HOUSEKEEPER TO HEIR

CHAPTER THREE: THE FAMILY THAT BURNS

The rain hadn’t stopped by morning, Grayson no longer Redington sat in the back seat of Emmett’s car as they drove through the dim outskirts of Graybridge. They had ditched the hotel an hour ago, using side streets and back alleys like fugitives. Because that’s what they were now.

Fugitives of power. “Where are we going?” Grayson asked.

Emmett adjusted the rearview mirror. “Somewhere no one knows about. My grandfather had a place in the hills. It’s not on record. No servants. No surveillance. Just trees, and silence.”

Grayson nodded, trying to breathe through the fog in his mind, So far, he had learned three truths in the last twenty-four hours: He was the lost son of a dying billionaire, The people he had served for years had known or suspected and kept it buried.

Someone out there wanted him dead, And that someone had influence, He’d seen it already: strange men in suits watching the hotel from across the street. A woman with a camera pretending to be a tourist. Cars that drove too slow behind him.

This wasn’t paranoia. This was legacy warfare, Meanwhile, in the Everhart estate, the air was thick with rage, Lucien Everhart stood in his father’s study, fists clenched at his sides. “He’s the heir,” he said bitterly. “The boy we’ve treated like garbage for years. He’s Wynthorpe’s son.”

Clive Everhart, calm as a statue, lit a cigar. “I know.”

Lucien spun. “You knew?!”

Clive blew out smoke. “I suspected. That’s why I kept him here. Better under our roof than out in the world causing trouble.”

“You let me beat him. Humiliate him!”

“I let you act like a boy with no foresight,” Clive said coldly. “And now that boy is about to inherit an empire we should’ve owned.”

Lucien’s eyes burned. “Then we take it from him.”

Clive nodded slowly. “Yes. But not with fists this time.”

Back in the forest safehouse, Grayson finally let the silence speak. “I was nothing to them,” he said. “I scrubbed their floors. Took their orders. I thought silence meant peace. That if I just kept quiet, the pain would stop.”

Emmett sat across from him, his face unreadable. “They broke me,” Grayson continued. “And now I find out they might’ve known who I was all along?”

“They did,” Emmett said. “I overheard Lucien a few weeks ago talking to our father. He said something about ‘the orphan project.’ I didn’t understand it until now.”

Grayson narrowed his eyes. “The orphan project?”

Emmett nodded. “Clive invested money into a string of orphanages after the Wynthorpe scandal hit the news twenty years ago. Now I know why. He was hunting for you.”

Grayson stood. “Then why keep me hidden?”

“Because you were a threat,” Emmett said simply. “To the empire. To their plans. And maybe to him.”

That evening, Grayson sat outside watching the trees sway, Memories were surfacing in strange, broken fragments: a white room, a woman singing lullabies, a man shouting behind a locked door. Blood. A name, his name whispered in the dark.

The past wasn’t dead, It was alive in every scar on his back, He pulled the old photograph from his pocket again. The one from the orphanage. On the back, the initials still haunted him: G.W.

He traced the letters with his thumb, A sound behind him made him turn, Emmett stood there, phone in hand. “You need to see this,” he said.

Grayson took the phone. A headline flashed across the screen:

BREAKING: WYNTHORPE HEIR SURFACES-CRIMINAL BACKGROUND REVEALED

His heart dropped, The article had photos of him working as a housekeeper, footage from a hidden camera showing him in a shouting match with Lucien. There were doctored police reports, false accusations, a fabricated drug charge.

The narrative was clear: The lost heir is unfit. A criminal. A liar. “They’re already burying you again,” Emmett said softly.

Grayson stared at the screen. For a moment, silence, Then, “They want war?”

He stood. “Fine.”

“They’ve forgotten who I was…”

He clenched his fists. “…but they’re about to learn who I’ve become.”

In an office tower across the city, Alaric Wynthorpe sat in a leather chair, eyes locked on the same article, His hands trembled with rage.

“Tell them to prepare the press conference,” he told his assistant. “I want the world to see him. With me. As my blood.”

The assistant hesitated. “Sir, the board”

“To hell with the board.”

“But if you name him publicly, they’ll move against you both.”

Alaric looked out the window at the empire he built. “Let them try.”

Meanwhile, Clive Everhart met with a figure cloaked in more shadows than light. “I want him gone,” Clive said. “Quietly. No blood in public.”

The man’s voice was cold. “And the Wynthorpe patriarch?”

“He dies naturally. Soon. But the boy… he’s young. He’s loud. And he’s vengeful.”

The man nodded once. “Consider it done.”

Clive smiled faintly. “Good. Because if I can’t own the Wynthorpe legacy, I’ll bury it.”

That night, Grayson stood in front of a cracked mirror, eyes scanning his reflection, He wasn’t the silent janitor anymore, Not the broken orphan, Not the boy on the floor begging for mercy, He was Grayson Wynthorpe, And he was coming for everything.