2026-02-26 12:10:34Nathan stood there, frozen. His chest felt like it had been hollowed out with a rusted spoon. He watched them… really watched them. Mark’s hand wasn't just on Amanda’s waist; it was sliding lower to her buttocks, possessive and smug, right there in front of the whole school.
That was his damn girlfriend.
And Amanda... she didn't look forced. In fact, she looked like she’d finally found the person she actually wanted to be with.
On the giant screen, the equations Nathan had typed until his fingers bled were scrolling by. The audience was losing their minds.
"$80 million!" a man in a front-row tuxedo screamed, waving a tablet.
"$150 million!" another shouted, jumping to his feet.
The numbers were moving so fast it didn't even feel like real money. To Nathan, it felt like his heart was being auctioned off piece by piece.
"$800 million!"
The hall went into a frenzy. Mark leaned over and whispered something in Amanda’s ear. She giggled… a sound Nathan had heard every morning for six months- and then she kissed Mark. Again. Right there on the stage. A deep, lingering kiss that told everyone in the room Nathan Walters never existed. He never did, really.
"THAT’S MINE!"
The scream didn't even sound like Nathan. It was a raw, ugly sound that tore through the cheering. But it was him.
The silence that followed was instant. It was a very hollow silence, one that would normally place a person on a hot seat. The big spotlights swiveled, blinding Nathan as they caught him standing in the middle of the aisle. He looked pathetic. His suit was a cheap charcoal thing that bunched up at the shoulders, and his face was red and streaked with sweat.a
"Amanda!" Nathan shouted, his voice cracking. "What the hell are you doing? That’s my code! That’s my project! That’s my machine! We built that in the basement, Amanda! Tell them!"
The Principal, a man named Epstein who usually didn't even acknowledge Nathan’s existence, stood up from the VIP table. He didn't look angry; he looked amused. He started laughing, a deep, belly laugh that set off the rest of the room.
"Well, well, who would you know?" Epstein said into his lapel mic. "It seems even a janitor can be ambitious. Tell me, young man, did you mistake the stage for the utility closet?"
The crowd roared. It was a nasty, mocking sound. Men, women and students collectively mocked Nathan Walters.
"I'm not a janitor!" Nathan screamed back, but his voice was drowned out. He looked at Amanda, pleading. "Amanda, please. Just tell the truth. tell them I spent six months on those equations. Tell them the code is mine. The machine I built it.. Come on!"
Amanda didn't even flinch. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him like he was a bug she’d found in her salad. She leaned into the microphone.
"I told you he was obsessed, Mark," she said, her voice cold and flat. "He’s been stalking me in the labs for weeks. He’s some scholarship kid who thinks because he cleaned the desks, he owns the ideas on them." She looked directly at Nathan. "I don't know who you think you are, but you need to leave before you embarrass yourself more than you already have."
Nathan felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. "Stalking? Amanda, stalking.. Wha…”
He turned to the crowd, “I have the prototype!" Nathan yelled. He was desperate now. He turned and ran back to his seat, tripping over someone’s feet as the crowd booed him. He grabbed the wooden box and ran back to the stage. "I have it right here! If it's theirs, why do I have the prototype inside this box?"
"Go ahead," Mark shouted from the stage, grinning. "Show them, Nate. Show them your 'genius' prototype!"
Nathan ripped the box open and opened it, expecting the obsidian cube to slide out.
Instead to his shock, a frantic, scrawny chicken with barely any feathers tumbled out onto the floor. It let out a terrified squawk and started flapping around, shitting on the polished stage.
The auditorium exploded. People were literally doubling over, gasping for air as they pointed at Nathan. They pulled out their phones and began to record, laughing unanimously.
"The Quantum Chicken!" Mark yelled, clutching his sides. "Is that your secret weapon, Nathan? Does it lay golden eggs?"
Nathan stared at the box. He felt sick. How?? They took it too. Mark must have swapped it while he was looking for Amanda. He looked at the Principal, at the investors, at the girl he thought he was going to marry. They were all laughing at him. He was a joke. A literal, featherless joke.
"Enough," the Principal said, wiping his eyes. "Security, get this clown out of here. He’s a disgrace to Braxton University."
Two massive guards grabbed Nathan’s arms. They weren't gentle. They jerked him around, forcing his head down. Nathan looked up one last time and saw Amanda leaning her head on Mark’s shoulder, watching him get dragged away like he was trash. And doing absolutely nothing!!
Suddenly, someone from the audience spoke up!
"I will pay $5 billion for a 50% share."
The voice didn't come from a microphone. It was just... there. Deep, quiet, and so powerful that it felt like the air in the room suddenly got sucked out.
The laughter died instantly.
In the center of the VVIP section, a man stood up. The moment he rose, the Principal nearly tripped over his own chair. The tech scouts from G****e and Apple stepped back like they’d been slapped.
It was Dr. Sage Walters.
He didn't do interviews. He didn't go to galas. He was the man who owned the satellites the world used to communicate and the banks that held the world's debt. Seeing him at a college demo day was like seeing a god walk into a dive bar.
"Dr... Dr. Walters?" the Principal stammered, his face turning a ghostly white. "I... we didn't know you were in attendance, sir. We are honored…"
Walters didn't even look at the Principal. He didn't look at the stage. He adjusted the cuff of his shirt, his eyes sharp behind his glasses.
"Five billion," Walters repeated. The amount was so high it didn't even make sense. "But I don't buy things that are stolen. And I don't invest in liars."
He looked toward the security guards holding Nathan.
"Let the boy go," Walters ordered. It wasn't a request. "And bring that machine to my office next week. I will make a deposit of $1 billion tonight. I want to see the hand that actually wrote the logic."
The Principal looked at Mark, then at the machine, then at the richest man in the world. He was sweating through his suit. "Of.. of course, sir. Whatever you want."
Nathan felt the guards' grip loosen. He stood there, shivering, confused. He looked at the man in the VIP section. He had no idea why the most powerful man in the world was looking at him with a look that almost... almost looked like a challenge. Or hope!!
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Chapter 216: The Chamber
Nobody moved.Nineteen people sat around that table, and not one of them made a sound. They had all just watched the same thing, and they were all thinking the same thought. The ground under this family had a trapdoor in it. And somebody had just pulled the lever.Nathan walked back to the foot of the table. He stayed on his feet."Ronav Walters. Abigail Walters-Croft." No anger in his voice now. That was the scary part. The anger had been used up somewhere else, days ago, in private. What was left was just business.Nathan continued, "Sixty-two million dollars. Eleven years. Two hundred and seven counts. You stole from every single person sitting here. From the aunts whose trusts you skimmed. From the cousins whose inheritance you priced into your own pockets. Fro
Chapter 215: Receipts
The first document was a wire transfer.It was small, as these things went. Four hundred thousand dollars, eleven years old, moving from a Walters real estate subsidiary into a consulting firm in Zurich that had no employees, no office, and no function except to exist. Dwayne laid a copy in front of every chair like a dealer at a card table, unhurried, letting the paper do its own talking."The Meridian Shore purchase everyone is so concerned about," Nathan said, "was real. It was also bait. Not for me. I wasn't in the country. It was structured, eleven years ago, as a place to hide this." He tapped the page. "One payment. The first one. There are two hundred and six others."The second document was a chart, and the chart was where the room stopped breathing.It was simple by design. Nathan had spent four of his eighty-six hours making it simple, because a boardroom does not convict on complexity, it convicts on shape, and the shape was unmistakable. Eleven years of money leaving the
Chapter 214: Raw!
"Why should this family trust a review conducted by a boy with eight days of experience?" The whole table held still. It was the question underneath every other question, the one they'd all carried in with their coffee. "You shouldn't," Nathan said. Cordelia's eyebrows rose a quarter inch. "Trust isn't what I'm asking for," he said. "Every figure I've cited this morning has a document number attached. The documents are in this room. Check me. Check all of it. I'd encourage it, honestly, because a Walters who asks to be trusted instead of checked is usually about to cost this family money." He looked at her, level, respectful, unafraid. "I didn't come here to be believed, Aunt. I came here to be verified. There's a difference, and the difference is the whole job." Cordelia stared at him. Eighty-one years of stares had gone into the making of this one, and lesser men than Nathan had confessed to crimes under weaker versions of it. Then she picked her pen back up, and
Chapter 213: The Long Table
The grand boardroom of the Walters estate had not been used, truly used, in six years.It sat at the very heart of the main house like a chamber of state. One table, forty feet of black walnut cut from a single tree, polished until the ceiling lights lay on its surface like coins at the bottom of a well. Nineteen chairs. No windows. Sage had built it that way on purpose. In this room, there was no weather, no time of day, no world outside. There was only the family, and the truth, and whichever of the two proved stronger.By nine o'clock, every chair was full.They had begun arriving at half past eight, and the seating itself was a war conducted in silence. Aunt Cordelia, eighty-one and the oldest living Walters, took the chair at Sage's right hand as birthright and dared anyone with her eyes. Uncle Amos, who ran shipping out of Singapore and had flown sixteen hours for this, positioned himself dead center where he could watch both ends of the table at once, which was Amos all over. P
Chapter 212: Knots
Friday arrived like every other day. Quietly, and exactly on schedule.In the east wing, Ronav Walters rose before the sun out of forty years of monastic habit and sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, prayer beads moving through his fingers, click by click, like a man counting down instead of counting blessings. He dressed in gray. He had read somewhere, decades ago, that gray was the color judges trusted. He had never needed the information until today.Two floors down, Abigail Walters-Croft stood at her mirror and applied her makeup with the slow, surgical care of a woman preparing for a photograph that would outlive her. She had slept four hours and looked like she'd slept nine. That was a skill. It had cost her thirty years and two marriages to learn it, and she intended to spend it all this morning.In a modest room in the south wing, modest by choice, Theodore Walters knotted a charcoal tie he had owned for eleven years and drank his tea standing up, reading through a slim
Chapter 211: The Beekeeper Writes Back
Nathan's breath left him in a short, sharp sound, somewhere between a gasp and a growl, before he could stop it.Across the room, Dwayne was upright in under a second, one hand already halfway to the sidearm holstered at his hip, his eyes wide and instantly, fully awake."Report," Dwayne said, voice rough but urgent, already scanning the room for the threat.Nathan's jaw worked. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, half-formed instructions already lining up — ‘trace this, break the encryption, get me an address, get me a team… do this, do that — and beneath all of it, a colder, older feeling he hadn't let himself feel since the streets. He wanted to say all of it. He wanted Dwayne to fix this the way Dwayne fixed everything, with a phone call and a very quiet, very final kind of certainty.But he didn't say any of it.Because that was exactly the problem, wasn't it. He was the heir. Not the ward. Dwayne was his right hand, not his crutch, and there was a difference between leaning o
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