Reborn Rich

I always thought death would come quietly for me. I’d built a life in the shadows; Adrian Cole, the loyal ghost of the Damaris dynasty. I handled their secrets, cleaned their scandals, patched the cracks in their golden empire before anyone noticed the rot beneath. For fifteen years, I protected them. For fifteen years, they owned me. But standing in the center of a dim warehouse, the smell of rust and cold concrete biting my lungs, I realized something with perfect clarity: Death was never going to be quiet. Not for someone like me. The first betrayal was the silence. No shouts. No warnings. Just the echo of my own footsteps as I approached the center of the room, where Lucian Damaris’s men had told me a “security breach” needed my personal attention. Security breach. What a joke. The second betrayal was the familiar faces. Six men stepped out from behind the metal containers, faces I had fed, defended, and saved more times than I could count. One of them, Martin, used to come to me for help with his sick daughter. Another, Drew, owed me his job after covering up an attempted corporate leak. They all had guns pointed at me. “Adrian,” Martin said, his voice trembling just enough to tell me he wasn’t doing this by choice. “Don’t…make this difficult.” “Difficult?” I let out a dry breath, something between a laugh and a sigh. “You ambushed the wrong man for that.” I lifted my hands slowly. Not in surrender but just to give myself a second to think. The lights overhead flickered, buzzing with the same coldness I’d spent years ignoring. I scanned the room for exit doors close enough, as I had no weapons on me, and there were no cameras except the one high in the corner. Alder was watching. I was sure of it. “Where’s the Chairman?” I asked. Drew swallowed. “This is his order.” Smirking, I murmured. “Of course it was.” I should have expected this day. I’d been too loyal, too efficient, too aware of the sins that made the Damaris family rich. Men like Alder didn’t like loyal dogs, they liked obedient ones. And I had stopped being obedient a long time ago. But the real betrayal wasn’t the guns. It was the fact that I recognized the second heartbeat behind the containers. The lightest footstep, the careful inhale, the person who would only show up if the situation was already spiraling into hell. “Zarai?” I said softly. The shadows shifted. And he stepped out. Zarai Kane, my closest ally, my only friend, the one person who could read a corpse like it was poetry. A forensic journalist who lived on truth the way others lived on oxygen. The man who is my lover and had once looked at me like he saw more than a fixer, more than a weapon. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, dark with what I prayed wasn’t blood. His glasses were gone, leaving his sharp eyes exposed but those eyes that usually cut through lies now filled with something worse. Regret. “Adrian,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “You shouldn’t have come here.” As if I had a choice. As if I could ever ignore his voice. Then I noticed the bruises around his wrists, the shallow cut on his cheek, the limp in his walk. Someone had beaten him. Tortured him. And I knew instantly as pain carved itself into me like a knife, that they had used him to lure me here. My hands curled into fists. “Who hurt you?” Zarai shook his head slightly in quiet plea. “Don’t ask. It won’t change anything.” “Ah,” someone drawled behind him. “How touching.” The seventh man stepped out, I didn’t recognize him and that alone chilled me more than the guns pointed at me. I knew every piece, pawn and private criminal of Alder’s machinery. But this man…this stranger…he didn’t belong to the Damaris chain of command. And he was smiling. “Mr. Cole,” he said. “The Chairman extends his deepest gratitude for your years of service.” The sarcasm was like a blade dipped in acid twisted into my guts. I narrowed my eyes. “And he sent you to deliver the thank you card?” His smile widened. “Something like that. The dynasty appreciates your loyalty, your silence, your…convenient ability to disappear problems.” He tilted his head. “Now it’s time for you to disappear.” My heart didn’t race as I growled out. “What does Lucian Damaris think I’ve done?” I asked. The man raised a brow. “You know too much.” Ah. So that was it. Not betrayal. Not suspicion. Just housekeeping. I should have felt fear. Anger. Something real. Something burning. But all I felt was a bone-deep exhaustion. Fifteen years of cleaning up murders, scandals, political manipulations. Fifteen years of being the invisible blade that kept the Damaris empire sharp. And now, like any other blade that had been used too long, I was being discarded. “Adrian…” Zarai’s voice cracked. “Don’t fight them.” I looked at him fully for the first time, memorizing everything I loved about him. From his warm body that I cuddled endlessly every morning, gorgeous brown eyes that I stared into while we had numerous bouts of lovemaking every night and every morning. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t part of this world. I’d spent years keeping him out of it. Protecting him from the parts of me that were too dark, too violent. And now he was being dragged into the center of my death. “Let him go,” I said quietly to the stranger. “I’ll do what you want quietly. Please just let him go.” The man laughed. “You dragged him into this.” His smile sharpened. “He had evidence. He was getting too close.” My stomach dropped. Evidence. Zarai’s investigation. The pharmaceutical leak he told me he was close to cracking. I had helped him chase that truth. And that truth had led him straight into the Jaws of the Damaris empire. The strange man took a slow step toward him, gripping a fistful of Zarai’s hair and yanking his head back. Zarai winced but didn’t look away from me. “You think we’re letting a man like him walk away?” the stranger said. “No. He’s part of the cleanup.” My throat tightened. No. No, no, no…. “Kill him first,” the strange man ordered. My vision tunneled. “Don’t!” I surged forward… A gun clicked behind me, cold metal pressing to my skull. I froze. Zarai didn’t even struggle. He just stared at me accepting his fate. “Adrian,” he whispered, “I’m sorry.” I was the one who should have apologized after dragging him into this. I was supposed to protect him. I should’ve seen this coming. But I didn’t get the chance to say anything. A sickening crack echoed through the warehouse. a blow to the back of his head. Zarai fell. His body crumpled to the ground like a stringless puppet. My lungs collapsed around my heart. My knees buckled. “ZARAI!” I barely heard myself scream. Two men grabbed his unconscious body by the arms and started dragging him away toward the far door. His head lolled. His blood smeared across the dirty floor. His hand brushed against the ground, limp and lifeless. “No…no, please…” The words tore from my throat. “Zarai…, Twinkle..….” The stranger hummed. “You could have saved him, Adrian. If you had stayed in your lane. If you had remained useful.” I turned, teeth clenched, vision blurring. “I am going to kill you?” He tilted his head, innocent. “Wow, really ?” He paused. Don't be bitter about it, we just did what we do to all threats.” I snapped. I lunged for him, rage blinding, grief ripping every restraint out of me. A gunshot ripped the air. Pain exploded through my side, hot and blinding. My body twisted from the force, collapsing to one knee. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. But I still tried to stand. Still tried to crawl toward the dark corridor where they dragged him. “Adrian.” Martin’s voice trembled above me. “Please…don’t make this worse.” “Worse?” I grunted. “You killed him.” The strange man crouched beside me, eyes gleaming with amusement. “I never knew you were the sentimental type,” he murmured. “No wonder the Chairman decided you had to go.” My vision flickered. The lights overhead blurred into hazy halos. My limbs grew numb, heavy. But my mind…my mind clung to one thing. Zarai’s hand dragging against the floor. The bruise on his jaw. The love in his eyes. The stranger leaned in, whispering by my ear. “You should never have trusted us.” A second gunshot echoed. And everything went black.