A SON IN LAW TURNS BILLIONAIRE AFTER DIVORCE

Chapter 26

After dinner, Leonard decided to head downstairs for a fresh air walk around the central courtyard.

He had just reached the main lobby doors on the first floor when the elevator chimed, slid open, and Mrs. Park walked out, holding young Jason by the hand.

The ten-year-old boy looked slightly guilty the second his eyes landed on Leonard, instinctively shrinking behind his grandmother. But Mrs. Park immediately puffed out her chest, staring Leonard down with a cold, hostile glare.

“You’re sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars! Why the hell are you so damn petty?!” she started complaining loudly, her scratchy voice echoing across the tiled lobby for everyone to hear. “So what if my sweet little Jason took a tiny cardboard box off your doormat?! What does a cheap little package matter to a man as rich as you?! And you actually had the nerve to drag property management to my front door over it?”

She stepped closer, pointing a crooked finger at his face. “We’re neighbors in this building. Don’t you make things ugly for us, boy, or I swear to God I won’t let this go!”

Leonard almost burst out laughing right in her face.

Some people in this world really were shameless beyond comprehension. Her spoiled brat of a grandson had stolen private property off his threshold, caught red-handed on high-definition video, yet somehow she was the one standing in the lobby acting completely righteous and wronged!

And now she was standing there throwing empty threats at him?

For a split second, Leonard felt a strong, sudden urge to slap the arrogant, smug look right off her face. But he quickly forced the urge down, taking a slow breath.

Not yet, he told himself. Don't ruin it.

He already had a much better, much darker lesson lined up for them. If he scared Jason too badly right now and made the kid stop stealing from his doorstep, wouldn’t that completely ruin the mousetrap he had just laid?

So Leonard said absolutely nothing. He didn't argue, didn't raise his voice, and simply walked right past her out the front doors.

Mrs. Park immediately smirked, looking immensely pleased with herself. In her mind, she had just completely dominated the young billionaire and put him in his place.

Jason’s small eyes darted around, his hands twitching as if he were already excitedly plotting what he could snatch off Leonard's doormat next.

As Leonard walked ahead down the concrete path, he could still hear Mrs. Park’s voice carrying on the evening breeze behind him.

“You see that, Jason? Next time that delivery guy drops off food for him, you just go right over and take it again! He’s filthy rich! Eating a little bit of his expensive food isn't going to hurt his bank account!”

“Okay, Grandma!” the boy chirped happily.

With his own grandmother openly encouraging his petty crimes, Jason naturally became ten times bolder.

A faint, dangerous smile appeared on Leonard’s face as he walked out the front gate. Perfect. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.

On his walk, Leonard stopped by a high-end specialty fruit market, dropping a few hundred dollars on massive crates of imported apples, seedless grapes, oranges, and fresh berries. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t finish eating them all today. The moment he transferred them into his frozen dimensional ring, they would remain crisp, sweet, and perfectly fresh forever.

Back inside his rental home an hour later, he washed a crisp red apple and took a deep, satisfying bite.

No one in this city knew how long the coming global disaster was going to last. Once the apocalypse hit in less than ninety days, fresh, sweet fruit would vanish from the face of the earth for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years. He needed to stockpile tons more. Enough to last him for several lifetimes.

The night passed peacefully, and another day rolled in.

The next morning, Leonard visited a massive commercial hardware center, purchasing high-grade power tools, extra generators, and structural repair gear. After that, he spent most of the day over at the Maple Grove estate, personally supervising James’s construction crews as they poured thick layers of reinforced concrete over the shelter walls.

He didn’t return to his rental apartment until late into the evening.

Meanwhile, back at the Park residence...

Ten-year-old Jason had stolen from Leonard the day before, and instead of getting a whipping, he had been praised and rewarded with grand promises. Naturally, his eyes had been glued to the peephole of Apartment 102 all afternoon, waiting like a vulture.

The second a gourmet delivery driver walked down the 15th-floor walkway, placed a large, extraordinarily elegant black food crate directly outside Leonard’s front door, and walked away, Jason slipped out into the hall.

He snatched the heavy, warm box with both hands and sprinted right back into his family's apartment.

Mrs. Park was sitting in the living room watching television. The very moment she saw her grandson carrying such a massive, luxury food crate into the kitchen, a huge, greedy grin spread across her face.

That useless Leonard had actually dared to bring property management to her door yesterday over a cheap box. How completely ridiculous! So today, her family was going to eat his high-end dinner right out from under his nose. That would teach the arrogant young man a real lesson about respecting his elders.

Her husband, Mr. Park, however, stood near the kitchen table looking noticeably uneasy.

“Honey... that’s someone else’s ordered food,” Mr. Park muttered, looking at the elaborate packaging. “We probably shouldn’t be eating this. What if he calls the cops?”

“He has hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in the bank! What the hell is wrong with taking a little bit of food?!” Mrs. Park snapped dismissively, waving her hand. “Besides, where does all that lottery jackpot money come from anyway?! Regular working-class people like us buying one-dollar tickets every day! In a roundabout way, that money came straight out of our pockets to begin with!”

Jason was already ripping off the gold ribbon, lifting the heavy insulated lid.

“WHOA! GRANDMA, LOOK!” Jason shrieked with joy. “LOBSTER!”

The luxurious feast was divided into eight beautifully arranged courses inside heated containers. There were giant butter-steeped lobster tails, fresh oysters on the half-shell, expensive cuts of Wagyu beef, imported caviar, and several complex, high-end dishes the Parks couldn’t even name. Everything smelled intoxicatingly rich.

Mr. Park swallowed his saliva hard, his hesitation wavering. “This... this must have cost a fortune. What if we get into real trouble for eating something this expensive?”

Mrs. Park hesitated for only a single second before her greed won out.

“So what? It’s probably a few hundred bucks at most! Is he really going to have the police arrest an old couple and a little child over some seafood?! Jason is just a kid! If anyone asks, we’ll just say he picked up the wrong box by mistake!”

That sounded completely reasonable enough to Mr. Park.

Without another second of thought, all three of them grabbed forks and dug in like starving wolves.

“My God... this steak is so tender!”

“This lobster is incredible!”

Jason chewed happily, grease dripping down his chin. “Grandma, can I take another food box from his door tomorrow?!”

“Of course you can, baby!” Mrs. Park laughed, patting his head. “We’ll eat like this every night!”

What none of the three Parks knew, however, was that this was no ordinary seafood dinner.

Leonard had specifically called a highly specialized, underground luxury restaurant and custom-ordered a potent aphrodisiac tasting menu—a meal heavily packed with concentrated herbal extracts, rare roots, and natural stimulants explicitly designed for extreme adult romance.

Including white-glove rush delivery, the specialized feast had cost Leonard $3,500.

The Parks scraped every plate clean, devouring every single drop of sauce.

And when an hour passed and Leonard still hadn’t come knocking on their door to complain, Mrs. Park became even more immensely smug. Looks like I really scared that boy yesterday in the lobby, she thought, leaning back on the couch. Good! If he doesn't have the guts to open his mouth, why shouldn't we keep eating his three-thousand-dollar meals every day?!

But not long afterward, Mrs. Park began feeling unusually, intensely warm.

A strange, burning heat flushed through her chest and face. Beside her on the couch, sixty-two-year-old Mr. Park suddenly shifted, his breathing growing unusually heavy and rapid.

The old couple exchanged a confused, wide-eyed look.

Without saying a word, they suddenly stood up, barked at Jason to go sit in the living room and watch cartoons, and ducked into their master bedroom, slamming the door shut.

For a little while, the apartment went completely quiet—save for the loud cartoons on the television.

Then, strange, muffled thuds and groans started coming through the bedroom door.

Then they stopped.

Then they started up again, louder than before.

Then stopped. Then started again.

By the time their adult son and daughter-in-law returned home from work hours later, ten-year-old Jason was still sitting alone on the living room floor in the dark. He had been staring blankly at the glowing television screen for hours, his eyes half-closed from sheer boredom and exhaustion.

The daughter-in-law’s face instantly flushed with anger. Was this how her in-laws were supposed to be babysitting her son?!

She marched angrily down the hallway toward the master bedroom, pushing the door open without knocking.

“What on earth are you two doing in here all afternoon—”

The words choked in her throat. Her face instantly turned a violent, bright shade of crimson.

She gasped, threw her hands over her eyes, and backed out of the doorway as fast as her legs could take her!

Her husband frowned in the hallway, stepping up. “What’s wrong with you? What happened in there?”

“Your... your parents...” she stammered, her face burning like fire, completely unable to finish the sentence.

BANG!

Before he could ask another question, the bedroom door flew open. Mrs. Park stumbled out into the hallway—completely, stark naked, her pale skin covered in cold sweat, her eyes wide with absolute, blind panic. Tears were streaming down her wrinkled face.

“SON! CALL 911! CALL AN AMBULANCE RIGHT NOW!” Mrs. Park shrieked at the top of her lungs. “YOUR FATHER COLLAPSED!”

The son stared at his naked mother in utter, traumatized shock. “W-What the hell happened to Dad?!”

Mrs. Park stammered for several agonizing seconds, her face turning purple with shame before she finally forced the terrifying words out.

“He’s been... he’s been... hard since two o'clock this afternoon! And now his heart stopped and he just passed out!”

The son stood there in complete, speechless horror. His father was sixty-three years old! How the absolute hell had something like this happened in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon?!

No wonder his wife had just backed out of the room with a bright red face!

Panicking, the son snatched his phone and dialed 911 immediately.

Ten minutes later, the loud, flashing red lights of an emergency ambulance illuminated the entire courtyard of the apartment complex. Two paramedics rushed up the stairs with a stretcher.

A short while later, Mr. and Mrs. Park were both wheeled out of the building main doors under thin white blankets. Even though most of their bodies were covered, anyone standing outside could clearly tell they were both wearing practically nothing underneath.

And considering that the two sixty-something-year-olds had just been rolled out of the exact same bedroom together by emergency medics...

It didn’t take a genius among the gathering neighbors to guess exactly what had transpired.

The Maple Grove community wasn’t very large, and gossip moved faster than light. By the next morning, the entire neighborhood was buzzing with loud, merciless laughter.

“Hey! Did you hear what happened over at Building 4?! Something went horribly wrong while the old Parks were doing the deed! They had to call an emergency ambulance at five in the afternoon!”

“Wait, you mean their son and daughter-in-law? Aren't they in their thirties?”

“No! The old couple! The grandparents!”

“WHAT?! Aren't they both over sixty-two years old?!”

“Pfft! Hahaha! They’re always standing by the gate gossiping and talking trash about everyone else's families! Now let’s see how those two shameless old bastards ever show their faces around here again!”

“Is old man Park even going to survive?”

“Who gives a damn?! Those two have been taking advantage of everyone in this building for years! It’s called karma!”

“Serves them right!”