A SON IN LAW TURNS BILLIONAIRE AFTER DIVORCE

Chapter 28

“A three-thousand-five-hundred-dollar takeout order?!” Daniel Park screamed, his voice cracking so hard it pierced through the quiet hospital corridor. “Are you out of your mind?! That’s flat-out extortion! That’s robbery!”

Daniel’s mother, old Mrs. Park, grabbed Officer Lewis’s sleeve with trembling, frantic hands. “Officer! You can’t just stand there and let Leonard make such an absurd, outrageous claim! What kind of takeout on this earth could possibly cost three thousand five hundred dollars? He’s lying to you! He’s trying to ruin us!”

Officer Lewis gently but firmly pulled his sleeve out of the old woman’s grip. He had to admit to himself that he had been utterly stunned when he first saw the digital receipt at the station, too.

He looked at the hysterical family and offered a cold, unbothered smile. “I understand your shock. But it really was three thousand five hundred dollars. We have the verified receipt as hard evidence right here. My partner and I even drove out to the restaurant in person to cross-reference the order. The raw, imported ingredients alone were worth well over two thousand dollars.”

Even after hearing the officer’s firm words, all three members of the Park family stood in utter denial, their heads shaking wildly.

Officer Lewis flipped open his file folder and held out the itemized receipt alongside the restaurant’s official order logs. “Take a look yourselves.”

The three of them leaned in, their eyes scanning the printed lines. Royal king crab, bluefin tuna, high-potency concentrated botanical extracts, imported caviar... every single dish listed on the receipt matched the restaurant's high-end menu system to the exact cent.

It was true.

Leonard hadn’t exaggerated a single thing. The meal they had greedily devoured off the kitchen table really was worth three thousand five hundred dollars in cold cash.

Standing by the foot of her husband’s hospital bed, old Mrs. Park felt a cold, sickening weight drop straight into her stomach. A sharp wave of deep, agonizing regret finally pierced through her arrogant mind.

If she had known that a single delivery box sitting on a doormat was worth more than her family’s entire monthly income, she never would have encouraged her grandson to touch it! She would have beaten the boy’s hands away herself!

But what could they possibly do now?

Leonard had already filed an official grand larceny police report. The precinct had accepted the case and logged the digital evidence. And the absolute worst part...

They had just loudly admitted to the police officers that their family had taken and eaten the food!

Wait, Daniel’s mind spun frantically, grabbing at straws. There’s still a way out!

As long as they insisted—screamed it from the rooftops—that Leonard had intentionally poisoned the meal, they could still turn the tables and force him to pay them! After all, old Mr. Park was physically lying in an emergency room bed hooked up to a heart monitor right now. That was an indisputable medical fact!

“Fine! We admit the takeout was taken by our family!” Mrs. Park shouted, stepping forward again with a fierce, desperation-fueled glare. “But that just proves what I said! That proves Leonard poisoned it to harm my husband!”

Officer Lewis’s expression turned completely serious, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.

“Let me stop you right there, ma’am,” Officer Lewis said, his tone dropping into a stern, authoritative voice. “First of all, security footage proves Leonard never once touched that delivery box after the driver left it. There is zero evidence—none whatsoever—that he added a single substance to that food after it left the restaurant kitchen.”

He pointed a finger at the medical chart. “Second, the substance your doctor found in the blood panel is classified as a legal, high-end botanical health supplement. Mr. Buck is a young, healthy man in his twenties. Ordering luxury vitality meals is completely legal and entirely normal for a man his age.”

Officer Lewis stepped closer, his voice cutting through the room like a knife. “The only reason your husband consumed those concentrated supplements today is because your grandson stole another man’s private property, and you served it on your dinner table.”

The room went dead silent, save for the rhythmic beep... beep... beep of the heart monitor.

“I am an officer, not a lawyer,” Officer Lewis concluded flatly, folding his file shut. “But I can tell you this with absolute certainty. As long as Mr. Buck maintains that the meal was ordered for his own personal consumption, you have a zero percent chance of forcing him to pay a single penny of your medical expenses.”

Hearing the officer’s rock-solid, unwavering confidence, the entire Park family was left completely, utterly shell-shocked.

Mr. Park’s emergency treatment, blood purges, and ICU bed fees had already pushed their hospital bill past five thousand dollars.

And that wasn’t even the terrifying part.

They had spent the last two hours greedily plotting how they were going to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars out of Leonard’s lottery jackpot. But now?

They were the ones staring into a financial abyss.

The stolen three-thousand-five-hundred-dollar dinner.

The five-thousand-dollar emergency medical bill.

The impending court fines.

Their spoiled grandson’s petty little act of theft had just cost their family well over ten thousand dollars in a single afternoon!

Mrs. Park’s face drained of every drop of color, turning as white as a bedsheet. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps. She absolutely, unconditionally refused to let things end like this!

Late that night, a hysterical, unhinged Mrs. Park stormed back into the apartment building, her shoes pounding furiously down the 15th-floor walkway.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

She slammed her palms and fists against Leonard’s heavy front door with ferocious strength, the violent thuds echoing down the corridor so loudly that residents two floors up and down were jolted awake from their sleep.

“LEONARD! YOU BASTARD! OPEN THIS DOOR!” Mrs. Park shrieked, her raspy voice echoing through the building. “OPEN THE DOOR AND PAY FOR MY HUSBAND’S MEDICAL BILLS! YOU RUINED MY FAMILY!”

Several angry neighbors pushed their doors open, popping their heads out into the hallway.

“Hey! Shut the hell up! It’s two in the morning!” a man from 1504 yelled.

“Some of us have to work tomorrow! Keep it down, you crazy old woman!” another neighbor barked.

Mrs. Park didn't care in the slightest. She turned her head and snarled right back at them like a rabid dog. “Go back to sleep if you don't like it, you nosy bastards! This is none of your damn business!”

Her vile attitude immediately infuriated every neighbor on the floor.

But no matter how violently she pounded on the door, no matter how loudly she screamed her curses, the door to Apartment 1502 remained dead silent. Not a single light flickered inside.

Eventually, the furious neighbors called the building’s night security team. In the chaotic, screaming scuffle that followed on the narrow walkway, Mrs. Park tripped over a doormat, fell hard against the concrete railing, and ended up injuring her ankle and hip.

The guards had no choice but to call an ambulance, shipping her right back to Sydvale City Hospital.

By an absolute stroke of bitter, poetic irony, the hospital staff had no open beds left in the ward—so they wheeled her stretcher straight into the exact same room as her husband, placing her right beside old Mr. Park.

What Mrs. Park had no way of knowing was that Leonard wasn't even home at all.

He had seen right through a woman like Mrs. Park from the very beginning. Someone as shameless and toxic as her would never sit down and have a rational, civilized conversation. When backed into a corner, she would either throw a hysterical scene or put on a pathetic act, playing the helpless victim to drag everyone else down with her.

There was zero point in wasting his precious time or energy arguing with trash like that.

Everything could wait.

In less than eighty days, when the sky turned black and the endless, apocalyptic freeze enveloped the earth...

He would settle every single debt in blood and ice. And when that time came, he would personally ensure that every single person who had ever stepped on him, betrayed him, or tried to bleed him dry paid the ultimate, agonizing price.

Leonard had already predicted that the Park family would come pounding on his door to cause trouble. So instead of going back to the rental apartment, he had driven his truck straight over to his private estate in Maple Grove.

Inside the subterranean shelter, James’s elite construction crews had completed the reinforced steel framing and acoustic dampening. The heavy blast doors were set, and a massive, ultra-plush king-sized bed had already been installed inside the master suite of the bunker.

That night, surrounded by meter-thick reinforced concrete walls, Leonard laid down and closed his eyes, sleeping with absolute, uninterrupted peace.

For the first time in two lives, his mind was completely relaxed.

And perhaps because his heart was finally at ease, he sank into an unusually vivid, warm dream. In the quiet haze of his sleep, he saw the freezing world outside his gates—while inside his warm, luxurious sanctuary, Fae and Sophia were both lying softly beside him, sharing the exact same bed.