CROWN OF GLASS ✔

1 | ACT I, SCENE I

I'd had countless surgeries, countless visits to heart doctors, countless prayers to god. Yet every time I was operated on, the gap had widened further, and my hope had grown weaker. And they knew it, I knew it, that when it finally burst open for once and for all, I would die.

I was a ticking time bomb.

A fine sheen of sweat covered Sophia's brow as she turned her soft eyes to me, then dropped them to the floor, very defiantly taking care not to look at my face.

"The reports?" I echoed, trying to not let my voice falter. I was used to this, after all. This hopelessness and misery. I lived in it, after all. "Sophia?"

It doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from. In the end, death comes for us all.

It never truly matters who you are.

Who I was to the world didn't matter to death.

I was the sole head of Witlock - the largest code breaking organisation in America. An organisation founded by me.

Orphaned since I was old enough to speak, I had no living relatives to talk of. My math professor, however, noticed my love for academia and numbers. It had resulted in him taking me under his wing, honing my skills, paying for endless hours of elite classes and extensive courses.

Some good people still existed in this world. Thanks to him, my faith in humanity still existed.

And now, ten years later, I led the largest secret organization in America, my own clandestine intelligence agency.

It was ironic how I had everything one could ask for. I indulged in charity to my heart's content by day, broke codes for the U.S. agencies for a living by night. We descended on the brightest minds every year, offering obscene salaries for their services.

I lived on One Fifth Avenue, the world's second richest street. The penthouse I called my home cost more than fifteen million, my bank accounts over the world were bloated with billions of dollars. I was listed at number thirty in the world's top richest people, with a net worth of more than twenty billion. People knew me by my face, owing to that intricate, complex brain in my head that worked so tirelessly and brilliantly.

And yet, all the money I earned was spent on going from one prestigious hospital to next. Money enough to rope in the WHO for help.

I had everything. Almost.

Except for time.

Or love.

Money couldn't buy anything. It couldn't buy me a life. It couldn't buy me a family. It couldn't buy me someone's love. And these were the only things I'd ever wanted.

The real measure of my wealth would be how much I'd be valued if I lost all my money.

By those standards, I was the poorest person I'd ever known.

I couldn't even remember my childhood. I couldn't remember ever coming into being, ever being around parents. The earliest memories of life my brain could squeeze out were that of a castle on a volcano.

It was always the same. Those strange little visions in head, like flashes of light - here one moment, gone the next. The mystery of those visions had kept me awake with haunted nights since the last ten years.