2024-09-10 08:22:31Those words sent shockwaves through everyone who had heard them. They couldn’t believe it, but the person who was most in disbelief was the first saleswoman. She snatched the phone from her colleague and dialed the number.
“Are you sure it was $500,000 received?” she yelled, her voice sharp with frustration.
Her tone was so rude that the person on the other end snapped back. “Why are you asking me an obvious question?!” he demanded. “$500,000 has been received! Is there some hotshot there or something?”
The saleswoman's words stuck in her throat as the confirmation hit her. The others who had belittled Tedmond earlier now remained silent, lips tightly sealed.
“Did you do something?” the voice on the phone asked, but the saleswoman quickly hung up, lowering her head.
She turned to Tedmond, bowing slightly. “I am extremely sorry for doubting you,” she stammered. “Can I get you a cup of tea as an apology while your things are packed?”
Tedmond glared down at her in silence. As she raised her head to meet his eyes, she flinched under his cold gaze.
“We made a deal, didn’t we?” Tedmond said calmly. “You were supposed to apologize while crawling around the store.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. She hadn’t actually expected to do it. “But... but…”
His eyebrows arched. “What are you waiting for? Did you forget what I asked you to do?”
Trembling slightly, she shook her head. “I never intended to do that. Couldn’t we just—”
“Your job or the deal?” Tedmond asked casually, cutting her off.
Without hesitation, she hurried away from the front desk and fell to her knees, shivering with embarrassment. She was about to start crawling when he stopped her with his foot.
“You seem to be forgetting something,” he said darkly. “I told you to apologize to your co-worker.”
She turned her head toward the salesman and yelled, “I’m sorry!”
The salesman was taken aback, awkwardly averting his gaze.
“Now, continue crawling,” Tedmond ordered.
The woman resumed, her face flushed with humiliation, while the other customers who had supported her earlier began recording the scene on their phones.
Tedmond glanced at the other saleswomen, and they all avoided his gaze in fear. “The one crawling could’ve been any of you,” he warned, and the women flinched.
“I’ll get your things ready,” the salesman said quickly, as though trying to rescue the situation. “Thank you for your help.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Tedmond replied. “I was only doing it for myself.”
Despite that, the salesman thanked him again and hurriedly packed Tedmond's purchases. Soon, Tedmond walked out of the store, and with the help of the staff, all of his items were loaded into the car.
“Should I drive you home, young master?” the driver asked, glancing back at Tedmond as he settled into the car.
Tedmond thought about it for a moment. He had left the house with only a few bags from his vacation, but he still had his things at the Griffin home.
“Drive me to Rolling Street,” he replied. “I have something to do there. Don’t wait for me—just drop me off.”
“Yes, young master.”
A few minutes later, Tedmond got out of the car far from his father's home to avoid drawing unnecessary attention. He waited for the driver to leave before walking toward the building.
The atmosphere was still cold, though not as biting as it had been earlier. After a short walk, he entered the Griffin compound. He wondered if his father had returned yet. Then, with a bitter thought, he corrected himself.
‘Ex-father.’
The man was no longer his father.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside, expecting to see his former family in the living room, but no one was there. He made his way toward the kitchen, glancing up the stairs as he walked.
His room wasn’t upstairs like the others'. Instead, it was in a small basement. The memory of the cramped space resurfaced as he approached.
“Didn’t you say he was in his room?!” a loud voice demanded, making Tedmond frown. It was Harold Griffin, his father—or rather, ex-father. “Where the hell is that brat?”
“He was here hours ago,” his stepmother, Evelyn, said, trying to calm him down.
“That brat!” Harold yelled.
Tedmond peeked through the open door. They were all in his room, no wonder the house had been quiet. Harold’s face was twisted in anger, the lines on his forehead prominent as he raged.
“Why are you looking for him?” Max, Tedmond's half-brother, asked. “We kicked him out of the family, like you said. He’s 19 now, and we no longer have to take care of him.”
Harold turned to glare at Max. “You should’ve done it while I was here!” he bellowed. “He has something important!”
Of course, Tedmond sighed. His father had no use for him unless it involved something valuable. Tedmond had considered giving them what they wanted and cutting all ties, but the next words made him pause.
“That stupid necklace his mother left him is valuable!” Harold claimed. “I just figured out its name and its worth!”
Tedmond’s hand instinctively reached for the necklace around his neck. It was the only thing his mother had left him, and for years, they had mocked it as something worthless. If they had known its value earlier, they would have sold it long ago.
His jaw clenched. Now, they wanted to find him only because they wanted something.
“I can get him back,” a voice said. It was Lisa, Tedmond’s ex-girlfriend, her face determined.
“And who the hell are you?” Harold demanded.
Apparently, he hadn’t attended the wedding.
“She’s my wife,” Max replied, and their sister Maxine nodded in agreement. “She’s Tedmond’s ex, and he’s still in love with her. She can trick him into giving us the necklace.”
Hearing that, Harold finally relaxed. “That’s settled then. We don’t need to bring him back here. That useless brat has caused enough trouble already. Get his stuff out of his room and toss it in the trash.”
“His room will become a storage space from now on,” Evelyn said, with a note of satisfaction. “I’ve wanted to get rid of him ever since he was brought here as a baby.”
Tedmond’s eyes darkened. He turned and left before they could notice him. Now he knew why they were looking for him, and he couldn’t wait for them to try. When they did, he would be ready with a nice surprise.
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CHAPTER 628– Harold’s Backstory I
The courtroom floor was cold, but the memory that flooded the void in the wake of the gunshot burned white-hot.Before the mansions, before the Griffin Group, before the corruption, there was a seven-year-old Harold.He wasn’t a monster then. He was just a boy living in the shadow of his mother, Vivian Griffin.The memory unfolded in the sprawling, manicured gardens of the old Griffin estate.Back then, they weren’t billionaires, but they were the elite of the county.Harold’s best friend wasn’t a Griffin.It was Leo, the son of the estate’s head stableman.They were inseparable.Leo was bold and charismatic, with a laugh that made Harold’s stiff, disciplined life feel bearable.“We’re brothers, right, Harold?” Leo had asked one afternoon, perched high in the branches of an oak tree. “When we grow up, we’ll run this place together.”“Brothers,” Harold had whispered, looking up with genuine adoration.But the core memory that broke Harold came during the Griffins’ annual Autumn Gala, th
CHAPTER 627
The thought hit him like a physical blow. He pictured her not as a ghost, but as a prisoner in some dark, concrete hell, waiting for a son who thought she was under six feet of dirt.The guilt was instantaneous, a suffocating wave that threatened to break his composure.He had been playing for stocks and buildings while his mother was being held by gangsters."She’s alive," Tedmond repeated, his voice barely a breath."She was too valuable to kill," Harold sneered, enjoying the way Tedmond’s face had finally crumbled. "And now, you'll never find her. Every day you spend in that penthouse, just know she’s under the dirt… just not the kind you think."Tedmond’s inner struggle was visible in the frantic twitch of his eyes.The logic that had made him a king was battling the raw, bleeding hope of a son.He wanted to scream, to wrap his hands around Harold's throat and tear the location from him, but he was paralyzed by the weight of the lie he had lived for years."Tedmond!" Persis’s voic
CHAPTER 626
The air in the room vanished, replaced by a raw, jagged panic.The low, professional murmurs of the gallery spiked into a chorus of terror.Reporters scrambled over one another, the sound of heavy benches scraping against the floorboards echoing like thunder."He has a gun! Get down!" someone shrieked from the back.A woman’s sharp, piercing scream cut through the chaos, followed by the frantic sobbing of a clerk who had crawled beneath a desk."TEDMOND!" Harold roared again, the sound tearing from his throat like an animal's.Tedmond didn’t hesitate.In a single he stepped in front of Persis.
CHAPTER 625
“Order!” The Judge hammered his gavel until the room fell into a deathly silence.He leaned over the bench, eyes fixed on the three brothers.“I have sat on this bench for thirty years. I have seen killers, thieves, and monsters. But rarely do I see men who look at the lives they’ve destroyed… lives of their own blood and lives of the poor and demand ‘fairness.’”Flipping through the final pages of the indictment, he continued,“The evidence provided by the whistleblower, who, for the record, has delivered more forensic proof than I’ve seen in a decade, is overwhelming. The accidental deaths resulted from grade-four steel being used where grade-one was required. You traded lives for profit margins. And the treatment of the minor in your care…”The Judge’s eyes softened briefly as they flicked to Tedmond, then hardened again.“It is a miracle he survived you at all.”“We didn’t know!” Harold pleaded, voice now a pathetic whine. “The contractors lied to us!”“The signatures on the cost-
CHAPTER 624
Tedmond didn’t reply.He walked toward his car, Thomas already holding the door open.As the sedan pulled away, leaving the prison and the name Griffin in the rearview mirror, Tedmond caught his reflection in the tinted glass. The revenge was complete. For the first time in years, the air he breathed felt entirely his own.*****Despite the winter chill outside, the central courtroom sweltered. The air conditioning had failed under the strain of the packed gallery, and the heat from camera lights turned the room into an oven. The thick scent of old wood, sweat, and the electric tension of a falling dynasty clung to the air.The heavy doors at the back swung open. Silence fell. Tedmond entered.To his right, Thomas remained watchful and composed. To his left, Persis moved with effortless grace, her presence commanding enough to make frantic reporters lower their microphones.They took seats in the front row, directly behind the prosecution. Tedmond folded his hands, face a mask
CHAPTER 623
Seeing the look on Tedmond’s face, confusion flared across Harold’s.“What do you mean?”Tedmond chuckled.“She is indeed my partner, Harold. But the money? The empire? That isn’t hers. It’s mine.”Harold scoffed, a flicker of old arrogance returning.“Yours? Don’t be ridiculous. Since when do you have anything? Even if you’d started a small business five years ago, it wouldn’t have grown into an entity capable of swallowing the Griffin Group. You were a nobody.”“It was my mother’s business,” Tedmond said quietly.Harold froze. The name of the woman he had discarded decades ago seemed to hang in the stale air like a ghost. Then, he began to laugh, a sharp, mocking sound.“Your mother? That beggar? That thief? Tedmond, she didn’t have a cent to her name when I kicked her out!”“She wasn’t a beggar, Harold. And she certainly wasn’t a thief,” Tedmond’s gaze turned lethal, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.“She was the daughter of an incredibly wealthy, powerful family who chose t
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