Reborn As The Beggar Lord

001 For the Family

Celeste set the black folder beside Ethan's dinner plate hard enough to rattle his fork.

"Papa wants it signed tonight. For the family. Do it."

Nine members of the Vance family stopped eating and looked at him. They waited.

Ethan opened the folder. Inside was a transfer form, already witnessed. His ten percent of the Vance Group would go to the family trust. The price was one dollar. The shares were worth eighty million.

They were a gift from Celeste's late grandfather, the only person at this table who had ever treated Ethan like family.

"You're the only one in this house who gives and builds," the old man used to say. "The rest of them only take and waste."

Now the takers wanted the last thing he owned.

Ethan had married into this family five years ago. He had designed the three towers that made the Vance Group famous. At the office, he was the engineer. At this table, he was the servant.

Ethan had grown up in an orphanage, and the Vances were the first family he had ever had. For them, he had swallowed every insult with a smile.

Sign it, he thought. Maybe tonight they will finally accept you as their own.

He hated that he still hoped to be one of them. But he did.

"The investors want a clean company," Julian said without looking up from his steak. "We cannot give charity to strays on the books. That means you. You understand, right?"

"I do," Ethan said.

He understood too well. This was a Vance decision and had nothing to do with investors. They just didn't dare say it aloud.

Ethan took out the old man's fountain pen, signed every page, and put the pen back in his pocket.

Celeste's father leaned over, checked the signature, and nodded. "Good."

Ethan waited for a thank you. A few kind words. The family went back to their plates.

Celeste walked back from the kitchen with one glass of red wine. She set it in front of him and rested her hand on his shoulder.

"I opened the good bottle. Just for you, husband. You earned it."

She hadn't poured for him in years. Ethan's heart lifted at his wife's affectionate gesture.

He put his hand over hers and smiled. Whatever the folder had cost him tonight, this was worth it.

"To the family," her father said, raising his glass.

"To the family," said nine Vances.

Ethan drank.

The wine tasted expensive. Then it turned bitter and metallic.

His mouth went numb, and his arm barely moved when he reached for water. The room tilted.

Ethan tried to stand, but the poison had taken his legs. They folded, and he collapsed. His wine glass shattered beside his head.

Celeste's mother glanced at him, then looked away and asked for the potatoes.

Not one person pushed back a chair. Not one of them screamed.

Julian crouched beside him. His phone was out, but he didn't dial the emergency number. He studied Ethan's face with a butcher's cold eyes.

"The ambulance will take twenty minutes," Julian said to the table. "The front gate will slow it even more. Keep eating like normal. We'll do it as rehearsed."

They had rehearsed this. The Vances had planned his murder like a holiday dinner.

Julian leaned close and grinned. He was enjoying himself.

"Five years of playing family, and you still never saw it. You were never one of us, Ethan. You were the servant. And the servant does not get to own ten percent or sit at our table."

Celeste's father spoke without turning.

"Don't look so betrayed, boy. Your life insurance will make us even wealthier. Thirty million. Finally, a real contribution from you."

They had already priced his corpse.

Celeste knelt beside him last. She straightened his collar, then looked into his eyes.

Ethan finally saw what was really behind her pretty face.

No love or guilt showed there, only disdain.

"Did you really think I loved you?" she said softly. "I picked you because you were useful and obedient. Like buying a good ox. And now the animal has finished its labor and needs to be put down."

She dug into his chest pocket and took out the old man's pen. "Grandfather's pen belongs in the family. Not with the servant."

Ethan's hand reached after it and fell back onto the empty carpet.

The only thing the old man had left him was gone.

A black rage flooded his chest.

Five years. He had built their towers. He had cooked their meals. He had nursed their dying grandfather.

And their thanks was poison in his wine, poured by his own wife.

The last thing he heard clearly was Julian's calm, bored voice telling the emergency line that his brother-in-law had collapsed, and please, please hurry.

If I ever get another life, I will build something of my own, on my own ground. I will choose who profits from me. And anyone who tries to take what is mine will pay for it a hundred times over.

Then his sight went black.

***

Cold morning air hit Ethan first. He had expected a hospital room, but this place smelled of damp earth and old wood.

He opened his eyes to a ceiling of dark beams.

Ethan's body did not hurt. After poison, that was impossible.

He sat up and looked at his hands. They were thin and pale, and they belonged to a young man.

Someone knocked hard on the door. A girl's voice called through the wood, impatient.

"My lord! You must get up! The Temple will not wait, not even for you!"

My lord?

Ethan crossed the room on unsteady legs. A small mirror hung above the washstand. When he looked into it, his whole body went stiff.

The reflection showed a young man of about nineteen, with grey eyes and soft, handsome features. The person in the mirror had never done hard work.

Ethan was inside another man's body.

Then a sharp pain filled his head with a stranger's memories.

The young man's name was Kingsley Carmine. He was nineteen, an orphan, just like Ethan.

His father, the Baron of Thornmere, had died when he was a small child and left him nothing but debts. His uncle had taken him into the capital that same year, and he had grown up there on his uncle's charity, eating at the servants' table.

The city had one name for Kingsley. The beggar lord.

And today was the day of the Awakening. At nineteen, every noble touched the sacred Stone, and the letter it gave him decided the rest of his life. A high grade meant a title, land, and gold. A low one brought shame.

The whole capital expected the beggar lord to fail today. They had dressed up to watch it happen and laugh at him.

The knocking repeated, harder.

"Lord Kingsley! If you are late to the Temple today of all days, your uncle swears he will drag you there in your nightshirt!"

Ethan reached for the folded clothes. His hands were steady.

In my last life, I built eighty million from an empty pocket and handed it to my murderers. I won nothing for myself.

This time, whatever I win and build, I will keep. I will be invincible.

Kingsley Carmine will not bow to this world.