2025-10-18 18:12:40“Charlie Grant! Are you even listening?”
The lecturer’s voice echoed through the wide, air-conditioned lecture hall of York University. Heads turned, eyes darting at him. Charlie blinked, realizing everyone was staring.
His heart thudded. He muttered a faint apology and tried to look composed, but inside, his mind was a storm.
The professor’s words were flying over his head like dust in the wind. His thoughts were miles away—buried deep in chaos and worry. The first wave of anxiety came crashing through: three assignments.
He had been paid already but hadn’t done any of them. Jacob Brown and his rich friends had hired him to ghostwrite their papers, and those boys were not known for patience. They were cruel when disrespected, and Charlie knew exactly how cruel.
He ran his trembling fingers through his hair, his pen shaking between his fingers. “I can’t screw this up again,” he whispered under his breath.
But that was only the beginning of his torment. The second thought wave hit—harder, sharper. The $3,000 loan he took from Salvatore, the campus’ most notorious loan shark, was due in two hours.
Two hours! And if he didn’t pay… everyone on campus knew what happened to those who didn’t pay Salvatore on time.
Charlie’s throat dried up. His palms began to sweat despite the cool air.
From the back row, a paper ball struck him squarely on the head. He looked up—and froze.
Jacob Brown.
The arrogant smirk on Jacob’s lips was enough to make Charlie’s blood run cold. Jacob’s eyes, filled with disdain, burned into him. “Where’s my assignment, Grant?” he asked, his tone slow and threatening.
Charlie swallowed hard. His lips parted, but no words came.
“Well?” Jacob snapped, leaning forward in his chair. “You took my money, didn’t you?”
Charlie stuttered, “I… I forgot it at home. I’ll bring it right after class.”
Jacob chuckled. “Forgot it? You forgot the one thing keeping your miserable self fed? You’ve got some nerve.”
The students around them laughed quietly, some out of fear, others out of mockery. Jacob’s girlfriend, Brie, who was sitting beside him with a glossy smirk, leaned close and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “You should make him pay you a hundred times over if he doesn’t deliver. Let’s see how the poor rat handles that.”
Jacob grinned wickedly. “You hear that, Grant? If I don’t get my work by noon, you owe me ten grand. Each.”
Charlie’s stomach dropped. There were four of them in total—Jacob and his three friends. Ten grand each. Forty thousand dollars.
Forty thousand he didn’t have.
He couldn’t even afford a meal last night.
And yet, life wasn’t done playing its cruel jokes.
Charlie’s phone buzzed twice in quick succession. He glanced down—two messages. One from Angela, his girlfriend of two months, and one from Jacy, his half-sister.
He clicked Angela’s first.
His jaw tightened immediately.
“Babe, I saw this gorgeous necklace trending right now. It’s $4,000, and I have to get it. You’ll send it, right?”
No greeting. No affection. No “How are you?” Just money.
Charlie’s chest burned with frustration. His leg bounced under the desk as he clenched his teeth. ‘Even now?’ he thought. ‘Doesn’t she know I’m drowning in debt because of her endless demands?’
But anger soon gave way to helplessness. He sighed deeply. As much as he wanted to scream, he couldn’t. He loved Angela—pathetically, foolishly—and for her, he had endured humiliation after humiliation.
He exhaled sharply and opened the second message from Jacy.
“Charlie, please come home now! Dad is beating Mom again. He’s forcing her to sign the divorce papers. I’m scared. Please hurry!”
His hands froze. His eyes widened, and the world around him seemed to blur. His pulse raced like thunder in his ears.
He shot up from his seat, knocking his chair backward. The class went silent.
“Mr. Grant!” the lecturer barked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I—I have an emergency, sir,” Charlie said breathlessly, already halfway to the door.
“Sit down, or I’ll fail you for this course!”
Charlie didn’t even look back. The words meant nothing to him anymore. Ever since two years ago—since everything had changed—he had become a target for disdain. Professors, classmates, even staff who once greeted him with smiles now sneered when he passed.
Because two years ago, Charlie Grant had been someone.
The adored son of Charles Grant, billionaire real estate tycoon. The heir to a billion-dollar fortune. The pride of the Grant family.
Until the day his father destroyed everything.
It was supposed to be a family dinner. But that night, Charles Grant announced he had a “new family.” A new wife—his mother’s best friend—and her three children: Jim, Jey, and Jacy.
That night shattered their world. His mother’s tears, his father’s indifference, the servants’ whispers… since then, he and his mother had been treated as outsiders in their own home.
And now, his father was about to finish the job.
“Let him go,” Jacob’s voice echoed through the room, smirking. “He’s going home to cry anyway.”
Brie’s voice followed like venom. “Oh, and remember, Grant! You owe us forty grand before noon!”
The room erupted with gasps.
Forty thousand dollars. Before noon.
Charlie didn’t respond. He stormed out, his eyes burning with fury and despair.
He hailed a taxi with the little cash he had left. It wasn’t even enough to get him home, so he got off midway and walked the rest—thirty minutes under the sun, his shirt soaked in sweat and humiliation.
When he reached the Grant Mansion, the sight stabbed him like a blade. The grand $20 million estate stood tall, magnificent—and yet it felt like a prison. He was once the prince of this castle, but not anymore. Not since his wicked stepmother came to the house.
The guards at the gate, who once bowed to him as “Young Master Charlie,” now laughed openly.
“Look who’s back. The useless one,” one guard sneered.
“Maybe he’s here to beg for scraps,” another chuckled.
Charlie ignored them. He had long grown numb to mockery.
He pushed through the large doors and stepped inside. Jacy rushed to him immediately, tears in her eyes. “Charlie… it’s over. Dad made her sign. He forced Mom to leave. She’s gone.”
Charlie froze. His chest tightened. Rage flared inside him like fire. He turned sharply and stormed toward his father’s study.
The moment he burst through the door, two sharp slaps struck his face before he could even speak.
Charles Grant stood tall, his expression cold and disdainful. “You dare storm into my office like a wild dog?!”
Charlie’s jaw clenched, blood dripping from his lip. He looked at his father—the man who took everything from him—and for the first time, his eyes didn’t tremble.
They burned.
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CHAPTER 361
It was Hale.Hale spoke for twenty minutes while Charlie listened with iron discipline and enough patience to get everything out. . Outside, New York blurred past—huge, indifferent, and entirely unaware of the conversation occurring within the black car.When Hale finally finished, Charlie let the silence hang. "Say the last part again," he said.Hale repeated it."You're certain," Charlie said."George told me himself in 2018," Hale replied. "The year he terminated our arrangement. I didn't understand why then. I thought he was just marking the boundaries of what I knew. Now I realize he was telling me because he knew I might eventually need to use it.""He was preparing you," Charlie said."He was preparing everyone," Hale said quietly. "I just didn't know I was one of them."Charlie looked at his hands, thinking of George in 2018—the year he had ended Hale's employment, the year he’d written the letters, the year he’d hidden a thread of truth in a place he knew would hold until the
CHAPTER 360
Charlie flew back the next morning, the jet hanging suspended between the grey clouds and the weight of what he had left behind in London. He thought about his father’s face across the fire—the specific quality of eighteen months and the bitter realization of what it didn't change. It didn't undo the years of betrayal, it didn't bring back Claire, and it didn't ease the new burden Jacy was carrying in New York.What it changed was the geometry of the fight. Bethany Maxwell had found a dying man and built a legal assault on his diminishment. It told Charlie everything he needed to know about her ruthlessness—and what she was willing to burn to win.Marcus sat beside him, spreading out the documents: the name filing, Catherine Holt’s response in London, and the New York counsel’s brief.The filing was a masterpiece of legal architecture. Bethany’s team had built it on three pillars: the Victorian estate records, Arthur Maxwell’s original will, and George’s own confession. The confession
CHAPTER 359
Jacy didn't speak for a long time, and Charlie let the silence run. Outside, the London streets were oblivious to the wreckage sitting inside the car."How long?" Jacy asked finally."Six weeks."Another silence, shorter this time. "Medical grounds," she said. It wasn't a question."Yes.""And Bethany's lawyer filed the release documentation."Charlie went still. "How do you know that?""Because I've spent the last hour pulling everything I can find on Bethany’s New York filings," Jacy said, her voice sharp with a familiar, clinical precision. "I found the Grant connection twenty minutes ago. I was waiting to see if you’d tell me.""You were testing me.""I was giving you the chance to be honest," she corrected. "There’s a difference.""He wants to meet," Charlie said. "Tonight.""And you're going."The silence that followed shifted from professional to deeply personal. "Charlie," Jacy said, "he’s going to try to use you. Whatever arrangement he has with Bethany, he’s going to sit acr
CHAPTER 358
Charlie stared at the name on the screen until the light timed out and the cabin of the car plunged back into shadows. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, he tapped the screen to wake it and dialed Joseph."I need you to run a name," he said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register. He read the name out—each syllable feeling like a shard of glass in his throat.On the other end of the line, Joseph was silent for three long seconds. For a man who lived and breathed data, three seconds was an eternity. "Where did you get that name, Charlie?" Joseph asked, his tone unusually sharp, stripped of its usual professional distance."A message," Charlie said, watching his own reflection in the darkened window. "Just now. Unknown number."Another silence followed, thicker and more suffocating than the first. "Give me ten minutes," Joseph said, and the line went dead.Charlie leaned forward and spoke to the driver. "Wait here."He sat in the stationa
CHAPTER 357
Ashby came because the guilty always show up. The message Joseph had delivered—*Mr. Maxwell knows everything*—had been the specific kind of bait that a clean man would have questioned and a compromised man would have feared.They met in a private room at a hotel near the Strand. Ashby arrived at three o'clock sharp, sixty-seven years old and carrying more weight than in his foundation portraits. He sat across from Charlie with the rigid, fragile posture of someone who had been holding a secret so long that the secret had begun to consume the man."I want you to know," Ashby began, "that I never intended—""Mr. Ashby," Charlie said, his voice level and quiet. "Don't tell me what you intended. Tell me what you did."Ashby’s hands folded on the table, a picture of forced stillness. He spoke of 2021, of a meeting with Bethany Maxwell three months before he left the board. She hadn’t used money. She hadn’t used threats. She had used the one thing more dangerous: acknowledgment. She knew ab
CHAPTER 356
The small third-floor room near Paddington felt smaller than it was. When Amara Vicker opened the door to Charlie’s knock, her face carried the hollowed-out exhaustion of someone who had been living on adrenaline for seventy-two hours and had finally run out of fuel.She looked younger than her file photo, yet far older than any twenty-year-old should."Come in," she said.Charlie took the chair by the window; Amara sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes fixed on her hands."I didn't know what I was doing," she whispered. "When I withdrew, I thought I was protecting my father. Mr. Ashby said if I left quietly, nothing would surface. It would just... go away.""What exactly did he tell you?"She laid it out. Ashby had approached her three weeks ago under the guise of a "governance consultant." He told her an internal review had flagged her scholarship as a conflict of interest due to her father’s ministry position. It was a lie, but it was a surgical one—precise enough to feel like
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