Reborn Rich; Crown Of Vengeance

2

“Rise and shine, graduate!”

Summer jolted awake at the sound of an unfamiliar voice.

Graduate?

What the hell was that supposed to mean? He had graduated five years ago, and as far as he remembered, no one had been with him on the day he graduated. Heck, he had gone straight from the night bar he worked at to the graduation ceremony.

Unlike his coursemates, he had no one to cheer for him and bring him flowers, even though he had graduated at the top of his class.

It had been one of the happiest yet saddest days of his life.

That was five years ago, and besides, the last thing he remembered was dying…

Wait!

Summer opened his eyes, but the sudden brightness made him squeeze them shut again.

His head throbbed faintly, and he shifted beneath the covers, expecting the familiar agony that had consumed his body before he died.

Except, there was no pain.

No restraints digging into his wrists. No burning sensation tearing through his muscles. No suffocating helmet covering his head.

Just a soft mattress beneath him and a warm blanket draped over his body.

Summer opened his eyes fully.

He stared at the unfamiliar ceiling, then slowly sat up, his gaze sweeping across the enormous bedroom.

Floor-to-ceiling windows allowed sunlight to flood the room, illuminating the luxurious furniture, polished marble floors, and a sitting area that looked more expensive than his entire former apartment. A walk-in closet occupied one side of the room, its door revealing rows of designer clothes.

Where the fuck was he?

He looked down at himself, examining his hands before running them over his chest and face. There were no bruises, cuts, or any signs of the torture he had endured.

But he remembered dying.

He remembered the electric chair, the unbearable pain, and his final moments as the darkness swallowed him.

So how was he alive?

His gaze shifted towards the man standing by the door whose voice had woken him. Summer couldn’t remember ever meeting him.

He swallowed as a crazy and scary thought settled in his head.

Was this the afterlife?

Maybe this was what happened after death. Maybe he had been given a comfortable room and a stranger to welcome him into eternity.

He pinched himself.

“Ouch.”

The pain was unmistakable, and Summer stared at his arm in disbelief. If he could still feel pain, did that mean he was still alive?

“Are you okay?” the strange man asked, looking increasingly concerned.

Summer ignored him and reached for his phone on the bedside table. The expensive-looking device unlocked at his touch, and he immediately checked the date.

His blood ran cold.

Five years.

The date displayed on the screen was five years earlier than the day he had died. He checked again, convinced his eyes were deceiving him, but the date remained unchanged.

“This is impossible,” he whispered to himself.

He hadn’t survived death. Somehow, he had gone back five years into the past.

But that still didn’t explain the room, the clothes, or the stranger who seemed to know him very well.

Five years ago, Summer had been living in a dorm with three other boys his age. He had been twenty-two and working part-time jobs while juggling schoolwork and his impending graduation.

If he had gone back into the past, then he should have been back in that dorm room with his nosy roommate talking loudly without a care for him.

This room was too huge and quiet to be the same room he had been in five years ago.

Summer slowly turned towards the man.

“Who are you?”

The man stared at him for a moment before sighing.

“Very funny, young master. I am Harry, your personal assistant. Now, can you please get out of bed? You are going to be late.”

Summer blinked in confusion.

His personal assistant?

He studied Harry carefully. The man looked at least ten years older than him, yet he spoke to him with the casual familiarity of someone who had worked for him for years.

Summer looked around the luxurious bedroom again, his mind racing as he tried to piece together every detail of what was happening.

He had died.

He remembered the moment it happened.

He had died at the hands of those men who accused him of stealing five billion. Before he died, he had been poor and had never once in his life experienced the luxury of sleeping in such a comfortable bed.

Now, for some reason, he was alive five years earlier, sleeping in a bedroom that belonged to someone wealthy enough to employ a personal assistant.

What the hell had happened to him?

Before he could ask another question, Harry checked his watch.

“Young master, I am serious. Today is your big day, and we can’t afford to be late.”

Summer’s head snapped towards him.

“My big day?”

“Yes, your graduation, remember?”

Harry asked, giving him a puzzled look. Summer’s eyes widened.

Graduation?

He looked down at the phone in his hand and then back at Harry. He had gone back five years, apparently into the body of a wealthy young man who was about to graduate.

But why?

And whose life was he living now?

Could it be that his soul had wandered around and somehow entered the body of a young man?

What about the real owner of the room and, perhaps, the body his soul was in?

Summer looked around the room, spotted a mirror, and got out of bed.

He braced himself as he walked to the mirror and gasped in shock at what he saw.

He had expected to see a new face and a new body, but his face stared back at him in the mirror.

He turned his body to look for any sign of a change, but there was none, just as there were no bruises or signs that he had suffered before his death.

“What’s going on?”

Summer turned to look at Harry, who had walked into the room and was now standing not far from him.

“What’s my name?”

He asked, and Harry stared at him in confusion.

“Summer.”

He answered. So his name hadn’t changed.

“And this is my room?”

Harry looked puzzled but nodded.

“I really want to go back and forth with you, but we need to get you out of the house and on the way to the venue for the event. Your father won’t be pleased if you are late, and I don’t want to be scolded today.”

Summer gasped at the words Harry had just said.

“My father?”

He had never met his father. Heck, he didn’t even know what his mother looked like anymore.

“Yes, your father, Charles Montague. Don’t tell me you slept so much that you forgot your father’s name.”

Summer’s hands flew to his mouth at the mention of a name he could recognize even in his sleep.

“My father is Charles Montague? As in Charles Montague of Montague Holdings?”

Harry looked very baffled by his outburst and checked his watch again.

“Yes, young master. Seriously, you need to go take a bath! We have to leave soon!”

Harry said, but Summer had more questions.

How the fuck had he suddenly become the son of Charles Montague?

That was the richest man in the whole country. A man who was already among the top ten richest men in the world.

The problem was that Charles Montague had no son. Heck, it was widely speculated that he would will his fortune to his brother’s children.

Summer knew all the details of the Montague family because he had worked in one of the banks owned by a close relative of Charles Montague.

The same man who had sold him out and lied that he had stolen five billion when he knew very well that Summer hadn’t even seen the money.

“Young master?”

Harry’s voice brought him out of his thoughts.

“Please.”

Summer nodded and confusingly walked towards the bathroom. He didn’t even know how he knew where the bathroom was.

His body just carried him that way, and the bathroom, like every other part of the room that was supposedly his, was massive.

Summer tried not to think too much while he showered.

When he walked back from the bathroom, he found Harry waiting for him near a rack of what looked like Armani suits.

“You couldn’t decide which one you wanted, so they brought the whole rack for you to pick from.”

Harry told him, and Summer just nodded absentmindedly. He went over to the bed and picked up the phone where he had left it.

He checked the date again, and it still hadn’t changed. He checked the gallery and was once again shocked by what he saw.

“It’s real?”

There was a photo of him and Charles Montague. He flipped through the pages, and there were more. He went to his contacts, and there weren’t many contacts, but the names there were very unfamiliar to him.

He couldn’t remember saving those contacts.

He couldn’t remember anything because the memories weren’t there. This wasn’t his life.

Something had happened that brought him here, and he didn’t know what it could be.

“Young master?”

Harry called, which got Summer to look away from the phone.

“Sorry, what am I supposed to do?”

He asked, and Harry pointed at the rack. Summer nodded and picked a suit because he didn’t really care about fashion, and they all looked very expensive, just like everything else he had woken up to.

“You will have breakfast with your father and stepmother.”

Oh shit! He had a stepmother? Great, just fucking great.

“And my mother?”

Summer asked, and Harry once again looked at him in confusion.

“Your mother is dead. She has been dead for over a decade now. Seriously, young master, are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I have no memory of anything. Nothing makes any sense! How am I the son of Charles Montague? Why does Charles Montague have a wife who is now my stepmother? The Charles Montague I knew never got married, and he certainly wasn’t my father! I don’t know what’s going on, but something crazy is happening.”

Summer had to say something, or he might lose his mind. Nothing that was happening made any sense to him, and he couldn’t continue to pretend.

“Your father is most certainly Charles Montague, and your stepmother, Rose, loves you like her own son. I think you might have injured your brain when you fell yesterday. You said you were okay, but I don’t think you are. I think we need to go to the hospital,” Harry revealed.

“I fell?”

Summer asked, trying to remember that happening, but he couldn’t because it wasn’t him who had fallen. It was the guy who owned his body.

Maybe he hadn’t died.

Maybe he had woken up in an alternate world where he was the son of a rich man, which meant the rich son might have swapped souls with him and was probably dead or somewhere in his universe, trapped in an electric chair.