The Son-in-Law Who Spent His Way to the Throne!

Chapter 2

Carson opened his eyes to a white ceiling and the smell of medicine. For a moment he did not know where he was. Then it all came back to him, the van, the masked men and the gun.

He sat up fast and pulled up his shirt. His chest was clean. There was no hole, no blood and no pain. He touched his stomach and found nothing but smooth skin.

"I am alive," he whispered. "How am I alive?"

Ding!

A glowing screen popped up inside his head, clear as day. Carson froze as lines of words and numbers slid across it. It showed his body, his strength and his health, and every number looked better than it should have.

"Welcome, host. You are now bound to the Spendthrift System. Your first task is ready."

Task One: Spend one million dollars within twenty-four hours. One million dollars has been placed in your account. Failure will bring punishment.

Carson read it three times. Spend a million dollars? He was a man who had been begging for a hundred thousand just yesterday. Now a strange voice in his head wanted him to throw away ten times that.

He took out his phone with shaky hands and opened his bank app. The balance sat there, long and bright. One million dollars, and it was real.

A nurse walked in, saw him sitting up, and dropped her clipboard. "Sir, you should not be awake. You came in last night with so many gunshot wounds. We thought you were gone."

"I am fine," Carson said. "Please, I need to see my bill."

The doctors came running. They checked him over again and again, and none of them could explain it. One of them kept shaking his head and saying it was a miracle. Carson only wanted to know the cost.

He paid every cent of it without blinking. The cashier stared at him as if he had grown a second head. A man who came in half dead and left with a bank card full of money was something nobody in that hospital would forget.

Then he went straight to Stella's ward. She was still asleep, but her face looked a little calmer than before. He took her hand and held it for a while.

"I told you I would fix it," he said softly.

He walked to the front desk and paid for her full treatment, her surgery and every drug she would need. He asked the staff to move her to a better room, a quiet private one with a good view and the best nurses. They did it at once.

The doctor who had warned him about the twenty-four hours came by, and he could hardly look Carson in the eye. "Mr. Roman, I am glad things are better. We will take good care of her now."

Carson nodded. He did not feel like saying anything to him.

When all the bills were settled, he checked his account. He had spent two hundred thousand dollars, which left him with eight hundred thousand. The system still wanted the rest gone before the day ended.

He walked out of the ward and took the long hallway toward the main exit. He was lost in thought, thinking about how to spend all that money, when he bumped hard into someone.

"Watch it!" a man in a black suit shouted. Two other guards pushed Carson back with both hands. "Move away, you filth. Do you know who you just touched?"

Carson stumbled but kept his balance. Before he could say a word, a soft voice cut in.

"Stop it. Leave him alone."

The guards stepped back at once. A young woman stood behind them in a white dress. She had long blond hair and bright blue eyes, and she was so beautiful that Carson forgot for a second what he was about to say.

She looked at him for a moment and her eyes widened. "Carson? Carson Roman? Is that you?"

He blinked. "Hazel?"

"It is me." She smiled, and it lit up her whole face. "We were in the same class. I have not seen you in years. What are you doing here?"

Hazel had been a quiet girl back in school, always singing under her breath. Now she was a famous singer whose face was on billboards all over the city. Carson had seen her posters and never thought he would meet her like this.

"My sister is sick," he said. "She is in the hospital. And you?"

"I came for a charity event," Hazel said. "We are giving money to the children's ward. I am sorry about your sister, Carson. I hope she gets better soon."

"Thank you."

Her manager called her name from down the hall. Hazel took out a small card and wrote her number on the back. She pressed it into Carson's hand.

"Call me sometime," she said. "I mean it. It is nice to see a familiar face."

Then she walked away with her guards, who still gave Carson a cold look. He stared at the card for a moment before putting it in his pocket. For the first time in a long while, someone had been kind to him for no reason.

At the same time, the Bruce family villa was full of laughter.

A man had come to the house an hour ago to give Sarah and Emily the news. Carson Roman was dead. They had found a body on the street, and the job was done. Sarah had even poured two glasses of the most expensive wine in the house.

"To a clean house," Sarah said, raising her glass. "That beggar is gone for good."

"No more washing his clothes in my sight," Emily said, laughing. "No more looking at his sad face."

"Now we can think about your future." Sarah leaned closer. "I have been talking to a family friend. There is a young man named Dan Brown, and he is a real scion. His family has money, and a lot of it. If you make him like you, we could climb higher than we ever dreamed."

Emily's eyes lit up. "Then bring him over, Mother."

Dan came that same afternoon in a sports car that cost more than most houses. He was handsome and sharp, and he talked like a man who was used to getting his way. Within an hour he and Emily were sitting very close on the sofa, whispering and laughing.

By evening, they were kissing in the living room as if the house belonged to them alone. Sarah watched from the kitchen door with a smile on her face.

Then the front door opened.

Carson stepped inside with a plastic bag in his hand. He had come to collect a few of his things from the small room behind the kitchen. He did not know about the plan to kill him, and he did not know they thought he was dead.

Emily saw him first. She jumped away from Dan and let out a loud scream.

"Ghost! It is a ghost!"

Sarah dropped the glass she was holding. It shattered on the floor, and her face went white as paper. "That is not possible. He is dead. He is supposed to be dead!"

Carson looked at their faces, and slowly the pieces fell into place. The men in the black van, the masks, the bullets. The way they were staring at him as if he had climbed out of a grave.

"So it was you," he said quietly. "You sent them."

Sarah's fear turned into panic, and then into rage. She turned to Dan and pointed at Carson. "Do not stand there! This man is a thief who broke into our house. Kill him! Get him out of here!"

Dan stood up and cracked his knuckles. But when Carson looked at him, there was something in those eyes, a coldness Dan had never seen in a man before. He hesitated and stayed where he was.

"I came back for my things," Carson said. His voice was low and steady. "But now I understand everything. You promised me money for my sister. When I asked for it, you tried to kill me."

"You are lying!" Emily screamed.

"Remember this day," Carson said. "All of you. I will make every one of you pay for what you did. I promise you that."

He turned and walked out of the villa. Nobody dared to stop him.

Outside, he took a deep breath. He had a lot of money to spend and a sister who would be getting better soon. She could not keep living in the cramped little house they had before, and he needed a proper place for her to come home to.

He took a taxi to the old house where he and Stella had stayed before the Bruce family found him. The landlord was surprised to see him back. Carson paid off all the rent he owed and added a large sum on top, enough to make the old man bow three times.

He then called in workers to fix up the whole place. He had the walls painted, the floors cleaned and new furniture brought in. When he was done, the house looked like a different home. He gave them everything he had left in the account.

Ding!

The screen lit up in his mind again.

"Task One complete. Congratulations, host. Rewards: cultivation level two and ten SP points."

Carson read the words slowly. Cultivation? He had only seen that word in the old novels he read as a boy. It meant training the body and spirit to gain strength, and some people even flew or moved mountains.

A new feeling was moving inside him, warm and light, like a river under his skin. He clenched his fist and felt power in it that had not been there before.

"What are SP points?" he muttered.

The system answered in a calm voice. "SP points can be used to buy items from the system store. The more you complete tasks, the more points you will earn."

Carson grinned. For the first time in three years, he felt like he could breathe. He did not know how deep this thing went, but he was ready to find out.

Ding!

"New task. Spend two million dollars within two hours. The funds have been placed in your account. Failure will bring punishment."

Carson stared at the screen. Two million in two hours! He could not even walk to the other side of the city in that time. He needed something big, something expensive that he could pay for fast.

A car, he thought. A really good one.

He locked up the house and started walking toward the main road to find a taxi. The street was quiet, with only a few lamps casting their yellow light. He was halfway down the block when he heard it, the low growl of an engine behind him.

Carson stopped and turned around.

A black van was rolling slowly toward him with its lights off. He knew that van. He would never forget that van.

The doors opened, and four men stepped out. They were the same men from last night.