The Son-in-law

Billy didn’t go straight home after work.He walked.Past the glass towers. Past the restaurants where laughter spilled out warm and careless. Past reflections of himself in windows that still didn’t recognize him.The city moved around him, unaware that something inside him had shifted alignment.When he finally reached his apartment—the one-room place he’d kept long before the marriage, before the fall—he locked the door behind him and stood there in the quiet.This place had never been impressive. Bare walls. Old furniture. A desk scarred with burn marks from cheap coffee cups and long nights. But it was his. The only place where no one looked at him like he owed them something.He sat at the desk and opened his laptop.Not to celebrate.To verify.The Porsche estate documents loaded slowly. Asset lists. Holding companies. Shell structures nested inside other structures like Russian dolls. Money layered so deeply it stopped feeling like currency and started feeling like architecture

Chapter Five :The Jones mansion glowed beneath a canopy of chandeliers, the kind of glow that could trick outsiders into thinking peace lived here. From the outside, its towering walls and gilded windows suggested harmony, wealth, and refinement. But inside, the air was heavy, thick with unspoken resentments and grudges sharpened by years of rivalry. The dining table was no longer a place of nourishment—it was a battlefield waiting for its first strike.Billy sat at the far end, shoulders squared, posture rigid with quiet defiance. His face gave little away, but inside, he could feel the tension coil like a spring. Across from him lounged Lucas, the heir who thought himself untouchable, his lips curled in disdain. Lucas’s fingers tapped lightly against the polished mahogany table. Every tap was a warning, a rhythm of dominance, a reminder that in his mind, Billy was still the outcast—the poor son-in-law who had no right to sit here.The silence cracked when the sound of heels echoed

Chapter Seven: The morning air was sharp, cold enough to bite through the thin fabric of Billy’s shirt. The streets were quiet, washed in that pale gray light that comes just before the rain. He sat on the front steps of the workshop where he once spent whole days fixing engines—machines that always made sense to him in a way people rarely did. His hands were stained with old grease, though he hadn’t touched a wrench in weeks. The smell lingered—oil, rust, and smoke—a reminder of a past that was simpler, but never truly safe.Through the grimy window he caught his own reflection: hollow eyes, a jaw clenched too tight, a man who looked older than his years. The reflection seemed to sneer at him, as though mocking the illusion of peace he had tried to build.A soft knock broke the silence. Billy didn’t move at first, but the sound came again, gentle but insistent.“Billy?”He turned. Evelyn leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, her hair tied back loosely so a few strands framed h

Chapter Nine: Rain had left the city slick, the streets gleaming like black glass under the flickering streetlights. Billy and Evelyn moved silently, the echoes of their boots lost in the hum of the storm. Each step carried the weight of the night before, and the whispers of the shadows that had followed them since dusk.“They know more than we think,” Billy said, his voice low, a barely audible growl beneath the downpour. He paused under the dim light of a cracked lamp post, scanning every alley, every rooftop edge. “Whoever sent that man is organized. Too organized to be just Liam.”Evelyn’s eyes darted around, sharp and calculating. “So, we’re talking about a network. Someone at the top pulling strings. Someone who knows your father’s past better than we do.”Billy nodded, jaw tight. Memories of his father’s last days—the Luoshen, the threats, the whispered warnings—pressed down on him like a physical weight. The man they’d just encountered was only a fragment of the machinery tha