Underworld's Chosen Like None Other

Warren's Shattering

Ironspire, a city that devoured men like Warren Buffet, grinding their dreams to dust beneath its steel towers. Three weeks ago, it had spat him out.

Framed for stealing 30 million dollars from the steel mill where he’d slaved for years, Warren was fired, disgraced, and buried under a debt he didn’t owe. The appeal court laughed him out, branding him a thief. Nobody believed him—not his coworkers, not the judge, not even his own brother, Caleb, who’d turned his back when Warren begged for help.

His parents saw him as a disgrace as his younger brother Caleb, was doing 100X better than him. They were not his biological parents after all. After they gave birth to Caleb the year adopted Warren turned eight, Warren became a slave, a liability and a nobody to them. He was forced to grow up so fast and independently, without help, just brute conviction.

He suffered!

Now, Warren scraped by as a delivery guy, part-time laundryman, and whatever menial gig he could scrounge, working himself to the bone to feed his wife, Rachel, and their eight-year-old twins, Sonia and Samson. All he wanted was to give them a life better than the one he’d clawed out of Ironspire’s gutters. But no matter how hard he worked, it was never enough, it had only became worse now that he had lost his only job.

Rachel, a full-time housewife with a taste for luxury Warren could never afford, made sure he knew it.

Her voice was a blade, slicing through him daily. “You’re a disgrace to manhood, Warren! A pathetic excuse for a father! I regret marrying you! You acted like you could take care of me! You manipulator!" Her words echoed as he trudged down the alley to their crumbling apartment, his knuckles whitening, fists clenched so tight his nails bit into his palms.

Blood trickled down his fingers, but he barely noticed. “If hard work paid, I’d be richer than the cabal who framed me,” he thought, rage simmering in his chest like a furnace ready to explode. “I’ll bounce back. I have to."

Even his brother who worked in the cabal knew the truth but he turned blind, same week he was double promoted and bought a new mansion in the 0.1% of the cities wealthiest island, and also a new Lamborghini aventador.

As Warren thought, the thoughts of unpaid rent loomed in, a fresh reminder of his failure.

“How did it all go so wrong?” he growled under his breath, his voice a low, guttural curse at the city, at fate, at himself.

**

A flash of gleaming metal snapped him from his thoughts. A Lamborghini Aventador, sleek and obscene, sat in his garage like a taunt. Who the hell parks a car like that here? Warren’s pulse quickened, a mix of confusion and dread coiling in his gut. Rachel didn’t mention any visitors. His mind raced— a creditor? A loan shark?—but nothing prepared him for what waited inside.

He pushed open the front door, the familiar stench of poverty hitting him: faded wallpaper peeling like dead skin, cracked plaster mocking his struggles. On the sagging sofa sat Sonia and Samson, his twins, glued to a shiny new laptop he’d never seen.

Where’d that come from? He forced a smile, desperate for their warmth. “Daddy’s home!” he called, arms spread, expecting their usual hugs. Instead, they turned, their eyes cold, slicing through him with disdain.

“That’s odd,” Warren muttered, his face burning as embarrassment twisted into something darker. What did I do?

“You’re not our real daddy,” Sonia said, her voice sharp, like Rachel’s. “Mummy said she’d never let a poor man like you father us.”

Samson nodded, his words a dagger. “Yeah, she said you’re a loser. Our real daddy’s upstairs with her. He’s rich. He bought us this laptop and tons of gifts. My friends won’t laugh at us anymore and he will renovate this shithole for us.

Warren’s heart stopped. “Real daddy? Upstairs? Their house a shit hole?" he choked out, his voice trembling with a fury he could barely contain.

“Yes!” the twins chirped in unison, their excitement a gut-punch.

The world tilted. His kids—his reason for grinding through Ironspire’s cruelty—weren’t his, who told them? , the twins’ words, the Lamborghini outside—it crashed over him like a tidal wave. Rage boiled, a molten fire in his veins, urging him to scream, to break something, to tear the world apart. Five years. Five years without touching her, and she’s upstairs with another man? His legs moved before his mind caught up, storming toward the stairs, each step fueled by a growing inferno.

A sound stopped him cold just outside their bedroom door. “Arghh! Aish!” A woman’s moan—Rachel’s moan—sharp and unmistakable. His vision blurred, not with tears but with a red haze of fury.

“Fuck me harder!” she cried out with intense pleasure again, her voice a blade twisting in his chest. Five years of abstinence, of her excuses, she is not in the mood, and she was giving herself to someone else in their bed. His bed. Their matrimonial bed.

Warren’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached, his breath coming in ragged gasps. She’s mocking me. They all are. His fists shook, the urge to destroy everything overwhelming. No more thinking. He kicked the door open, the wood splintering under his rage.

The sight seared into his soul. Rachel, naked, legs splayed like an offering, moaned beneath a man in his twenties—athletic, smug, thrusting into her with a grin that screamed privilege. Victor Crane, Ironspire’s youngest billionaire, a man whose face plastered every billboard in the city. Warren’s world spun, his rage a living thing clawing to break free. His heart pounded like a war drum, each beat screaming "betrayal". Tears stung his eyes, but they burned away under the heat of his fury.

He ripped his belt from his waist, the leather snapping in his grip like a whip. “You bastard!” he roared, his voice raw, animalistic. The belt cracked across Victor’s bare back, a vicious lash that echoed like a gunshot. Victor yelped, his spine arching in pain, his smug grin vanishing as he scrambled off Rachel. Warren didn’t stop. Another lash, then another, each strike fueled by years of humiliation, by Rachel’s insults, by the twins’ rejection, by the frame-up that stole his life. “You think you can take everything from me?” he bellowed, his voice shaking the walls.