Author: nguyễn hoàng

PART 1 The first rule of the high lonely is that you are, in fact, never lonely. You’re just being watched. I’m Alex, and my “house” is a 400-square-foot timber cabin bolted to a ridge in the Montana backcountry. My nearest neighbor is 40 miles down a dirt road that’s impassable six months of the…

Part 1The world knows me as Ethan Ward. Thirty-three years old. The “miracle of modern capitalism,” as one magazine called me. The man who turned a line of code into an empire that owned half the Boston skyline. From my penthouse on Beacon Hill, I could see it all. The Charles River, a dark ribbon….

Part 1 At first, it looked like just another Tuesday morning at Grand Central. The air smelled like old copper, diesel fumes, and the sweet, artificial cinnamon from the bun shop on the lower level. It was a dull roar, the sound of a thousand people all going somewhere else, a river of footsteps and…

Part 1He shoved my graduation cake off the table. Frosting splattered across the patio; candles rolled under people’s feet. Then, my ten-year-old nephew grinned and said, “Eat it off the ground, Aunt Daisy.” The whole table laughed. My mother laughed the loudest. I stood there, knife still in my hand, wondering how love could sound…

Part 1The rain wasn’t just falling; it was attacking the city. An October deluge that turned the streets of Chicago into slick, black mirrors reflecting a neon-blurred misery. I sat in the armored silence of my S-Class, parked across from the Lyric Opera. I wasn’t here for the music. I was waiting for a man…