Chapter 5 Five
Chapter Five
The morning crept in the way it always did in this corner of the city—gray and slow at first, then quietly bright, like the sun had better places to be.
Ethan barely slept. Not because of the dungeon. Not because of the pain, which had finally faded away. His mind just wouldn’t stop spinning the numbers. He had two hundred and sixteen thousand bucks parked in a Cash app linked to a battered iPhone 6. A system nobody else could see. A thing down some stone corridor that somehow knew way too much about Lawrence Luther.
He sat on the sofa, phone balanced on his knee, thinking about next steps.
Practical stuff came first. He needed a real base. The apartment was out—it had Lugard’s fingerprints all over it, literally, after the guy wandered in and helped himself to half the furniture. And he’d been living there for two years, so if Lawrence’s people wanted to track him down, they’d barely have to try. He needed somewhere new. Somewhere clean. Somewhere that belonged to him.
He opened his phone and started searching.
By nine, he’d looked at two places and signed for the third. Fifteenth floor, east-facing. Doorman at the front, key fobs, thick walls—the kind that swallow your neighbor’s TV noise. The rent was more than he used to make in a whole year. He paid three months up front without blinking. That balance in his account barely noticed, still huge by any measure he’d understood before.
The leasing agent shook his hand twice, called him Mr. Cole both times. Nobody had ever called him that. He found he kinda liked it.
He texted Shelly from the cab:
You free today?
Her reply landed fast. I'm unemployed, Ethan. I'm always free.
He almost smiled.
Meet me at Grover's on Fifth. Noon.
---
Shelly was already there, tucked in a booth by the window with a coffee she hadn’t touched and an exhausted look that said she’d been keeping it together since yesterday and was starting to feel the strain.
She looked him over as he sat, then looked again, slower.
"You look different," she said.
"Different how?"
"I don’t know. Taller, maybe." She frowned. "That can’t be right."
"It’s just the clothes." He’d stopped at a store on his way. Nothing flashy—dark trousers, crisp grey shirt, real shoes that fit. He looked like someone owning his circumstances instead of someone chewed up by them. He was paying attention to that now.
Shelly wrapped both hands around her coffee cup. "How are you really? Don’t say fine."
"I’m not fine," he told her. "But I’m moving."
She nodded, slow and careful, like that was at least honest, if not comforting. "I’ve been applying since last night. Three places. I know someone at Meridian Financial who might—"
"Shelly."
She stopped.
"I need someone I trust to help handle something." He kept his voice even. "I’m starting a business. Nothing shady. Investments mainly, but I want a physical front—consulting, financial services, something clean. I need someone who knows how offices work, how people work."
She stared at him. "Ethan, you were delivering pizza four days ago."
"I know."
"Where’s the money coming from?"
"An inheritance," he said, which was the closest he could get to the truth. "From someone anonymous. I know that sounds—"
"It sounds insane."
"It is," he said. "But the money’s real, it’s in my account, and I need someone who’s not going to steal from me or sell me out. You lost your job because of me. Let me fix that."
Shelly was quiet awhile. Outside, a bus rumbled past and a kid chased after a dog heading the wrong direction.
"What would I actually do?" she asked.
"Run the front office. Handle correspondence, schedule stuff, vet people who want meetings. Eventually manage a small team when we grow." He paused. "I’ll pay you four times what O&M paid."
Her eyebrows shot up. "That’s—Ethan, that’s a lot."
"You rode in an ambulance with me. You held a twenty-thousand-dollar hospital bill and cried about it. That’s not just a coworker, Shelly. That’s showing up. I pay people who show up."
She glanced at the table, then at him, then finally took a sip of her coffee.
"Okay," she said softly. "Okay. Yes."
He was back at the old apartment mid-afternoon, picking up what was left that mattered—a box of papers, a photo of his parents, both squinting at the sun somewhere unfamiliar, a spare phone charger. That was it. Everything else stayed behind.
Lugard showed up in the hallway, as expected.
He looked at Ethan like a problem he’d just recalculated and didn’t much like the answer. His two muscle guys from yesterday were nowhere around.
"You’re leaving," Lugard said. Not really a question.
"Already gone." Ethan slipped the photo into his jacket. "I’ll have someone collect the deposit."
Lugard’s mouth opened, then closed.
Ethan walked past him without another word, down the stairs.
Outside, the city moved around him just like always—loud, indifferent, everyone headed somewhere. He paused on the pavement, box under his arm, took in the building he’d called home for two years.
The system chimed, barely audible.
[Mission 2 available.]
[E-Rank Dungeon: Unlocked.]
[New intel flagged: Lawrence Luther — financial irregularity detected. View?]
He looked at the screen for a moment.
"Yes," he said, barely above a whisper.
He started walking toward his new place, reading as he went. And for the first time, Lawrence Luther’s name didn’t sting.
It felt like a target.
