2025-02-25 16:32:58The moment Harper Valente stepped inside, the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Her sharp silver eyes scanned the scene, her presence commanding. The store fell into dead silence. The manager, who had been brimming with arrogance just moments ago, visibly paled at the sight of her.
“H-Harper Valente…” he stammered, his voice trembling.
Before he could process his next move—
SLAP!
A crisp, merciless slap landed across his face.
The sound echoed through the store like a gunshot.
The manager stumbled back, clutching his cheek, eyes wide with disbelief.
“H-Harper! I—”
Harper’s voice was ice. “Who the hell gave you the right to humiliate my boss?”
The manager’s mind spun. Boss?
His gaze darted back to Nathan. This… lowly errand boy?
Panic set in. He forced a nervous laugh. “M-Misunderstanding! I thought he was a mere assistant, running errands for you! If I had known—”
SLAP!
Harper struck him again. Harder.
The manager collapsed onto his knees, face burning, gasping in pain.
“You dare judge my boss by appearance?” Harper’s tone was lethal.
The clerk, who had been watching with a smug expression, suddenly looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor.
Margaret, watching the scene unfold, frowned. “Wait a damn minute. Who even is this woman?”
Jessica sneered. “Pfft. Probably some secretary trying to act important.”
Harper’s eyes snapped toward them. “And who are these barking strays?”
Margaret scoffed, crossing her arms. “I’m Margaret Miller. Miller Group. I don’t know who you think you are, but—”
“You don’t need to know who I am,” Harper cut her off, turning to the manager. “But you? You do.”
The manager was already trembling.
At that moment, hurried footsteps echoed down the hall.
“G-General Manager Valente!”
The store owner himself came rushing out from the back, sweat dripping down his face.
He froze at the sight before him—his manager kneeling, Harper looking murderous, and Nathan standing completely unbothered.
The boss’s stomach dropped.
“What the hell happened here?!” he demanded.
Harper’s voice was clipped. “Your trash employees refused to serve my boss, insulted him, and then tried to hand over his purchased goods to this walking corpse.” She pointed lazily at Margaret.
Margaret gasped. “Excuse me?!”
Jessica leaned over, whispering. “Mom, I think she’s serious…”
The store owner’s face drained of all color.
He turned to the manager and clerk. “You… you insulted General Manager Valente’s boss?!”
The manager’s face was a mess of panic. “B-Boss, listen, I didn’t know—”
“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!” the owner bellowed.
The clerk tried to sneak backward, but the owner pointed a shaking finger at both of them.
“You’re fired.”
The clerk collapsed. “S-Sir, please, I—”
“Out. Now.”
The manager looked like he had been slapped a third time. “Please, have mercy! I—”
“OUT!”
Security guards immediately rushed forward, dragging the two out by their collars.
Margaret and Jessica watched the scene unfold, stunned.
Jessica, ever the idiot, muttered, “Damn… That’s some serious overreaction. I mean, it’s just a stupid herb.”
Harper’s head snapped toward her.
Jessica froze.
Margaret rolled her eyes. “Honestly, this is getting ridiculous. So what if he has a rich friend? It doesn’t change the fact that he’s a stray racoons who got dumped.”
The store owner flinched.
Harper’s eyes flashed dangerously.
The owner panicked. “M-Madam Miller, I think you should—”
“Oh, shut up.” Margaret waved him off. “I don’t care who you all think he is. He’s still nothing but a leech who latched onto my daughter—”
“Security. Get rid of them.”
The order came not from Harper but from the owner himself.
Margaret blinked. “Wait—what?”
“I SAID GET RID OF THEM!”
The security guards rushed forward, grabbing Margaret and Jessica.
Margaret screamed. “You CAN’T do this! I am MARGARET Miller—”
“OUT!”
Jessica kicked at the air. “You’ll regret this, you bastards! I’ll—”
The doors slammed shut behind them.
Silence.
The entire store seemed to exhale.
Margaret Miller and Jessica stood outside the store, their faces frozen in a mix of disbelief and rage. The automatic doors had slammed shut in their faces, leaving them humiliated in front of the onlookers who had gathered to watch the commotion.
Margaret’s fingers trembled as she clutched her purse. "That… that lowly racoons actually dared to humiliate us?"
Jessica scoffed, flipping her hair, though her voice shook with anger. "No way in hell did he get that rich on his own. He must’ve latched onto that new woman."
Margaret’s eyes narrowed. "That’s the only explanation. That Valente woman must be his new host. Just like a parasitic leech, he’s sucking the wealth out of another clueless woman."
Jessica crossed her arms, a sneer forming. "And I bet he’s letting her crawl all over him just like he did with Sophia. God, he’s so disgusting. He has no shame, no self-respect, just a stray racoons rolling over for treats."
Margaret’s lips pressed into a thin line before she pulled out her phone.
Jessica’s eyes gleamed. "Calling Sophia?"
Margaret smirked. "Oh, I’m not just calling. I’m making sure she knows exactly what her ex-rat is up to."
She tapped the screen and waited as the phone rang.
Sophia Miller sat behind a sleek glass desk, reviewing the finalized guest list for Imperial Corp’s anniversary event. The event was critical. Every high-ranking business figure would be attending, including the new Chairman of Imperial Corp.
She needed to make a good impression.
Her eyes skimmed down the list until she saw an empty space next to "Chairman of Imperial Corp."
Her brows furrowed. Strange. Why isn’t the chairman’s name listed?
Just then, her phone buzzed.
Margaret Miller.
Sophia sighed. Her mother only called when there was drama.
She answered. "Mom, what is it?"
Margaret’s voice came hissing through the phone. "Sophia! Do you know what that filthy racoons of an ex-husband of yours just did?"
Sophia pinched the bridge of her nose. "Mother, I don’t care about—"
"He stole the herb!"
Sophia froze. "What?"
Jessica’s voice cut in from the background. "The precious Golden Ginseng you were supposed to buy for the new Chairman of Imperial Corp? That mangy dog Nathan took it right in front of us!"
Sophia’s grip tightened on the phone. "That’s impossible. Nathan has nothing. He’s nothing."
Margaret cackled. "Oh, sweetheart, it gets worse. He wasn’t alone."
Sophia’s stomach twisted. "What do you mean?"
Jessica sneered, her voice laced with venom. "He’s attached himself to some rich woman. We thought he was a beggar, but no—he’s upgraded from a stray racoons to a lapdog."
Margaret added, "You should’ve seen them! She was slapping managers around, calling him ‘Boss’, acting like he’s someone important."
Sophia felt her blood turn cold.
Nathan?
The same Nathan she had discarded like trash?
No. No, that wasn’t possible.
Jessica’s mocking voice rang out. "Can you imagine it? That pathetic loser actually landed on his feet. Just like a cockroach, he always finds a way to crawl back up."
Margaret sighed dramatically. "Poor Sophia, you must feel so embarrassed. Just days after you kicked him to the curb, he found some rich woman’s bed to warm."
Sophia gritted her teeth.
This wasn’t possible.
Nathan was supposed to be suffering. Alone. Worthless. Begging for scraps.
Not… not stealing her opportunity to impress the Chairman of Group Imperial.
Not walking around with a woman powerful enough to make people kneel.
Jessica laughed. "Guess you weren’t his ‘one true love’ after all, huh? He replaced you faster than a broken leash."
Sophia’s nails dug into her palm.
Nathan… you bastard.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Ch-170
The memory of Senna faded with the morning light, like mist burning off the cliffs of Ardent Cradle. Nathan stood for a long time at the edge of the vault, hands open, letting the silence settle into his skin. The Severance Protocol was complete. The unraveling had slowed. But not stopped.In the heart of the mountain stronghold, where six rings once hummed in distant synchrony, five figures now gathered around a slab of origin stone—unchiseled, untouched since before the Codex had been written.The chamber pulsed faintly. Not with power, but with intention.Miko arrived first, her eyes rimmed in pale gold, probability still flickering off her fingertips like static. Harper followed, silent as a shadow, her projected memory brushing the minds of those present in greeting. Nyx stood with one foot in reality and the other humming with digital decay, her eyes two cold blue points wired into half a hundred dead satellites.And the last: the Echochild.Nathan's half-brother.He said nothin
Ch-169
As the last threads of memory dissolved into stardust, the Astral plane began to settle, shimmering with the aftermath of the Severance Protocol. Harper’s breath slowed beside Nathan, her hand still faintly glowing from channeling the Rite. But time had not fully healed—and across the collapsing corridors of forgotten thought, a deeper fracture pulsed. The echo of Praelor’s dominion, buried but not broken, stirred in defiance. Nathan turned. His work was not done.---Nathan stepped through the silver breach, his coat whipping against the ripples of untime. The chamber he entered was both infinite and enclosed, walls bending around paradoxes—scrolls burning in reverse, ink flowing back into pens, relics whispering their own creation. At its center, Praelor waited.The proto-Sovereign stood tall, his body stitched together from archives of civilizations that never existed, eyes smoldering with stolen insight. “You dare walk into my sanctum,” he hissed, “with broken time hanging off you
Ch-168
The vision lingered long after the vault sealed behind Nathan.Even as he stepped into the windswept outer corridor of the Ardent Cradle, the world no longer held its shape. The stars had turned unfamiliar again—constellations writhing into spirals. Wind sang in reverse. Far below, valleys flickered between seasons, time stuttering like a failing engine.Harper met him halfway up the ridge path, her eyes wide and haunted. “The dreamworld’s unraveling. People are waking in wrong bodies. Entire cities are forgetting their names.”Nathan didn’t break stride. “We don’t have much time.”They spoke little as they moved. A shared rhythm between them had long since replaced the need for words. At the summit, they knelt side by side, not in prayer—but in preparation. Their bodies slowed, breath synced, minds unspooling like threads through layered thresholds.Their astral selves emerged beneath a shattered aurora sky.---The Astral Plane twisted like broken glass.Where once there had been cl
Ch-167
The sky no longer followed rules. Over Nova Point, sunlight refracted at strange angles, casting shadows that bent against their own grain. Clocks stuttered, skipped, and sometimes reversed. Birds flew in circles, then vanished mid-flight. The oceans swelled without wind. On the western coast, the stars flickered in broad daylight—entire constellations rearranging as though the heavens were remapping themselves by will alone. The End Convergence had begun. At the southern edge of the world, buried beneath the granite shelves of Ardent Cradle, Nathan descended into a chamber known only to the original Sovereign lineage. A vault with no key, no door, no defined space—only threshold and silence. The six rings hung around his neck in a tempered alloy chain, each nested in its dormant state. Power coiled beneath his skin like static. Dominion, Vision, Continuum, Flux, Sacrifice, Renewal—each represented a sliver of what had once been unity. And now, for the first time, he needed all o
Ch-166
The skies hadn’t healed since Cairo.The rift still hovered like a wound carved across the upper atmosphere, glowing faintly even by daylight. Nathan had barely slept in forty hours. His body ran on willpower, his mind tethered to too many coordinates—relief zones, kinetic shields, Sovereign Council reports.But it was Miko who hadn’t spoken since touching the corrupted fragment near the Sinai fissure.She sat on a bench just outside the rebel command bunker, hood drawn over her eyes, hands clenched tightly in her lap. The ring of Vision, once a warm pressure along her skin, now felt… absent. No glow. No whisper of potential futures. No shift in probability. Just silence.Nathan approached quietly, stopping when she didn’t look up.“You feel it too?” she asked.He didn’t pretend. “Like a missing limb.”Miko finally looked at him. Her eyes weren’t dull—they were too sharp, if anything. Raw. Exposed. “I touched something I shouldn’t have. It didn’t just take my sight—it stripped my anch
Ch-165
The ink hadn’t yet dried on the declaration of war.Nathan stood in the central chamber of the Nova Point sanctuary, palms braced against a schematic sprawled across the long obsidian table. The air was thick with the scent of old ozone and fresher arguments. The hologram above the table spun slowly—an image of the Ring fragments glowing like stars orbiting a storm.Harper stood beside him, silent but alert. Her voice had returned, but not entirely hers. The words she spoke now echoed faintly, like memory echoing down a canyon. Even Nathan, who could read storms in a person’s silence, didn’t fully know what price she’d paid for that partial return.“There's a way,” Nathan finally said. “To sever a fragment without killing the bearer.”The others looked up.“But?” Miko asked.Nathan tapped the schematic. “It requires a sacrifice. One of us would have to willingly part with their ring. Entirely. Permanently.”Silence spread like frost. Even the monk, usually unreadable, stiffened.Harpe
You may also like
Rejected Billionaire
Drew Archeron131.1K viewsHarvey York's Rise to Power
A Potato-Loving Wolf4.0M viewsSon-In-Law: Love and Revenge
Mas Xeno84.8K viewsFrom Darkness to Light: Darwin's Rise
Magical Inspirations71.5K viewsBILLIONAIRE MINOR
E-Neutron 581 viewsThe Greatest Dominance
Kingfisher1.1K viewsRETURN OF DON' CARA FROM USELESS TO GREATNESS
Bigsnowy 196 viewsTHE UNFORSEEN DOMINANCE OF ZACH MARLOW
Gem Lynne7.4K views