In Myers mansion.

The family joined at the dinner table. Victoria had been murmuring with Gregory for a little while, making Andres wonder what they were talking about, even though he acted like he didn’t care.

Victoria eventually spoke, eying everyone except Gregory at the table, which included her son, two daughters, and Andres, “I don’t want to do this, but I can’t ignore what happened.”

“What are you talking about, Mom?” asked Marlon, her half-assed son who was never good at anything other than playing games and chasing after women older than him.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” Victoria didn’t mince her words. “We all know, Carlos rotted in the cottage for weeks.” Everyone nodded in response. “But I found some food packets and water bottles inside.”

“What?” Everyone else was shocked to hear that, but Victoria kept scrutinizing their expressions. She couldn’t figure out who did it purely from their expressions. Either none of them did it, or one of them was very good at hiding their emotions, she thought. The one who had the highest chance of doing it was obviously Sofia, who had taken acting courses. However, Victoria didn’t want to admonish let alone punish her eldest daughter in front of Marlon and Andres, so she shifted her gaze to her youngest daughter, Narika, who would put up with everything others threw at her.

“I know who did it, so there’s no use lying,” Victoria confidently stated.

“Who?” Sofia’s eyes bulged in red. “Who was it?” she looked at Marlon. “Is it you, Marlon? Did you take pity on that pathetic bastard?”

“No, it’s not me!” Marlon denied without hesitation. “Why would I even go to that crappy cottage?”

“Then who?” Sofia looked at her mother who kept staring at Narika. “It’s Narika?”

Victoria nodded faintly.

“No!” Narika quickly refused. “It’s not me! Don’t you guys know I’m allergic to dust? How can I even go to that cotta—”

“Shut up!” Sofia didn’t even think twice before slapping her sister in the face. Silence fell over. Gregory kept his head lowered. He didn’t want to get involved in this small matter. Marlon and Andres also didn’t interfere as it wasn’t their place.

“I’ll leave the punishment to you,” Victoria told Sofia.

“How could you supply that trash with food when we were the ones who put him there so he would starve to death?’ Sofia was still grinding her teeth while glaring at Narika. “Since you gave him food, I’ll deny that very food from getting to you.” She looked at the maids and said, “Throw her in the empty dog cage where we put Carlos in the past.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the maids came to take Narika away.

“No, sis, please don’t do this,” Narika begged. “” she pleaded. “It’s not me who did it. Please stop with this.”

However, none of her family members even looked at her anymore, and after realizing that, she went silent.

Somewhere else in the city.

“I wasn’t expecting to win this much, but my senses have been super-sharp lately,” Carlos seemed surprised at his recent success as he walked out of the casino. In his bag, there were 30,000 dollars which he earned from the 30 dollars he took from the beggar. Because he played poker and the amount totaled hundreds of times more than his bet, he didn’t even need to pay the tax. He could have played more, but he didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention.

In the past, when he worked in the Myers company, he used to be happy every time he earned a hike in his salary. He was goal-driven and was money-minded back then, but now the 30,000 dollars felt like nothing. Even if he were to have 30 billion dollars in his bank account, he might not feel happy about it anymore.

Using some money from the 30,000 dollars, he bought a second-hand toyota and roamed throughout the city for days, looking for the customers for his business.

“You want to deliver groceries to my home?” an old woman asked him, standing at the doorstep. “But I don’t even know you. What’s the guarantee that you’re not going to bring products from cheap stores? There are so many fakes being produced these days. The eggs I bought the other day were all rotten, and the store owner didn’t even give my money back!”

“I assure you, such things will never happen when you do business with me.”

“And what’s the guarantee? Your serious-looking face?”

“Um… how about you pay me a day after you receive the products?”

“What?” the old woman was pleasantly surprised. “I can do that?”

“Yes, but only for the first month.”

“Okay,” she still looked doubtful as would anyone with enough juice in their brain. “Can you bring me bread and cheese for today?”

Carlos smiled and said, “Sure, I’ll have them at your doorstep before evening.”

He then talked with more potential customers who would require his service. He visited different grocery stores and tried to make deals with them, showing them his small customer base. Two stores accepted his proposal.

Carlos named his company SGNG. He painted its logos on his car, for his car was his office for the time being. The logo was a combination of SGNG and an ant symbol.

When some customers and the grocery store workers asked him what SGNG meant, he replied, “Super good novel groceries.” The name received a few chuckles, but he didn’t care because the real meaning behind the title SGNG was Sofia Gets No Groceries!

In the beginning days, Carlos had to work extra hard to deliver the groceries on time. Once he proved himself, his customers recommended others to him. That was the sign Carlos was waiting for.

He began recruiting people into this company to meet the growing demands. He also rented a small store where the groceries would come and go, where the workers could meet and interact with him.

It seemed like he was working hard every day, and many local girls asked him out. However, he refused them all, for he had more important work to do every night. Wearing a fake mask and carrying a fake identity, Carlos entered different casinos all over the country and earned thousands if not tens of dollars on every visit. After he got the attention of those sitting at bigger tables, he joined their table and started earning hundreds of thousands. All in a matter of weeks.

The casino staff checked him for everything, for any tricks that he might be using, but they found none. They had no idea that his skills were coming from his heightened senses.

But then one night, a casino sent some guys after him.

Even though outnumbered, Carlos didn’t run away. He fought them all and defeated them in a bloody struggle. It was then, when their blood touched his hands, his nails started growing rapidly. When the scent of blood intruded his nose, his eyes glowed red, and his fangs protruded out, hurting his whole head in the process. He had no idea what was happening, but he screamed in a high-pitch voice, and all the bats that were lurking in the darkness in the vicinity of a couple of miles reacted to his voice and burst out of the darkness in throngs.

That night, hundreds if not thousands of bats had witnessed the birth of a vampire! However, the citizens had no clue what had happened in the alley that night. All they found were men slashed and bitten everywhere. They all thought some wild animals did it. The news channels also reported it the same way.

In the coming days, Carlos took his time to cope with his newfound ability, which primarily activated when around blood or when his feelings got out of control. Having seen many movies, it didn’t take him long to realize that he had probably become a vampire, which he didn’t like because vampires often played negative roles in the films and so he didn’t have a positive opinion on them. Things that lurk in darkness and suck blood out of every living thing that they come across? Who would want to be in such a blood-thirsty being’s shoes?

He couldn’t figure out how he became a vampire yet, but he was now sure that all the changes in his body were because of this phenomenon. The reason his broken knees got healed and how someone who was dying from fasting could find strength all of a sudden and was able to run away from Myers mansion all on his own.

Everything that had happened made much better sense now.

However, the things that took place in Myers mansion still made no sense to him. He still couldn’t understand how his mother-in-law could hold such a big, unending grudge against him for a single mistake done unintentionally. She had truly done so many horrible things to him afterward by practically making him her slave and stealing all of his freedoms. The only good thing that happened because of her was she forced him to stop smoking. He hated her for that in the beginning, but after he got out of the smoking habit, he realized that it was a blessing in disguise.

Even though he walked away from them, in fact, ran away from them, thinking that was all he needed to do, the wanting for vengeance never left him. His foster mother had told him to never take revenge on anybody as God would deal with them in His own time, but he was finding it hard to forget all the things that had happened to him. Everytime some woman asked him out, he was smiling on the outside but shivered on the inside. The scars Sofia and her family had left on him ran so deep he didn’t look like the same man in the mirror anymore. He had experienced terrible things in his childhood, but the leftover innocence and the light-heartedness in the eyes which somewhat existed in the past was nowhere to be seen now.

He wanted to forget everything, but the movie posters of Sofia and the interviews she was giving didn’t help his cause, either. She looked so happy, and it made him feel bitter, but what hurt him more was that she was spewing lies after lies about her and her family, and most importantly, about him! She said in one of the interviews that her first husband had become abusive and so she began living away from him. All these things tortured Carlos’ soul. All the scars deep in his heart ached and begged and demanded him to do something. Anything.

Finally, after many months of living his life separately from the Myers family and after opening his own grocery store, Carlos found himself staring at the logo of his company, especially at the ant symbol. If the Myers were to find out about this store, they would destroy it without a second of hesitation, for sure, he thought. All the money he had earned through gambling wouldn’t save him from this billionaire family as the police and courts would always support them, not him!

“I don’t want to do this, but I can’t help but do this…” he put on his brand new, handsome face mask for the first time during the daytime. “From now on, I’ll be the man whose freedom can’t ever be fucked with. I’ll be Charles ‘mother-in-law-fucking’ Wallace… full time.”