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.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
CHAPTER 270
The last guests left at seven.Charlie watched from the terrace as the final cars moved down the estate's long driveway and the grounds returned to their own quiet.Mrs. Adeyemi's staff moved through the gardens with an efficient discretion as they cleaned. The catering team packed with practiced speed. The ensemble had left an hour prior. The formal gardens, which had held the afternoon's grandeur, were returning incrementally to their ordinary state.The roses remained.Charlie turned back into the house.The inner circle had gathered in the sitting room — the room with the best light, George's room, the room that had been reorganized in February to hold what the last months required. Emily on the settee, Jacy in the armchair she'd occupied at the earlier dinner, legs tucked under her, watching George, Daniel and Cindy side by side on the small sofa, close in the way they always were, Daniel's hand resting over Cindy's without either of them appearing to have decided it. Joseph sta
CHAPTER 269
The toasts began at five.The light had softened by then, the sharp brightness of afternoon easing into the gentler gold of early evening. Glasses appeared in hands across the gardens, quiet clusters forming and dissolving as people shifted closer to the space near the roses where George stood.There were many speakers.Colleagues. Old rivals. Friends who had become something more permanent than friendship through the long mathematics of shared history. People whose relationship to George resisted simple labels — the sort of relationships that form only when someone has spent decades moving through rooms where decisions mattered.Each stood with a glass raised and said something true.Not the polite exaggerations of ceremonial praise, but the specific truths that accumulate around a life lived publicly and forcefully. Stories about negotiations that had changed entire industries. About arguments that had lasted for hours and ended with both men walking away better for them. About the
CHAPTER 268
The guests began arriving at two in the afternoon.By three the estate's grounds held two hundred people, and by four it held nearly all four hundred, moving through the formal gardens and reception areas. These were people who had known George Maxwell across decades, people who had done business with him, competed against him, been mentored by him, been defeated by him, been changed by the sheer force of his presence in their lives.They had come because he mattered.You could see it in how they moved through the space. Not the stiff solemnity of an occasion shadowed by mortality, but the warm gravity of people who were simply glad to be near someone they valued.George received them from near the center of the formal gardens — standing. Charlie stayed close without hovering.He watched George work the gathering the way he had always worked rooms. People came to George rather than the other way around, which was practical given his energy and perfectly aligned with the way he had
CHAPTER 267
The birthday planning consumed George in the best possible way.Charlie had not seen him like this in months — purposeful and was applying the full force of his considerable organizational intelligence toward achieving it. The decline was still present, still visible to anyone paying close attention, but it had been temporarily subordinated to something that George had decided mattered more than managing his own limitations.Mrs. Adeyemi was the primary executor of George's vision, which she approached with the particular combination of devotion and professional competence that had made her indispensable to the estate for twenty-two years. She and George held daily planning sessions in the sitting room that Charlie occasionally sat in on — George with his handwritten lists, Mrs. Adeyemi with her own far more organized documentation, the two of them moving through logistics.The estate's grounds would host the afternoon reception — four hundred guests, catering from the restaurant Geo
CHAPTER 266
Jacy presented the expansion initiative's first quarter data to the Claire Corporation board on a Thursday morning .Charlie sat mid-table. Emily at the head. The twelve board members arranged with the particular alertness of people who had approved something significant and were now receiving their first evidence of whether the approval had been warranted.Two of the three sectors were tracking within projected parameters. Healthcare access infrastructure was performing slightly ahead of expectations in markets where Claire Corporation had existing partnerships — Sustainable agricultural technology was slower, the supply chain complications Jacy had modeled materializing roughly as predicted, requiring patience rather than recalibration.The third sector, affordable housing development, was behind.Jacy had prepared for this.She presented the standard metrics cleanly and without softening, then moved to a supplementary analysis she'd built over the previous two weeks — community imp
CHAPTER 265
The Osei initiative's first complication arrived in June through a three-line email from Hartwell's chief of staff.The initiative's public announcement, originally scheduled for mid-July, was being pushed to September. No detailed explanation beyond scheduling conflicts at the federal level requiring timeline adjustment. Osei would be in touch with specifics.Charlie read it twice at his desk on a Monday morning with his coffee going cold beside him and called Osei before the day's first meeting.Osei answered carefully — too carefully, which was itself the answer before the explanation arrived. The delay wasn't scheduling. Two of the private equity partners had requested modifications to the student selection methodology, specifically the criteria weighting comprehensive support need against academic merit. They wanted the balance adjusted. They had a preferred ratio that would make the initiative's outcomes cleaner on paper and considerably less useful to the students it was suppos
You may also like
The Pinnacle of Life
Evergreen Qin1.7M viewsThe Ultimate Commander Cassian
AFM31158.3K viewsRevenge Of The Rejected Heir
Beautypete97.0K viewsUnexpected Trillionaire.
Max Luthor91.9K viewsThe Healer of Hollow Street
Ibechi387 viewsThe Rise of Alexander Black (the Errand Boy)!
De Scripter410 viewsWhen the Loser Became rich heir
archnemesis352 viewsScales Of The Dragon's Revenge
Suzzy665 views