Alliance

PART 3

Writer's POV :

​The elevator doors slid open with a soft ding, revealing the wide, polished hallway of the conference floor. This was where the high-stakes meetings happens

​Victor hadn't given his son any details. The phone call had been short and cold: "Get to the conference hall now."

​As Zane stepped out, his heart hammered against his ribs. He saw his father standing at the far end of the hall, deep in conversation. But Victor wasn't alone. He was talking to someone whose back was turned to the elevator.

​The closer Zane walked, the more the stranger's silhouette began to look familiar. The sharp, expensive suit. The broad shoulders. That perfectly straight, confident posture that screamed authority. And then there was the voice calm, assertive, and annoyingly bold.

Zane froze. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. His breath caught in his throat, and for a moment, he forgot how to inhale. It was the one person he had tried to scrub from his memory with the fire of a thousand distractions. The one person he had failed to forget, no matter how many years or miles he put between them.

​His enemy.

"Zane... am I seeing things? Tell me I'm hallucinating," Adam whispered from behind him, rubbing his eyes as if he expected the vision to dissolve into smoke. "Is that really... him?"

​Zane didn't answer. He couldn't. His jaw tightened so hard he felt a dull throb in his temples. His hands curled into tight fists, his knuckles turning white as he forced his legs to move. Each step toward the duo felt like a step into a minefield.

​"Dad, what is going on here?" Zane demanded.He was furious

​Victor looked up, his face an unreadable mask of business-like calm. He checked his watch. "You're late, Zane."

​Zane didn't care about the time. He turned his gaze to the man standing next to his father. Up close, the tension was thick enough to choke on.

Ryan stood there, his eyes flashing with a familiar, burning spark of anger.

The old resentment hadn't faded with time. It hadn't withered or died. Instead, it had rotted in the dark, turning into something much sharper, much more jagged, and infinitely more dangerous.

​"What the hell are you doing here?" Ryan snapped. His voice was low, but it cut through the air like a knife.

"The real question," Zane spat back, stepping into Ryan's personal space until they were chest-to-chest, "is why you are polluting my company's meeting space with your presence?"

​Benjamin stepped between the two young men, acting like a referee in a high-stakes boxing match. He placed a steadying hand on Ryan's shoulder, but the boy didn't move. Both Zane and Ryan glared over Benjamin's head at each other, their breathing heavy and synchronized in their mutual rage.

📌

​MEANWHILE...

Halfway across the world, in a dorm room that looked like a hurricane had hit a laundry mat, a pillow flew through the air. It hit the boy square in the face with a muffled thud.

​"Jamie, get up! Do you even know what time it is?!"

Jamie groaned, burying his face deeper into the mattress. His head felt like it was being used as a drum by a heavy metal band. "Go away," he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep and the remnants of a very expensive bottle of tequila.

​"Didn't you say you had to be in the exam hall by 2:00?!" his roommate yelled.

​Jamie sat up, his hair a wild mess and his eyes bloodshot.He blinked at the digital clock on his nightstand. 1:15 PM

"Oh no... my exam! Why didn't you wake me up earlier?!"

​"I've been trying for twenty minutes! You were snoring like a chainsaw!"

​He scrambled out of bed, tripping over a pile of clothes. "Towel? No, no time! Where is my toothbrush? Has anyone seen my ID card?!"

​Waking up at 1:00 PM for a 2:30 PM exam is a disaster for anyone else. But for Jamie? This was just a Tuesday.

Jamie is Zane's younger brother, the "little" Bennett who was famous for being a total chaos magnet.

​The family had literally sent him to a foreign country to get a degree, hoping the distance would make him grow up.

If you thought Jamie stayed up late studying for this exam, you'd be wrong. He was currently suffering from a massive hangover after a party that lasted until 5:00 AM.

​Jamie didn't know it yet, but his life was about to get much more complicated. He was hiding a secret

A little detail that would shock the entire Bennett family. But let's let him finish his exam first... if he even makes it there on time.

📌

​BACK TO THE BOARDROOM

​"What the hell do you mean, united?"

"You've got to be kidding me!"

​Zane and Ryan spoke at the exact same time, their voices clashing in perfect, hateful harmony. It was like they hadn't spent a single day apart; they still knew exactly how to trigger one another.

​Victor and Benjamin stood their ground. They had expected this explosion. They knew the history between their sons, but they were thinking about the survival of their legacies.

​"We knew this would be difficult," Benjamin said, his voice steady and calm. "But you both need to be adults. Think this through logically."

​"Think about what, Pappa?" Ryan turned to Benjamin, his face pale with shock. His voice trembled with a mix of shock and betrayal.

"Are you seriously telling me... that to save your friendship I'm supposed to marry him?"

​Zane let out a cold, harsh laugh, his tone dripping with pure disgust.

"In your dreams, Ryan. I wouldn't marry you if you were the last person on Earth and the survival of the world depended on it"

​The silence that followed was heavy. The two fathers looked at each other, then back at their sons. The war was just beginning.

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​TO BE CONTINUED...🤍