2024-08-21 09:43:49As Alex approached the house entrance, Sophia noticed that Alex
was behind her."Haven’t you had enough?"
"Believe me," Alex replied, "running into you is the last thing I wanted today."
Sophia stepped out, blocking his path.
"So, what is it then? Are you here to remind me of the biggest mistake of my life?"
"Mistake?" Alex’s tone grew colder.
"I could say the same. You think I enjoyed waking up and realizing I’d wasted my time with someone so shallow?"
"Shallow?" Sophia’s eyes flashed with anger.
"You’re just bitter because you know I’m right. You’re nothing but a loser, a gold-digger."
Alex laughed, shaking his head.
"You’re delusional. I don’t need anything from you, least of your money."
Sophia stepped even closer, her finger jabbing the air between them.
"Then what do you want? To ruin my life even more?"
"No, I’m not here to ruin anything." Alex locked his eyes with hers. "I’m meeting my fiancée."
"Your fiancée? You have a fiancée?" Sophia shocked.
"I’m here to meet someone named Sophia Lancaster at this address," Alex’s patience wearing thin.
"I’m not looking for you. So, if you can help me out, call her, and I’ll leave as soon as possible."
WTF?!
Sophia paused, her expression shifting from shock to realization.
"Wait... you're here for that Sophia Lancaster?"
Alex coldly replied.
"Yes! Can you please just get her? I don't have time for games."
Sophia bit her lip, trying to mask the confusion swirling inside her.
"There’s no need to call anyone. I’m... I’m Sophia Lancaster."
They stood there, staring at each other in stunned silence.
Just then, a voice called out from inside the mansion.
"Alexander Leonhart!"
An old man stepped out, his face lighting up with a wide smile.
"Master told me you would come today! What are you doing out there?"
"Grandfather," Sophia called.
The old man, Abraham Lancaster, turned towards them, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
He looked between them, his smile growing even wider as if he had been waiting for this moment.
"So, you've met Alex, your fiancé. It’s great to know you both know each other."
Sophia quickly interjected, "We are not—"
"Call your parents, Sophia," Abraham said, cutting her off.
"Gather everyone in the Great Hall. I have an announcement. You both are going to get married today."
Sophia stood, shocked.
"Finally, my long-held wish can be fulfilled today," Abraham’s voice trembled with happiness.
He walked over to Alex, his hand reaching out to grasp Alex’s.
"Come, let’s go to the Great Hall. You’ll meet your in-laws."
Sophia watched them walk away, disbelief and anger surging through her.
She had lost her virginity to that man, and now she was supposed to lose her future too.
"This can't be happening!"
She had dreamed of an extraordinary fiancé, someone worthy, someone heroic, not any rubbish!
Instead, she was now being handed to a man she could have picked off the street.
As CEO of Lancaster Group, known for her beauty and bright future, how could she marry such a man?
What would people think?
"No," she decided. "I'll stop this marriage, no matter the cost."
***
In the Great Hall, Abraham guided Alex to an honored seat.
"How is Master?"
"Still healthy after a hundred years," Alex replied.
"You’re young, successful, and humble. I’m fortunate to have a grandson-in-law like you. Sophia is a good person; please give her a chance to get to know you better."
Alex nodded politely, but he doubt the possibility.
Sophia didn’t look like she wanted the chance.
"Wonderful, wonderf—" Abraham laugh joyfully.
However, just then, an angry voice cut in.
"Are you insane?! Sophia cannot marry him!"
Lady Lancaster, Abraham's wife, angrily stormed into the Great Hall.
She was flanked by their two sons and two daughters-in-law, with Sophia trailing behind them.
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Chapter 776
The Hall of Council went so silent you could hear the rain on the gallery windows three storeys up.The Minister of the Interior was still on one knee in front of the throne.He stayed there for a moment longer than he meant to, and in that moment every man in the room watched him understand it.He had stood up and asked for Harland. Then he had chased a prince down the middle of the floor.Then he had asked the Emperor to put that prince on a scaffold.And now there was a ghost in the room that wanted his head, and the only thing standing between the Second Queen and her grave was whether the Emperor was willing to hand it over.He had dug the hole himself, one shovel at a time, in front of witnesses.There was no way out of it.They had wanted to take everything from him, and he had turned around and hit them exactl
Chapter 775
"Your Majesty."The voice came from the left side of the floor, and every head in the Hall of Council turned toward it, because everybody knew which side of the floor that was.There were three factions in that room, and there had been for twenty years.The First Queen's people sat on the right, under the green standards.The Second Queen's sat on the left, under the gold. And in the middle, in the plain seats nearest the throne, sat the ones who belonged to nobody — the career men, the old families, the ministers who served the Emperor and whoever came after him and had very carefully never been seen to prefer a prince.It was the left side that stood up first.The Minister of the Interior came down onto the black stone with his hands folded in front of him."Your Majesty, the Second Queen's household is prepared to be generous." He turned his palms up."We will agree to restore the Tenth Prince to the line of succession. Whatever this council struck from the record, let it be writte
Chapter 774
He sat with that newspaper for most of the night, and the money was the smallest part of it.A billion dollars was a number. He could make a billion dollars.What he could not make was a witness.Alexander still did not know which of them had killed his mother.He knew it was one of two women.The Second Queen had borne the First Prince — the crown prince, the eldest, the one the court had been arranging itself around for thirty years.And the First Queen had come late to it. She had been barren for nine years and then, past forty, she had borne the Second Prince, and from the day that boy could walk she had been pushing him at the throne with both hands.Two women. Two sons. One line of succession, and eight queens' worth of children standing in the way of it.One of those two women had signed that....The summons arrived four days later, on paper, with a seal.His Imperial Majesty required the attendance of Prince Alexander of Leonhart at the Hall of Council in the capital, to answ
Chapter 773
The first real money arrived on a Tuesday, and Richie brought the printout up the stairs himself because he did not trust himself to say the number out loud.One million subscribers.Twenty dollars a month, every one of them, on a service that had existed for eleven weeks."Twenty million dollars," Richie said. "A month. Recurring."Behind him, Felicia had stopped in the doorway with a tray in her hands and forgotten she was holding it...."And the corporate side?" Alexander asked."That's the other page." Richie turned it over for him, and his hand was not quite steady."Separate tier. Direct connection, machine to machine — the firms don't want a person typing, they want their own systems talking to ours. We've signed nine hundred and forty accounts, most of them on the mainland, four in the capital.""How much?""Another twenty million a month. Give or take."Forty million dollars a month, out of a two-storey building opposite a fish market....Felicia put the tray down very care
Chapter 772
The crowd went home talking, and Alexander went upstairs to the governor's office and sat down with the truth.A tax haven is not a law. A tax haven is a reputation.You can write anonymity into your statute in an afternoon. Getting a man in another country to move nine million dollars to an island he has never heard of, through a bank with four staff and a door for a vault, on the word of a twenty-year-old prince the whole Empire calls an idiot — that takes something else entirely.He had no name. Harland had no name.And the island had nothing to sell. No ore under the chalk, no port, no factory, a fishing fleet older than its crews and a tourist season dying a little every year.To attract outside money, Harland had to create something people actually wanted to buy.It was the only way to launder the proceeds into clean, legal cash.He wrote to the head steward that night."If I want to borrow for Harland, how much can I have? I need it to start a business."The answer came back in
Chapter 771
The letter came up the hill in an official car eleven days later.The Emperor's head steward wrote it himself, in his small neat hand, and it said what the council had decided.His Imperial Majesty, on the advice of the council, was pleased to grant the governorship of the island of Harland to Prince Alexander of the House of Leonhart.The prince would take up his post at his earliest convenience.And the court wished to see results in five years.Felicia read it over his shoulder twice and did not understand why he had gone so quiet."Is it good?" she said. "It sounds good. It sounds like they're giving you something."“Well,” Alexander thought, “first they hand over a castle, and now they’re throwing in the entire island with it.”...In the capital, the Second Queen laughed until she had to sit down."Harland." She said the word to the ceiling. "Harland. Out of the entire Empire, they gave him Harland."Her head maid poured the tea and permitted herself a smile."It is the poorest
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Reader Comments
but he doubted the possibility
good novel
like seriously