2026-06-24 12:44:09CHAPTER THREE
How could the poor waiter they had humiliated suddenly become someone who could command people like Geena and Seth?
For the first time that night, real fear crawled into Benjamin’s eyes.
“How dare you! Do you know who my father is? Do you know what my family can do?”
Benjamin’s hands trembled while he unlocked his phone.
“I’ll fucking bury you, Jensen. You’re done!”
The screen lit up. His father’s contact photo.
A stern looking, silver-haired man with a patch over his left eye.
Benjamin hit the video call button with a shaking thumb, stepping over the screaming bodyguard without looking down.
The call connected.
Marcus Starr’s face filled the screen, irritation already spreading as he gazed at his son.
“This had better be good, Benjamin. I’m in the middle of something-”
“Daddy, there’s a problem.” Benjamin’s voice cracked.
“Some lunatic attacked my men. I think he broke my guard’s arms. I need security here, now, before this gets out to the press—”
“Slow the fuck down.” Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “Who attacked you?”
Benjamin hesitated, glancing toward Jensen, who stood watching with the calm of a man enjoying a show he hadn’t paid for.
“It’s… it’s Jensen Pike. Rose's ex. I was just teaching him a lesson that poor bastards shouldn’t have girlfriends. Daddy, you should’ve seen it.“
The other end of the phone went silent.
For a whole six seconds.
“Benjamin...” his father finally answered, slowly, each word trembling. “You imbecile.”
Benjamin froze. “What?”
“Why must you continue to humiliate my name like this? This isn’t the first, second or third time!” Marcus growled.
Benjamin’s mind went blank.
“Daddy…”
“I send you to manage your future, and instead you’re out picking fights with poor street trash at a nightclub like some delinquent who’s never had a single responsible thought in his head. Do you have any idea the damage you might have just caused? To my company?”
Marcus yelled at him again.
“This isn’t going according to plan.”Geena said and chuckled.
“Not one bit.” Jensen scoffed.
“Dad, he’s nobody, he works at a club. You need to help me here!” Benjamin begged.
“I don’t care what he does for a living!” Marcus continued.
“You harass him in public, in front of witnesses, and now you’ve got broken bones and a crowd filming it on their phones? Fuck!” Marcus yelled again.
“I didn’t know… I just… Dad slow down please…” Benjamin sniffled.
“You’re a fucking disgrace. Apologize to him. Right now.”
Benjamin’s mouth fell open. “Apologize? To Jensen?”
“On your knees, Benjamin, so you can remember this pain. Do it now, before I disown you and watch you discover exactly how little your last name is worth without my signature on it.”
The threat was certain.
“Dad, you can’t be serious. ”
“Try me.” Marcus’s eyes had gone feral. “I will have the lawyers draft you out of the will before sunrise. Test me again and find out.”
Then with a final note, Marcus added. “You still have siblings, Benjamin. Do not forget that.”
Benjamin’s jaw locked , humiliation and panic warring across his face. The crowd that had scattered during the fight had drifted back, phones already raised, hungry for the next act.
Slowly, Benjamin lowered himself to his knees on the cracked pavement.
He looked at Jensen as people gasped.
“I... I’m sorry,” he said, voice barely audible.
Jensen said nothing. He simply watched, arms crossed, the same unreadable expression on his face as when the fight had started.
“Louder!” Marcus snapped through the phone, watching the whole spectacle from a screen Benjamin was forced to hold up himself like evidence against his own dignity.
“Let him hear you mean it.”
“I’m sorry!” Benjamin’s voice cracked on the second attempt. He sniffled as cameras flashed on his face.
“Now,” Marcus continued, “slap yourself three times. So he understands exactly how seriously this family takes what you’ve done.”
Benjamin’s head snapped up. “Dad!”
“Three bloody times, Benjamin.”
“Benny, stop this. He’s not worth your dignity-“
Rose’s voice cut in, stepping forward despite the bruise already darkening her own jaw from earlier.
“Stay the fuck out of this!”
Benjamin’s head whipped toward her, fury replacing humiliation in an instant.
“I’m trying to help you.”
“You’re the reason I’m on my knees in an alley!” he snapped, voice cracking with rage.
“If you hadn’t insisted on rubbing it in his face tonight, none of this would’ve happened. You’re nothing but a cheap slut who can’t keep her mouth shut, and now I’m paying for it.”
Rose’s face went pale.
“Excuse me? You’re the one who planned that whole humiliation-“
“Shut up!” Benjamin roared. “Just shut the fuck up.”
He turned back to the phone, jaw tight, eyes burning with unshed tears of pure disgrace.
Slowly, he raised his hand.
Slap!
The crowd’s murmur swelled.
Slap!!
His cheek had gone red, a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth where a ring had caught skin.
Sniffling, he lunged again.
Slap!!!
The third landed harder than the first two combined, like he was trying to end his own humiliation through sheer force.
“Good,” Marcus said, voice utterly devoid of sympathy. “Now get in a cab and come home. I can see your car’s wrecked. You fool.”
The call ended.
Benjamin knelt there for a long moment, breathing hard, cheek swelling, the entire alley watching in silence broken only by the soft click of phone cameras still recording every second of it.
Jensen finally spoke with a soft smile.
“You should listen to your father more often.”
His voice was almost gentle in its cruelty.
Geena chuckled in amusement. “Well that was a show. Ha!”
Benjamin glared at Jensen as he stood to his feet. He sniffled, cameras flashing continuously on his face.
“This isn’t fucking over, Jensen.”
Benjamin muttered and dashed off, hiding his face as people pointed and laughed at him.
Rose stumbled after him, one heel broken, with her hand pressed to her bleeding mouth.
The pride she’d walked out of that club was completely gone.
“Benjamin, wait.” She called after him.
“Fuck off!”
“Seth.” Geena’s gaze followed the two miserable figures as they fled. Her smile faded. She had no intention of letting them escape so easily. “Go after them.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The proceeding.
54The legal team arrived at midday .Alfred had apparently described himself as recovering. What they'd found when they arrived was a man in a wheelchair at the head of a table with case documents already organized in front of him.Madeline sat across from them.She'd arrived with Fae, who'd collected her from the safe house at eight and driven her in silence. Madeline sat with her hands flat on the table and her back straight and a practiced composure.Alfred looked at her once when she sat down. She looked back. Neither of them said anything. The moment passed and the legal team began.The lead attorney, a woman named Sable, walked Madeline through the structure of her testimony."Start with how she contacted you," Sable said. "Not the first time she used the information against you. The first time she made contact at all."Madeline talked. Slowly at first, then. She described the initial approach: a letter, handwritten, arriving at Alfred's household in an envelope with no return
Cornered
Chapter 53The judge called the adjournment and the room came apart.Not loudly. The people in this courtroom were too professional for loud, but the movement that followed the gavel was the movement of people who needed to be somewhere else immediately journalists with phones already out before they'd fully stood, legal observers collecting their notes with the focused urgency of people carrying information someone was paying them to deliver quickly.Priscilla stepped down from the witness box without hurrying.She crossed the courtroom floor toward Jensen with the unhurried confidence of someone who'd planned this specific moment and was arriving at it on schedule. Her legal team fell back slightly, giving her the space to do what she'd come to do.She stopped two feet from Jensen and looked at him."You should have taken the offer at the hotel," she said. Not vindictive. Almost conversational, the tone of someone reviewing a negotiation that had gone the way they'd anticipated.Jen
Courtroom
CHAPTER 52Jensen sat at the defense table with Korra to his left and Geena in the gallery behind him, and watched the room fill with journalists who'd caught the filing and decided the name Pike was worth a seat, legal observers from firms that monitored Harmon Briggs Collective the way weather stations monitored pressure systems, and a cluster of faces Jensen recognized from the charity dinner who'd apparently decided the follow-up was worth attending in person.Alfred wasn't there. The doctors had been clear and Jensen had enforced it, which had produced one of the more interesting phone calls of the week -- Alfred arguing from a hospital bed that he was sufficiently recovered to attend his grandson's assault hearing, and Jensen telling him with complete calm that he wasn't going to be there and the conversation was over.Alfred had hung up. Jensen had taken that as agreement.Priscilla arrived with her legal team arranged around her in the formation of people who'd been expensive
Madeline again
Chapter 51The door swung shut and the ward went quiet.Geena stood at the foot of Alfred's bed and listened to Jensen's footsteps fade down the corridor until they were gone, and then she turned back to the old man against the pillows and found him already looking at her."Sit down, Geena," Alfred said.She sat.Alfred closed his eyes for a moment."He's angry," Alfred said."Yes.""Good."Geena looked at him. "Grandfather….""Anger is fuel," Alfred said. "Managed anger, directed anger, anger that knows what it's for. Jensen has spent four years being careful. Controlled. Learning how to keep everything underneath where nobody can use it against him." He shifted slightly against the pillow and absorbed whatever that cost him. "The problem with that is that careful men wait too long. They measure when they should strike and strike when they should wait and by the time they've worked out which is which the moment has passed." He paused. "I didn't push him to make him feel inadequate. I
Disappointed
The doctor arrived with two nurses.Jensen stepped back. Geena moved to the wall. The room that had been quietly still for six days became procedural and fast, hands checking lines and readings, Dr. Harland leaning over Alfred with the penlight and the questions that Alfred answered in fragments, voice rough from disuse, eyes tracking but slowly.Alfred was in pain. That was visible. The kind that came from a body that had been doing urgent, exhausted work for nearly a week and was now being asked to also be conscious, and was registering its objection through every available channel. He answered the doctor's questions with the clipped economy of a man who found the process beneath him but understood it was necessary.Blood pressure. Responsiveness. Grip strength on both sides. The doctor worked through it without rushing, which Alfred visibly found more irritating than the pain."You need significant rest," Dr. Harland said, when the immediate assessment was done. "Extended rest. The
Meeting Korra
CHAPTER 49The address Korra had texted him was a coffee shop on the west side that was trying too hard to look like it wasn't trying at all -- exposed brick, mismatched chairs, a chalkboard menu with too many adjectives. Jensen walked in at ten past nine and found her already at the corner table with a black coffee she hadn't touched and a folder she had.He recognized her before she looked up.Korra Mase. He'd been twelve years old when the Delimont case collapsed, but Alfred had talked about it at dinner for three weeks afterward with the specific intensity he reserved for things that confirmed what he already believed about people. A promising attorney who'd had one of the cleanest records in the city's commercial litigation scene, handed a case that should have been unlosable, and lost it in the final week on a procedural error so elementary that the opposing counsel had apparently needed a moment to confirm it was actually happening.She'd been thirty-four then. She looked forty
You may also like
Unexpected Trillionaire.
Max Luthor94.1K viewsUnderrated Son-In-Law
Estherace109.1K viewsThe Return of The Richard Dwayne
Dragonix Loki73.8K viewsThe Lowly Son in Law is Quadrillionaire
Riku Ormstrom96.5K viewsThe Son They Erased, Never Forgotten
Book Revolution 63 viewsMy Wife Said Only Death Could Set Me Free
Svard551 viewsThe Shadow in My Hand
Joel Sac110 viewsThe Silent Shareholder
Favy pen151 views