his suit jacket with one hand. The air smells like expensive cologne and desperation.

Inside, in a mahogany-clad office that reeks of cigars and failed ambition, Ambrose Hawthorne sits across from Arthur Brown. Between them, a marriage contract lies on the desk, the ink still wet.

Ambrose smiles—a rare, dangerous expression that never reaches his eyes.

"The trap is set," he murmurs, more to himself than to Arthur.

And somewhere in the shadows of the estate, a girl in an oversized cardigan scrubs wine from a carpet, unaware that her life is about to be auctioned to a man who hasn't felt his own heartbeat in seventeen years.