ASHES TO EMPIRE

Episode1

There is no scent as persistent as poverty; it lingers. In the folds of a secondhand coat, in the leaky faucet that drips all night in your council flat, in the silence between your mother’s sighs. Even now, with a Montblanc pen in my pocket and an Italian leather choking my wrist, the memory of cold dinners and overdue rent scratches beneath my skin like a rash that never heals.

I was born in Deptford, South East London, to a man who drank his brilliance away and a woman who stopped believing in men before I could speak. My father, once a clever estate agent with soft palms and a sharp mind, died when I was sixteen. Or rather, he was buried then. He’d died years earlier, the day his brothers took everything he'd built and sold it out from under him. Two flats in Shore ditch, gone. A minicab business, also dissolved. The last I saw of Uncle Roger was him walking out of the funeral without meeting my eye, with his daughter clinging to his hand like he was Jesus, the savior.

I remember that year too well, the grief, the eviction notice, the way my mother shrank and how she looked at me not as a son but as the echo of a mistake made by her, which she probably should have corrected.

And then there was Layla.

God, Layla. With her sharp tongue and too-long lashes, she was every boy’s undoing. She wore her defiance like red lipstick and kissed like she meant to forget the world. We were seventeen when she told me she was pregnant, and I was still naïve enough to think love could hold weight against fear. When she left, it wasn’t with tears or explanations. Just a note that said, “I can’t live like this, El. I’m not your salvation.”

I never saw her again.

Not until last week.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After my father’s death, I buried myself in books. It wasn’t noble, as it was survival. A scholarship to university and a part-time job cleaning floors at night, then lectures during the day. I was invisible, but I had fire. The light that kept me shining, that’s when Mr. Deacon found me.

He was a quiet man, graying, who liked his coffee bitter. He is the one who saw something in me that no one else did.

“You’re wasted in that library,” he said once. “Come intern with us at North Petra. Learn something that’ll feed you.”

North Petra — a mid-level oil company with a hand in everything, from offshore drilling to green-washing press releases. It was supposed to be a stepping stone for me, but when Deacon retired, he left me his seat. I was thirty-two at the time.

Now, at thirty-five, I’m the youngest VP they’ve ever had. My flat overlooks the Thames. my name opens doors, and my bank account could float a small country. And yet…

I still wake up at 4:17 a.m. When my father used to cough himself awake, I still carry the letter Layla left, and I still don’t know my son’s name.

Until last Friday.

It was a gala for North Petra’s coastal initiative — the usual pageantry for rich men to pretend they cared about melting ice caps. I wore navy, did my tie too tight, and as I stepped out onto the marbled floor, champagne in hand, I saw her, my ex-girlfriend.

Layla…

She hadn’t changed much. Slimmer, perhaps, older, of course… But the same posture she always had— arrogant and defiant. She was with a man, or rather, I saw her with a man. Middle-aged, balding and with an expensive watch on his wrist. Her arm threaded through his, fumbling and squeezing and caressing.

And then there was the boy...

He stood behind her, half-hiding in the corner of the lobby. Maybe twelve, skinny… Eyes as sharp as hers, hair like mine.

He saw me first, staring while he was watching.

When our eyes suddenly met, my stomach twitched, and my skin felt churned up by heat. He blinked, then turned his back.

I couldn’t breathe; it felt like my son had turned his back on me. Of course, why shouldn’t he?

After twelve years of my absence?

I was struggling back then, and his mom could no longer stand the stench of my poverty.

That night, when I retired to bed at home, I didn’t sleep.

I didn’t reach out. I didn’t storm over, cause a scene. It’s not how I move anymore. I did what was right, waited, and observed. And with time, will investigate the truth in silence.

On Monday, I called a man who owed me a favour. “I need some info about someone,” I said. “A boy, possibly twelve, connected to Layla Sharpe. I want everything.”

Later that day, in my office. Still unable to think straight, a call came through the landline. I picked it up when it rang a second time and listened. Then a voice came through…Isaac.

Isaac Kane.

“Kane?” I asked again, to be sure.

The words spelt the name visible in my mind, and I stared at it until the letters burned into my skull. She’d given him my name. My name, even after all these years. After walking out, after choosing someone else.

She never wanted me to know him, never told him about me. But she gave him my name.

Why?

Just then, the caller hung up. Then, silent tears began streaming down my eyes. I have a son, I said to myself.

And then yesterday, something strange began.

Calls from family who said I should be thrown out.

Uncle Roger, cousin Dean and even bloody Aunt Mara, who once told my mother she should’ve “flushed the boy and started over.”

They suddenly want meetings.

Want to “reconnect.”

Want to talk about “old times”

Texts came in earlier from strange users, and I was not interested.

No one calls for anything, especially from me… Who am I that anyone should want? Or who was I?

Someone must’ve told them. That Elliot Kane, the boy they left behind, now signs contracts worth millions. He owns two flats in Shore Ditch.

At this time, I had bought back most of my father’s properties that they had sold. Someone must have told them that, perhaps one of the landlords.

They wanted to come in for the money.

But I saw a war coming.

And this time, I’m not seventeen, I can now speak for myself.

Whatever…

Tonight, I sit at my kitchen island, Isaac’s photo in hand, his eyes sharp and watching. I pour myself a drink, trying to get drunk when my phone buzzes…

A private number.

I answer.

A woman’s voice spoke up from the other end, “Mr. Kane?” She sounded scared.

“Yes,” I replied…

“He’s gone, your son, Isaac. He left school an hour ago, and no one’s seen him.”

My pulse stutters.

“What do you mean gone?”

“He left a note.” My heart starts racing hard.

“What did it say?” I whisper, unable to speak any louder.

Another pause…

“He wrote…‘I need to find my father.’’’