Ribbons of fate

Chapter 17: The Transformation

Gael Aiden Andrez’s POV (Aiden Clarke)

I had built empires without hesitation.

I had ruined men without regret.

But erasing myself?

That was new.

By the time the jet pierced through Los Angeles airspace, Gael Aiden Andrez no longer existed in the way the world knew him. His name still held weight in boardrooms, still echoed in whispered fear—but I had locked that man away. Temporarily. Strategically.

What remained was deliberate.

Aiden Clarke.

I studied my reflection in the private terminal bathroom—no tailored power suit, no unmistakable authority stitched into fabric. Just worn denim, a plain black shirt, boots scuffed enough to look lived-in. My watch was gone. My rings. The armor of wealth stripped clean.

For the first time in years, I looked… ordinary.

The thought unsettled me more than any threat ever had.

“Everything is in place,” Sancho said quietly behind me. “Your apartment. Your records. Your income. You are officially forgettable.”

Good.

I needed to be forgettable. Tracy Rsman would never let her guard down around a man who looked like control. She was still rebuilding herself—still bruised in ways she wouldn’t admit.

I couldn’t storm into her life.

I had to drift into it.

“She’s changing,” Sancho added. “Different routines. New cafés. Longer walks. Less isolation.”

I felt that strange pull again—that ache low in my chest.

She was healing.

And somehow, the thought both relieved and infuriated me.

“She’s looking for a chauffeur,” Sancho continued. “No permanent staff. No security. She wants freedom.”

Freedom.

The very thing I threatened by wanting her.

I exhaled slowly. “Then I don’t approach her as a savior.”

Sancho glanced at me. “As what, then?”

“As someone harmless,” I replied. “Someone she chooses.”

That was the most dangerous part of this entire plan.

I had never waited to be chosen.

Over the following days, I learned restraint like a discipline. I woke up early. I painted—poorly at first, then better, letting the motion quiet my thoughts. I walked instead of being driven. I stood in lines. I listened instead of commanding.

Power had always bent the world toward me.

Now I had to learn how to exist without it.

At night, though… she returned.

Her laugh.

Her defiance.

The way she had looked at me like I was both mistake and temptation.

She didn’t know my name.

She didn’t know my reach.

She didn’t know how close I was.

And that was the point.

From the balcony of my modest apartment, I watched the city glow—alive, reckless, seductive. Somewhere out there, Tracy was living her new life, believing she had escaped every shadow tied to that night.

She was wrong.

I wasn’t coming for her loudly.

I wasn’t coming as a king.

I was coming as a man she could trust.

And when she finally looked at me—not past me, not through me, but at me—

I would decide whether to let Aiden Clarke live…

or whether Gael Aiden Andrez would rise again.