2026-02-12 20:43:29Jack looked Juliet over slowly, from the waves of her chocolate-brown hair to the curve of her hips, down to the slim ankles above her expensive heels.
What a classy, beautiful woman. He had hit the jackpot on the dating app.
Jack leaned back in his chair and gave away none of it.
"Juliet Forbes, huh?" he repeated. "Never heard of you. I was waiting for a nice, homely girl named Clara Ford who likes cooking and rom-coms."
Juliet clicked her tongue at him.
How has he never heard of the Forbes family? We are the wealthiest in Redmont City! Something must be wrong with him.
Her hazel eyes narrowed on the handsome, athletic man in front of her. His clothes carried no designer labels, and nothing about him said money or status.
Juliet had met plenty of meathead jocks like him. They spent all day in the gym, their bank accounts were empty, and not one of them had been in a real fight in his life.
"Are you a homeless man?" she asked. "That would explain why you haven't heard of the Forbes family."
Jack chuckled and shrugged without answering.
Her gorgeous looks had impressed him for about a minute. Now she was just another rich girl with an attitude.
"So you don't deny it," she said, shaking her head. "Fine, then let me introduce myself again. I am Juliet Forbes, CEO of Angel Skincare."
A cup went down hard two tables away. "That's actually her. The ice queen heiress of Redmont City."
"Who's the guy she's sitting with?"
"A veteran probably. She must be giving out alms."
"Angel Skincare is our conglomerate's beauty products company, worth billions," Juliet finished.
Jack looked bored, as if she had mentioned the weather. "What else? Do you make good spaghetti?"
"What kind of lame response is that?" she snapped.
Billions means nothing to this man? All he cares about is whether I can cook?
"Lame? No. It's a natural response. Lameness is bringing a SWAT team to a coffeehouse. Are you showing off your wealth to impress me?"
Juliet's jaw tightened. Men usually fell over themselves the second they heard the Forbes name, and her face alone had put billionaires on their knees.
This one hadn't even straightened in his chair.
"The guards are for my protection," she said through her teeth. "When you're as influential as I am, people try to hurt you. And I have no reason to show off my wealth to a commoner like you."
Jack whistled softly. "You're worth billions, and yet you joined a dating app under a fake name with somebody else's picture. That doesn't add up."
Juliet cocked her head. "That's exactly the point. It's a precaution against gold diggers who want a piece of the Forbes inheritance."
"I wanted to see whether anyone could meet my criteria without knowing who I was."
Jack's grin faded. "Your reason for joining a dating app sounds like bullshit."
The nearest guard took half a step forward and stopped, waiting on her.
Heat rose in Juliet's cheeks. Why is this man so sure of himself?
He showed no fear of her family's power, and he wasn't begging for her favor either.
Jack Hardy just sat there teasing her like she were any other girl. Juliet had never been treated this way in her life, and she couldn't decide what to do next.
"Most men would be on their knees by now," she grumbled. "You're being a nuisance."
Jack sipped his black coffee. "Kneeling isn't my style. But you're cute, I'll admit that."
"Cute?" Juliet's voice sharpened.
She was about to inherit the most powerful conglomerate in the city. The Mayor and the Commissioner both bowed to her grandfather.
Nobody has the spine to call Juliet Forbes cute.
Now she wanted to humble him.
"So, Jack. Tell me about yourself," she said. "Do you have a job? A decent family? Any ambition at all? Or do you live in a cardboard box?"
Jack shrugged. "I don't have a steady job right now. My family is complicated. As for ambition, I want to marry a modest woman and live a quiet life."
Juliet's eyebrow arched. This is it, then. He wants to drift through life doing nothing and collect a traditional wife on the way.
What a loser!
Jack had told her the truth, and she had heard a man declare himself a failure.
"You would need someone desperate or stupid to marry you," she scoffed.
Jack clutched his chest. "Ouch. But what about you? Why are you catfishing guys like me on a dating app? Don't lie to me again."
Juliet glared at him, then decided to tell him the truth.
"My grandfather gave me an ultimatum. I have to marry someone within three months or I will lose the Forbes inheritance. I've been interviewing candidates who suit my agenda."
"How many so far?"
"You're the fifteenth this month."
Jack's eyebrows shot up. "You're interviewing men for marriage like it's a job opening. That's interesting."
Juliet nodded and looked him over again with a lopsided grin. It was time to deliver the crushing blow.
"And you, Jack Hardy, are the worst candidate yet. No money, no connections, and no future. You're broke, lazy, and dressed like you sleep at a bus stop."
"Pathetic." She said it at full volume, and the entire cafe heard it.
Somebody laughed into a napkin. The waitress stopped pouring at the next table and froze. The Forbes guards snickered under their breath.
"Fair enough," Jack said.
He pushed his chair back and stood up slowly, stretching like he had all the time in the world.
"I guess this date was a failure. It was nice meeting you, Juliet Forbes."
He dropped a few bills on the table and turned to go.
Juliet watched him walk toward the door, and something twisted in her chest.
Most men groveled at her ankles the moment they heard about the inheritance. Most men would kill for one dinner with someone beautiful like her.
This one wasn't asking for a second chance. He wasn't asking for anything at all.
"Wait," she called out, surprising herself.
The Forbes bodyguards moved at once to block Jack's path. He chuckled and shook his head. Do these men really believe they can stop me?
He closed his right hand lightly into a fist at his side.
The glass on the next table rattled against its saucer, and the water in it shivered. The guards exchanged glances, their instincts telling them that this man should not be messed with.
Jack relaxed his fist. The Forbes heiress's voice had hooked him. He stopped and turned around.
"What do you want?"
Juliet rose to her feet, and he took a few seconds to admire her figure and that flawless face.
Was this woman made in heaven? I can't find a single imperfection on her.
Juliet smoothed her coat and looked straight at him. "You're homeless and insane," she said through gritted teeth. "And your credentials make you completely unsuitable to be my partner."
"However, if you're that eager to get married, I have an offer for you."
Jack raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "I'm listening."
"I have a pre-drafted marriage agreement. If you accept the rules and sign it, we'll be husband and wife strictly on paper."
"A contract marriage. You'll be paid monthly for your trouble. What do you say?"
The cafe went dead silent.
Juliet kept her eyes on Jack and waited for him to refuse so she could move on to the next candidate.
Anyone can make a better husband than this insane, cocky man. Absolutely anybody.
Jack didn't think about it for a second.
"Deal," he said with a shrug. "Let's get married."
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097 A Thousand Legacies
Teeth ground against Jack's neck and snapped on his skin as if it were steel.The flood of dead bodies rolled him down the street, over and over, a thousand gray hands clawing at his face.Starfall had torn out of his grip when the horde hit him. It stood somewhere behind him in the broken asphalt."Eat him, my children!" Morgana shrieked from the roof. "Tear Victor Cromwell's errand boy to pieces!"The zombies couldn't scratch him. They could only carry him. So Jack let them.The switch he had flipped on the avenue slipped, and everything he had locked away flooded back.His father lay scattered across a factory lot. His mother had flown to the North Pole with a plasma bomb in her arms and probably burned with it. His sister slept in that palace without knowing he was her brother.And Juliet, the woman he loved, had watched him walk away, and she probably didn't love him anymore.He had saved strangers all his life, and he couldn't save one of his own.Jack let his power sink, little
096 The Gods Were Angry
Valentina's voice shook in his earpiece. "My lord, Vandrake told us about Lord Victor. We're all devastated. I can't even imagine how you—""What about Jill?" Jack cut in. "Is she okay?"He stood alone on the broad avenue half a mile from the Obsidian Palace, his father's blood dried dark on his shirt. Hail hammered the asphalt around his boots and bounced like white gravel.Thunder rolled over Sparta City without a pause, and lightning split the sky again and again.It was the wrong season for a storm like this. It was as if the gods themselves were angry.The Queen of Spades dropped her voice to a whisper."She's asleep, my lord. I'm right beside her, watching from the window. Morgana hasn't come inside. She's standing over the mansion. I can see her shadow over the courtyard."Lightning flashed, and Jack saw her.Morgana stood on the palace roof between the black spires. She had grown at least twenty feet tall. Her wings hung half open, her broken arms dangled at her sides, and her
095 Springfield's Future
Jack cut across the lot in three long bounds and landed between Morgana and the broken door.He didn't wait for her to reach him. He threw punch after punch into the air, and blast after blast slammed into her chest and drove her back a step, then another.Morgana stopped.Her whole body shook. The growl in her chest rose into a scream of pure rage that rattled the crystal walls of the dome."You dare get in my way, errand boy!"The gray hide on her back split open with a wet tearing sound.Two more arms burst out behind her shoulders. They were longer than the first pair, and black ooze dripped from their claws. They shot over her head and hurtled at Jack from both sides.He smashed the first one away with an air blast. The second one wrapped around his chest.Then the first swung back and seized his legs.The instant they touched him, his strength started to drain away.It poured out of him like water out of a cracked bucket. His skin burned wherever the gray flesh pressed against i
094 Dark Alchemy
"Run, little rabbit! Run!"Morgana's shriek split the night as the second rain of thorns hammered down.Jack threw himself sideways. Black spears punched into the dirt one after another along his trail, and every one of them left a glowing pit of molten rock behind it.He landed in a crouch by the dome's wall, his boot smoking where the heat had caught it.Ashley's apparition was already beside him. The thorns had passed straight through her misty shape.Overhead, Morgana folded her wings and dropped out of the sky. She hit the ground at the far end of the lot with a thud that cracked the earth under her claws, and her black eyes fixed on him. She stood too far off to catch a low voice over the hiss of the molten pits.Jack rose slowly and dusted off his coat."Now I understand why they call her the Black Witch," he said. "She has performed some kind of dark alchemy inside her own body."His gaze ran over the gray hump of her back and the wings twitching behind it."But the bigger que
093 Born Yesterday
Morgana's black robe split down her back with a sound like tearing canvas.Gray flesh bulged through the rip, mottled like a corpse. Her spine cracked and stretched until she hunched taller than the doorway she had just smashed, and her eyes swelled black from lid to lid above the veil.Both her arms shot out across the dome.They grew longer and longer, bones popping as they lengthened, and twisted around each other into one huge spiral of gray flesh and black claws. It drilled through the air toward the platform, straight at Jack and Victor behind him."I will rip you both to pieces!"On the highway, Jack had caught that hand and been shoved down the road. This time he had no intention of catching anything.He planted his feet and threw a single punch.His fist stopped a hand's width short of the claws, and the air in front of it exploded.The blast smashed the spiral back down its own length. The gray arms crumpled like a stamped-on garden hose, and the force kept going, straight i
092 The Replacement
Victor never finished the sentence. A cough tore out of him and doubled him over the cables, and blood dripped from his lips onto the crystal.Jack dropped to one knee beside him. He pulled the handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his father's mouth, the way Ashley used to wipe his face when he was small.Then he unscrewed the small water flask at his belt and held it to Victor's lips."Drink, Dad. Slowly.""Tell me where Mom is."Victor swallowed a few mouthfuls. Some of the gray left his face."Let me tell you everything, from the start. You've earned that much."He let his head sag and closed his eyes."When we found Jill, we thought we could just take her home. We watched her from a distance for days, and your mother cried every night.""Then we got hold of the palace medical files and learned what you learned the hard way. The moment she got near the city border, the plasma core in her chest would start burning her alive."Jack's jaw clenched. He still remembered his siste
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