Chapter 6 The 99 Percent

Chapter 6

Victor smiled sadly, "So was your father. But he always faced the fire."

That word touched Ethan in a way he couldn't understand. It helped him understand the man he had never known, his biological father. Fear didn't run in their blood, his lineage had gone through the impossible and still stood stronger.

He swallowed the hard lump in his throat. Steeling his nerves, he snatched the parchment envelope from Victor's hands. He carefully tore open the paper and pull out the forensic result. 

At first, Ethan didn't understand what he was looking at. The page was full of genetic markers, complex loci data, and medical jargon that exhausted his eyes. His gaze scrambled frantically down the page, searching for anything that made sense to a layman, until his eyes landed on the final conclusion on the bottom.

PROBABILITY OF BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP: 99.9999%

Ethan’s hands began to shake violently. The paper rattled in his grip and finally fell off onto the floor. 

He looked up at Victor. His lips parted, desperately trying to form a word, a question, anything. But no sound came out. He was completely paralyzed, caught up in the reality he couldn't understand.

Victor slowly rose to his feet. He stepped across the cramped space, tapping his silver-tipped cane once against the floor, and placed a comforting hand on Ethan’s bruised shoulder.

Ethan flinched instinctively at the touch, with his body still wired for pain.

"No, Ethan," Victor said softly, answering the frantic, unspoken denial burning in the boy’s eyes.

The words were smooth and calming against the chaos inside Ethan's head. Then, Victor smiled. The expression was warm and fiercely fatherly, brimming over with a protective love that Ethan had never expected to see in a stranger's eyes.

"Welcome home, Ethan."

Victor slowly turned his back. He retrieved an encrypted satellite phone from his tailored suit pocket and made a single call.

"Get ready," he paused, his voice turning into an unquestionable command. "And prepare Sterling Manor."

He hung up before whoever was on the other line could answer.

Ethan finally found his voice, though it was barely a raspy whisper. "What are you doing?"

Victor smiled, while twinkling his eyes in the low light. "I’m taking my grandson home."

The older man's voice wasn't loud, but the weight of the words forced Ethan to stare at him, with his mind completely refusing to process the words. ‘Grandson. Home.’ Just a few hours ago, he had been on his knees in a puddle of spilled soy sauce and crushed lobster, begging the ruthless Damien Cross for a few wet hundred-dollar bills while wealthy strangers laughed at his misery. Now, the patriarch of the wealthiest conglomerate in the country was standing in front of him in a filthy holding cell, claiming him as blood.

"I can't," Ethan breathed, shaking his head slowly as he backed away from the open iron door.

Victor looked at him, his expression was entirely calm, almost peaceful. "You can, Ethan."

"No, you don't understand," Ethan insisted, with his voice rising in panic as he pointed violently toward the steel bars. "I'm under arrest! I was caught on the forty-fifth floor of the Hart Group. Damien... they accused me of corporate espionage. The police aren't just going to let me walk out of here because you asked them to. I'm facing twenty years!"

Victor’s lips curved into a faint, chillingly cold smile. "They won't stop you."

"That's not how the law works!" Ethan yelled, getting confused and frustrated. "You can't just…"

Just then footsteps echoed down the corridor, slightly taking Ethan’s mind from his panic. It wasn't the slow, dragging, feet of a single night-shift guard. It was the quick, commanding, and terrified footsteps of several people marching in unison.

Ethan tensed, his muscles began to scream in protest as he instinctively prepared himself for more possibly more humiliation or punishment.

Instead, the first person to come in was the precinct captain. His face was pale, he was nervously sweating, and his uniform looked suddenly rumpled. Beside him was a tall man in a tailored black suit with a gold badge pinned to his lapel…the City Police Commissioner. Behind them stood two senior detectives, a serious-looking corporate attorney holding a leather briefcase, and the very guard who had mocked Ethan hours before.

The guard was standing so stiffly he looked like a reanimated corpse, his eyes were locked straight ahead, and completely refusing to look Ethan in the eye.

The captain smiled nervously, his hands were visibly shaking as he opened the iron door of the cell wider. He stepped forward, his face was flushed with a deep, humiliating red.

"Mr. Sterling," the captain began, with his voice carefully respectful, practically begging. "I want to personally apologize for this... unfortunate misunderstanding."

Victor didn't answer. He simply looked at the captain with an expression that could melt ice.

The commissioner swallowed hard, the sound was audible in the dead-silent corridor. "We acted on information provided by Hart Group security. They claimed Mr. Cole had illegally accessed restricted areas and stolen proprietary data. We had no reason to doubt…"

"You had no reason to doubt," Victor repeated. His voice was low, serious, and deadly calm.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

"You held a man in custody for eighteen hours," Victor continued, his voice never rising above a conversational tone. "You didn't allow him a phone call. You didn't allow him legal representation. You beat him."

The commissioner stepped fully into the cell, his face was drained of whatever color was left. "I assure you, Mr. Sterling, our officers followed standard precinct procedure…"

"Your officer," Victor interrupted, raising his silver cane to point directly at the shaking uniform guard who was now actively trying to melt into the wall, "told my grandson that he would spend twenty years in a federal prison. He then threw his dinner on the floor and forced him to eat it off the floor like a dog."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Ethan’s breath hitched. He looked from the sweating, terrified captain to the rigid commissioner. For the first time, the terrifying, world of influence of Victor Sterling shook him to his core. This wasn't just wealth, it was the kind of power that could make the city's highest law enforcement officers shake in their expensive shoes and do frantic damage control in a filthy basement precinct.

"Mr. Sterling," the attorney said, stepping forward with absolute professionalism. He snapped open his leather briefcase, pulling out a single, freshly stamped document. He held it out, not to Victor, but to Ethan. "The Hart Group's preliminary filing has been officially voided by the District Attorney's office."

Ethan blinked, the room spinning slightly. "What? But the boardroom... the security cameras..."

"There is no case, Mr. Cole," the lawyer stated flatly. "You are completely free to go."