Wheel of Time: The Heir who isn't Useless

Chapter 4: Ex’s Regret Begins + Family’s First Collapse

Lucas POV

"He saved Master Lawrence with a spinal needle?"

Kelly stared at the flashing screen of her tablet, her fingers digging so hard into the glass frame that her knuckles turned white.

The video on the campus forum had already accumulated four hundred thousand views. The camera angle was crystal clear. It showed Lucas sitting in his wheelchair, his face deadpan, calmly inserting the metal catheter into Lawrence's throat while Dr. Paul cowered on the floor.

"It is fake," Oscar said, slamming his hand onto the steering wheel of his red sports car. "It has to be an edited clip. That cripple does not even have a medical license! He probably paid the hospital staff to film a fake staging so he wouldn't look like a homeless dog on the internet!"

"Look at the badge on his chest in the second clip, Oscar!" Kelly cried out, her voice trembling with a sudden, suffocating knot of panic. "That is the dark gold pass of the Central Research Hospital! Only primary medical consultants can hold that pass! He was not begging... he was heading to the executive suite!"

"So what?" Oscar sneered, pulling out his phone to refresh his investment portfolio. "He is still a broken loser who got thrown out of his own house. My father is finalizing a ten-million-dollar land deal with the Darlington family this afternoon. Lucas is nothing compared to us."

Kelly didn't answer him. Her heart pounded against her ribs like a trapped bird. She opened her contact list, her shaking thumb scrolling down to Lucas's number.

Two years. She had spent two years using his allowance, letting him buy her designer clothes, letting him pay her tuition, while secretly laughing behind his back because he was confined to a metal chair. She had called him a parasite last night in front of fifty thousand live viewers.

She tapped his profile and hit the call button.

“The number you have dialed is no longer in service or has blocked your caller ID.”

Kelly gasped, the blood draining from her face. "He blocked me? He actually blocked my phone number?"

"Why are you calling that garbage?" Oscar growled, reaching over to snatch her phone away. "He is probably hiding in some cheap motel room right now!"

"Give it back!" Kelly screamed, tears of sheer desperation spilling down her cheeks. "You said L. Blackwood would sign my father's distribution agreement! But my dad just called me crying! He said the regional director personally stamped our cancellation papers! Lucas was sitting right inside that room, Oscar! What if he really knows them?"

"Shut up!" Oscar yelled, shoving her back against the leather seat. "You are overthinking! He is a useless cripple!"

[Camera Cut: Outside the campus gates, three heavy black SUVs belonging to the city marshal's office sped past Oscar's car, their red lights flashing directly toward the Darlington Group headquarters.]

Inside the executive boardroom of the Darlington Group, total chaos had erupted.

"Where is the eighty million dollars?!" Dean Darlington roared, slamming his heavy fist onto the mahogany table so hard that the crystal water glasses rattled.

His face was bright red, veins bulging along his neck. The television screens mounted around the room were all playing financial news broadcasts showing the Darlington Group's stock price plunging by sixteen percent in a single hour.

"The bank is refusing to grant a grace period!" Daniel shouted, holding his phone to his ear while sweating through his suit. "They said the credit line was tied directly to the 'L. Blackwood' personal guarantee! When Nathaniel wiped Lucas's sub-accounts from the system, the central banking algorithm treated it as an active fraud attempt!"

"Nathaniel!" Esther cried, turning her wide, terrified eyes toward her golden son. "Fix this! You told us you had full control of the financial network!"

Nathaniel sat at the head of the table, his tie undone, his handsome face completely pale. His fingers typed frantically on his laptop keyboard, but red warning boxes kept flashing across his screen.

[Access Denied: Master Override Required.]

[Access Denied: Master Override Required.]

"I... I am trying to re-enter the root code," Nathaniel stammered, his voice cracking with sheer terror. "Lucas must have placed a virus in the database before he left! He sabotaged us!"

"Sabotaged us?" Connie shrieked from the corner, clutching her expensive handbag. "Father, call the police! Have that wheelchair retard arrested for grand theft! He stole our company money!"

"He didn't steal anything!" Daniel yelled back at her, his voice dripping with absolute despair. "I just audited the last five years of ledger entries! Lucas didn't take a single cent out of the company! He was using his own private patent royalties from L. Blackwood to cover our interest payments! He was paying our bills with his own money!"

The boardroom went so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Dean stepped back, his body swaying slightly as if he had been struck in the head with a sledgehammer. "What did you say?"

"The eighty-million-dollar loan was never backed by Darlington assets," Daniel wept, dropping a stack of legal documents onto the table. "Lucas backed it with his personal signature! We didn't keep him out of pity, Mr. Darlington... he was holding our entire debt structure on his shoulders! Now that he is gone, the banks are executing total asset liquidation!"

[Camera Cut: Nathaniel slumped back into his chair, his eyes wide and hollow as he realized the entire 'empire' he had just inherited was nothing but a mountain of unpayable debt.]

"Find him!" Esther screamed, her voice piercing through the heavy air as she grabbed Dean's arm. "Dean, go find him right now! Bring him back! Tell him it was a mistake! Tell him he is still our son!"

"He won't answer," Lydia whispered, looking at her phone screen with cold, trembling hands. "I tried calling him ten times. His number is disconnected."

In the quiet, dimly lit office of the L. Blackwood holding corporation, Lucas sat in his wheelchair near the floor-to-ceiling glass window.

The city spread out below him like a glowing grid of lights. His tablet sat on his lap, displaying three live financial streams.

"Young Master," Mandolin reported, standing respectfully three feet behind him. "The short-selling campaign against the Darlington Group's primary subsidiary, Darlington Logistics, has reached its peak. Their stock value has fallen by forty-two percent."

"Execute the secondary buy order," Lucas said flatly. His pulse remained at a calm sixty beats per minute.

"Understood," Mandolin replied, tapping his tablet screen. "We have quietly purchased thirty-eight percent of Darlington Logistics shares through six offshore shell accounts. By tomorrow morning, you will hold the majority vote on their logistics board."

"What about the Morton family?" Lucas asked, his eyes tracking the red stock tickers.

"The Mortons are taking the bait, Young Master," Mandolin smiled thinly. "When they saw the Darlington stock crash, they immediately injected sixty million dollars of their own capital to buy up the floating debt, thinking they could force a hostile takeover. They do not know that you already own the underlying mortgage notes."

"Let them buy more," Lucas said. "The higher they climb, the deeper the hole when the floor opens."

A quiet knock echoed at the office door.

Lancelot stepped inside, holding a silver tray with a sealed document and a small black velvet box.

"Young Master, Dr. Jessica from the Research Hospital has arrived downstairs," Lancelot reported. "She brought the final pathological analysis from Master Lawrence's blood sample."

"Bring her in," Lucas commanded.

The heavy mahogany doors opened, and Dr. Jessica walked into the room. She was no longer wearing her surgical scrubs, but a sharp white business suit that complemented her confident posture. Her bright, intelligent eyes swept across the luxurious office before settling directly on Lucas.

"I spent three hours cross-referencing your needle trajectory with the international medical database," Jessica said, walking straight to his desk without any hesitation. "There is no record of anyone performing that procedure without full fluoroscopic imaging."

"Pattern recognition," Lucas answered simply, not looking up from his tablet. "Human anatomy follows mathematical constraints. The variation is less than zero point five millimeters."

Jessica let out a soft, breathless laugh. "You talk about trauma surgery like it is simple calculus."

"It is," Lucas said. "If you understand the system, nothing is chaotic."

Jessica set the sealed document on his desk, her expression turning serious. "Master Lawrence asked me to deliver this personally. He underwent a full toxicology screen after you stabilized his airway. We found something abnormal in his blood work."

Lucas picked up the paper and opened it.

"Neurotoxin," Lucas stated, his eyes scanning the chemical compounds listed on the lab sheet. "A synthetic organophosphate derivative. It targets the motor neurons of the throat, mimicking an aggressive tumor."

"Yes," Jessica nodded, her voice dropping. "Someone was poisoning him slowly for six months. The exact same compound was found in an unregistered pharmaceutical shipment seized at the northern docks two days ago."

"Who imported it?" Lucas asked.

Jessica pointed her finger at the bottom of the lab report, where an official customs seizure seal was attached.

"The shipment was consigned to Vance Medical Distribution," Jessica revealed. "Kelly's father."

Lucas's hand remained completely steady. "He was acting as a blind middleman. Who paid the invoice?"

"The payment originated from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands," Jessica said. "The account holder name on the wire clearance sheet is Nathaniel Darlington."

[Camera Cut: In the Darlington mansion, Nathaniel was currently sitting in his bedroom, opening a hidden wall safe to retrieve a dark glass vial, unaware that his offshore wire transfer logs had already been fully decrypted by the central police network.]

Lucas closed the lab report. The piece of the puzzle fell into place with absolute, pristine clarity.

Nathaniel was not just trying to take over the Darlington family. He was systematically poisoning the city's top business leaders to create a medical crisis that only his secret suppliers could solve.

"Is Master Lawrence fully conscious now?" Lucas asked.

"He is," Jessica replied. "And he wants to meet you at the City Charity Gala tomorrow night. He is planning to announce his new primary medical partner in front of the entire upper class."

"I will be there," Lucas said flatly.

Jessica looked down at Lucas's legs, her professional instincts taking over. She leaned closer, her hand hovering inches away from his knee. "Your spinal cord injury... I reviewed your old X-rays from ten years ago. The central nerve bundle was not severed by a sharp impact."

Lucas looked at her face. "It was a surgical incision."

Jessica's breath caught in her throat. "Someone operated on you when you were a child... and deliberately cut your motor pathway?"

"Yes," Lucas said softly. His voice carried no anger, no sorrow, only pure, cold facts. "My grandfather knew who did it. That is why he left me the wooden box."

He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the small piece of yellowed parchment he had unlocked the previous night.

He turned it over.

There was a second line of text written on the back of the page in faint, dark ink, which he had not seen before:

“The man who ordered your surgery will be wearing the Ring of the Crimson Order at the City Charity Gala.”

Lucas's satellite phone on the desk suddenly vibrated with a sharp, heavy buzzing sound.

A text message from an unknown number flashed across the screen:

“Young Master Lucas, Dean Darlington has just put up the family's ancestral mansion as collateral to secure a emergency loan from Oscar Enterprises. Oscar has accepted the deal.”

Lucas tapped his fingers against his wheelchair armrest. A cold, ruthless smile touched the corner of his lips.

"Tell Mandolin to buy Oscar Enterprises' master debt," Lucas commanded flatly.

"They won't sell easily," Lancelot noted.

"They will," Lucas said, looking out at the glittering city below. "Oscar's father has a secret gambling debt of thirty million dollars in the underground Macao circuit. Hand him the buyout contract tonight. He will sign it before dawn."

Lancelot bowed. "It will be done."

Jessica watched Lucas with a mixture of awe and slight terror. "You are going to destroy both families in one night?"

"I am not destroying them," Lucas said, locking his wheelchair wheels and turning toward his private research lab behind the office. "I am simply collecting the interest on twenty years of abuse."

As Lucas pushed himself into the dark laboratory room, the heavy iron doors began to slide shut automatically.

Before the doors closed completely, Mandolin rushed into the outer office, his face pale, holding an urgent telegram envelope stamped with the black wax seal of the Supreme Medical Council.

"Young Master!" Mandolin shouted through the narrowing gap of the door. "Stop! The Supreme Council has just issued an emergency summons!"

Lucas stopped his wheels in the dark room, turning his head slightly. "Why?"

Mandolin held up the opened telegram, his voice shaking with absolute disbelief:

"Your grandfather's dead body... it has just been stolen from the family mausoleum!"