Becoming Tyler Kramer: The Hidden Billionaire Boss’ Revenge

Chapter 10

Tyler held his own gaze. He recited words he had said to himself more times than he cared to count.

He knew what he had to do. Every step of his plan.

He was going to start right at the top and work his way down.

“Edward Kramer. Vincent Kramer. Phase one,” he muttered, keeping his voice low even though he was alone.

“Kramer Holdings. Kramer Estate. Phase two.”

“In one year’s time. I will wipe the slate clean. All you have done to me, I will repay. With interest,” he rumbled.

The Master of the Miran Auction house inhaled deeply as he let the rage run its course. He had already learned never to try to cage it. Not when it was this high.

Repeating his mantra did not help. He already knew it wouldn’t.

He watched himself tremble, felt every muscle tighten as he gritted his teeth. His hands on the sink balled into white knuckled fists.

His corneas reddened and his vision blurred.

Not from tears, those were long spent, but from an ache in his head, his chest, and his stomach that felt as if his entire being was in a pressure cooker working his body from the inside out.

Tyler knew it was almost done. That pain was the peak.

With his eyes closed, he felt his trembling subside and his legs turn to rubber. He put his weight on the sink, taking measured breaths.

Such episodes were an affliction for him – almost. It was not a panic attack or a depressive state. It was a hot, burning fire that flared up whenever he let his mind roam too far.

Nothing could cure it. Nothing could make it less painful.

In prison, in the Vault, he had been going through one such episode when a particularly ‘friendly’ inmate had tapped Tyler on the back in his usual ‘friendly’ way, and the younger man had not blinked before the scream had broken his trance.

He had spent a week in solitary for that, and would have had some time added to his sentence if he had not greased the palms of the ever-slick hands of the Vault warden.

Frank, the prisoner Tyler had asked Harrison about, had lost the use of his arm that day, and Tyler had gained a loyal follower he had not been seeking.

Once he returned to GENPOP – the general prison population – Franklin Rhodes and his gang had pledged themselves to him, bringing to light something Tyler had kept hidden for three years.

Tyler shook his head now, as he had done in Lincoln’s office, but this time it was as if to clear his mind, to release himself from dead memories.

He walked into his bedroom and stared at the window. The first hint of daylight was seeping through the base of the floor-length curtains.

Morning already… if I go back to the flat, I’ll get to the office late. I don’t want any issues with the Lady… but… she should be out of –

His phone beeped, interrupting his musings.

He sauntered to his large bed and stared at the screen.

He smiled lightly.

Boss Brazer! You’re truly the man! Tyler reflected happily.

He checked the time – five a.m.

In under five hours, the mafia boss had confirmed he had the men Tyler needed.

He stretched, groaning as the joints of his arms and shoulders popped. He had not slept since he returned home. This day would make it the third in a row.

I need to sleep… I can easily go a week without, but all the magic use is making me wearier than usual. That’s why my mind keeps wandering so much recently.  

It can’t be helped. I’ll sleep here. Even if it means going to the office directly from this location… I’ll have to risk it.

Tyler unlocked his phone and sent a message back to Lincoln, then one to his butler, who shared the home with him.

He got into bed, dead asleep, before his head hit the pillow.

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As the world came alive, and the sun shone brightly over a fogless city, the young Lady of the Jergens’ household was in a complex mood.

“It was returned?” the young Lady asked quietly, her eyes on the medium-sized box on the coffee table in her sitting room.

“Yes, Madam,” the young maid replied softly, her eyes downcast as she stood calmly before her mistress.

The young Lady waved the maid away distractedly as her brow furrowed at the box, the delicate charm bracelet on her right wrist chiming softly as she gestured for her maidservant to leave.

The young maid exited the room without a sound.

That’s the second return delivery of late, the Lady noted internally as she stared at the care package.

Why…? Should I go the prison? She wondered weakly, even as she knew the answer.

Just like five years earlier, she would not visit the Vault. Not only had her father forbidden her from going there, but she also knew that the man himself would not wish to see her.

Not after what she had done.

Not after everything that had happened to him afterward.

Tyler… Emily Jergens, heiress of the Jergens empire, mused silently, placing a hand against her fluttering chest as her mind filled with the boy who had saved her life eight years prior.

Who had made her a promise and had failed her, causing a hurt far deeper than she had ever anticipated.

Who had returned to her but whom she had rejected out of her anger at the time, only to find out less than ten days later that he had been convicted of assault on his masters on the same day of her rejection.

Her mind went back to the day she had found out.

She had stormed into her father’s study on the ground floor of the east wing of their mansion.

==========

“Father! We have to help him!” the twenty-one-year-old Emily had cried to her father as she burst into his home office.

“No,” Lord Jergens had rumbled, without glancing up from his large oak desk.

“Please, Father!” she wailed, stumbling forward, almost delirious with panic and grief.

“No, Lily,” her father repeated in the same even tone.

“But –”

“I know what you want to say, but think about it carefully. What have I always told you?” Lord Jergens cut in and then demanded steadily.

“Father!” she wailed again, tears filling her already red-rimmed, puffy eyes.

Lord Jergens sighed.

He gazed up at his daughter, his only living child. His heir. One who was like a second skin to him.

As his heir, he hid nothing from her, and she, in turn, spent every healthy hour, every day learning about their empire, about their business, directly at his knee.

Both had been through much together, and both had grown side by side in the years of the young Lady’s incessant illness, an illness that had taken every child Lord Jergens had ever had, an illness that had worried her mother to an early death.

An illness that had made a young girl wiser than her years.