The Rise Of The Unknown Zillionaire Heir

Chapter 3

Seeing the shock on his face, Zinnia laughed again. "Let me do the honor to clear you of any confusion. I don't feel bad for cheating on you because you've cheated on me too by marrying me through deceptive means. You could have refused the proposal of my father then but you agreed to marry me and cause me humiliation every single day. You don't know how many times I've broken down when I'm being reminded that I, Zinnia Lennart, got married to a useless shit for brains. You're an idiot, Duncan."

Duncan watched the other family members laugh at him mockingly and still gathered the strength to talk in his appalled state.

His eyes brimmed with tears. "Zinnia, I wanted to give you a surprise on this special night of my birthday."

Everyone roared in laughter again except for Zinnia who eyed him with disgust.

"What could you have got to surprise me qwith? A cheap bouquet or cake? Or a worthless bracelet?"

Duncan shook his head and sniffed. "It was a…"

"Shut up!" She silenced him and held up her right hand. She flaunted the ring on her middle finger with a unique glittering gemstone. "Do you see this ring? Peterson gave it to me. He had also given me other nice things worth thousands of dollars in the past few days."

Duncan couldn't have been more shocked to know that his cheating wife had taken gifts from another man which he couldn't afford. It stung his ego but at the moment, he was feeling more devastated than defeated.

Peterson walked in and pecked Zinnia's lips.

"Peterson is a darling. You're merely useless."

"You've hurt me badly, Zinnia…"

She growled, Interrupting him. "I don't bloody care. In fact, you can leave if you want to."

Duncan was riled, he took a step forward to grab her shoulders but Peterson pushed him to the floor, and in a blink of an eye, Duncan was pounced on by him and Marcus who was delighted to want his bones broken.

After being trashed, he was left clutching his stomach in pain and spitting out blood. Duncan managed to get on his feet and stared at each of them who mockingly laughed at him, feeling pleased to see him in that state.

"Zinnia, you all…will regret treating me like trash and trampling on me like I was mud," he said with gritting teeth, making them increase the level of their laughter.

He swore within himself to make them pay and headed out of the house, his whole body aching.

"Don't mind him. He'll come crawling back because he has no place to stay." Duncan heard Laila say as he stepped out of the house and all agreed with a smirk.

Someone ran to the door and shut the door close behind him.

Having no place to go, Duncan wandered aimlessly in the streets. His mind was shrouded with disappointment, betrayal, and anger.

 Why did Zinnia do this? He thought that she'll get to love him with time just like the way he had fallen in love with her despite their marriage happening on her grandfather's saying, and that's why he had strived the make her happy and support her by working as a delivery man and working part-time as a janitor in their company. 

He felt devastated as the visual of his wife making out with Peterson flashed in his mind.

He didn't want to go to the hospital to spend the night in the room his grandmother was staying in. He knows she's probably fast asleep and even though he sneaks in, the moment she opens her eyes and sees him in the room, she's going to be worried and ask him a lot of questions.

He took out his phone and having John's number stored in his head, he decided to call him to ask if he could crash at his place for the night.

"Hello, this is…?"

"It's me, Duncan."

"Oh, what's up? I was thinking of calling you to ask how the surprise went. Was Zinnia happy?"

Duncan was speechless for a while before he got the courage to reveal. "Things didn't happen as I had planned. I found Zinnia cheating on me."

"Damn it. I felt something like this was going to happen someday." Duncan heard him curse under his breath.

"You said it. I really got a shocking surprise from my wife."

"Duncan…sorry, man."

"It's alright. Please, can I crash at your place tonight?"

"Shoot, I wouldn't mind but as I speak, I'm in the subway heading to the next city. My Mom collapsed. I'm sorry, I'll only be back by Friday morning."

"It's alright. Take care of your Mom."

Duncan hung up and went on wandering.

He was almost at the dead end of a street when he decided to take a rest by a dumpster. He sat on some made bricks, leaning against the dumpster.

He slipped into deep thoughts.

"How will I live onwards? I've got no one to rely on for a while and how am I going to settle the accumulated hospital bills of my grandmother's treatment?"

Then he regretted buying the ten thousand dollar ring for Zinnia. He should have thought it through and used it to pay up some of the debts he had on his neck. 

He couldn't stop himself from questioning his existence.

"First my parents, now I've lost my adopted family and my wife," he thought and shook his head. "Isn't just giving up on this world the best thing I can do now?"

He sighed and after a while, his phone vibrated in his hand. He got a call from an Unknown number.

"Who could this be?" He shrugged and answered the call, reluctantly.

"Hello…"

"Young Master, you finally answered the call," a baritone voice revealing worry and excitement, said. Duncan's lips parted as he stared at the phone screen and shook his head.

"Excuse me? Who are you?" He questioned, baffled.

"Young Master Walton, I'm your loyal man. I'm greatly pleased that you've answered the call."

'Young Master Walton?' Duncan was dazed. Who could it be that's addressing him so highly and respectfully? He wondered.

Then Duncan supposed it was a wrong number.

"I think you called the wrong line. Sorry. I'll hang up now…"

"Please, master…"

Duncan angrily ended the call and sighed.

He thinks the caller had called to trick him. Why? Because he had experienced that before.

Some months ago, when he decided to insert the old sim card into his phone, someone had called him and almost made him send some money into a certain account with the promise that he would get over three times what he had sent. He was lucky to be saved by his colleagues in the restaurant then.

He returned back to thinking about how he was going to live his life onwards. As he contemplated on whether to sleep by the dumpster or go to a nearby police station to sleep, his phone rang again.

 This time, he ignored the call after checking it was the same number that called before.

"Why can't they go and fool someone else? My life is on the brink of ending and I'm feeling depressed, still, these heartless scammers won't stop until they've swindled a poor person," he grumbled looking down the quiet empty street.

Some passers-by who walked past him and saw him grumbling to no one but himself thought he had lost his sanity.

He felt more embarrassed knowing that they must be regarding him to be a mad fellow.

After incessant calls from the number, Duncan angrily decided to answer the call, swearing to pour out his anger and frustration on the caller who he already assumed was a fraudster.

"Young Master Walton…"

The baritone voice said when he answered the call but he quickly interrupted him, almost shouting.

"I'm not your master. My last name isn't Walton. Are you…."

"Excuse me, but you're Duncan?"

"No…" Duncan said in a rush and paused when he realized he had answered wrongly. "Yes, I mean. I'm Duncan."

"Young Master, please give me a chance for clarification. I'll be where you are in a jiffy." The caller hung up and Duncan couldn't stop himself from laughing strangely.

"Let me see how he disappears and appears here. I'm sure he's not a magician," he said to himself.

It was logical. Duncan didn't even give the caller a clue of where he was so he wondered how the man was going to track him down. 

In less than ten minutes, Duncan was about to doze off by the dumpster, then… 

  'Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!!'

 The sounds of moving cars forced him to jump up and in a blink of an eye, a fleet of slick Ford Mustang GT500 cars pulled up in line before him. The doors of the cars quickly opened and a group of men dressed in black suits, wearing the same color of wireless earbuds and dark glasses stepped out.

Some passers-by stopped right in their tracks upon seeing them. Duncan's jaw dropped as they all at once bowed down to him.

"Greetings, young Master Walton!" Their voices boomed as they greeted in unison to his amazement.