Chapter 43: The Shadow and the Name

Ethan’s hands were buried in his pockets, his knuckles white against the dark fabric.

From the deepest shadow near a broken dumpster, a figure slowly detached itself. He was a man in his late forties named Jason Carter, but he looked closer to sixty. He was disheveled and gaunt, covered in a thin layer of grime and dust, wearing clothes that had been slept in for weeks. He was hunched over, constantly scanning the alley entrance—the epitome of a man running for his life.

"You’re Ethan, aren’t you?" Jason rasped, his eyes wide and anxious. "You look just like your old man."

"I’m Ethan Blake. Who are you?" Ethan demanded, taking a small, almost imperceptible step back.

"Jason Carter. I was... I am a friend, a colleague, and a business partner of your father’s," Jason corrected himself, the anxiety in his voice barely contained. "Listen, I know this looks bad, kid, but you need to know the truth. Vincent Halbert—he’s the one who killed your father."

Ethan didn’t react outwardly, but his entire focus sharpened. Halbert. The name felt cold and heavy.

"He’s been hunting me ever since," Jason continued, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "I’ve been attacked over ten times. They want me silent. I know you won’t believe me, but I have the evidence. It proves Halbert killed him. It’s hidden—I haven’t been able to retrieve it because I’ve been running for my life since the day your dad died. I’m next on the list."

Ethan listened to the desperate flood of information. The story was compelling, laced with genuine fear, and the details sounded real enough. Yet, a large part of his mind raised alarms.

"If this is true, why now, Jason?" Ethan asked, his voice flat. "Why not the police? Why not two years ago? Why come out of the shadows now, after all this time, to tell me this?"

Jason finally stopped shivering and met Ethan’s gaze, the desperation momentarily replaced by a strange relief. "Because you finally turned twenty-one," he explained simply. "I’ve been waiting for this. I couldn’t find you. You kept moving after... after what happened. And since I’ve been hiding, it was impossible for me to look for you openly."

Jason let out a shaky breath. "I had to wait. And then, a few days ago, I saw you drive through this neighborhood. Thank God you didn’t change that number, Ethan, or it would have been impossible to reach you."

The mention of the number made a final, unsettling piece click into place for Ethan. That phone number—the one Jason had used to contact him—was an old burner phone his dad had given him years ago. His father always told him never to give it to anyone, that it was a special, emergency number only to be used if he needed to locate his dad instantly.

Ethan had always taken his father seriously, treating him like the man of the house, and he never told anyone about the secret number. He had kept it all these years with a stupid, pathetic hope—he had dreamed countless nights that it had all been a nightmare, praying that his dad was still alive and that his mother would call that special number. Eventually, he had resigned himself to the truth and forgotten the number’s reason... until now.

[Well, well, well,] the System whispered, the amusement gone, replaced by genuine fascination. [Looks like the old man planned ahead. You’ve got your first lead, kid.]

Ethan leaned slightly forward, his mind voice dark as the hell. "He’s the father of that asshole Lucas," he answered to the system. "The one who used the guards to run me out of the restaurant. I always knew that subject had something to do with all this, but I never had concrete proof."

Ethan’s silence, charged with threat and calculated intent, made Jason even more nervous. The disheveled man rubbed his hands and moved slightly closer, as if the alley’s darkness were his only sanctuary.

"I don’t know how you got money, young man," Jason said, his voice trembling. "I suppose your father left you a part of it... But you have to believe me, you are in serious trouble. I’ve been watching Vincent, and a few days ago, he made a strange move: he hired someone to hunt you again. They’ve been investigating you. Luckily, they haven’t found you yet, but it will be easy for them to track you down while you’re in the city. You need to run away fast, or they will find you. Now that you’re twenty-one, you are completely his prey."

Ethan fixed his gaze on Jason, ignoring the warning about running, but focusing on one word. "What do you mean by ’it’?" he asked, as if speaking of a treasure he never knew.

In Ethan’s mind, the memory was clear: his father never told him what he did for a living. He only remembered that, suddenly, they had money. They bought an apartment, a new car, meals were better, everything improved... but he never said anything. Perhaps only his mother knew the truth, but they wouldn’t tell a child like him.

Jason looked surprised. "Your father never told you what he worked on?"

"No," Ethan replied, frustration rising in his throat. "I never knew what my father did. Only that it was ’business.’"

Jason sighed, desperation giving way to the need for confession. "Stocks. Your father was a genius with stocks... or, rather, a programming genius. He created a software that could decrypt stocks and forecast with ninety-nine percent accuracy when and which stock would rise."

The story began to flow, like a river of pain and betrayal. "We founded a company: him, me, and that bastard Vincent Halbert. In the beginning, Vincent put up all the money, and we took scraps, but they were very large scraps. Then, your father fought for a fairer split, and we divided the pie into three. The money flowed like a river, but that greedy bastard wanted your father’s share and mine.

"When your father made the final adjustments, based on the few flaws the program had, he managed to make the software almost perfect. That’s when that damned Halbert ended his life. Then he came after me to silence me and take everything."