“This is your last chance. Get lost, or we'll open fire,” the head of security for the Sinclair estate threatened. “Your kind are not even allowed in this part of the city, so how can you possibly live here?” Examining Phil's ragged waste management uniform, she asked.
“I do live here… Sometimes… Gosh, this argument isn't going anywhere. Just let me in, so I can retrieve my wife from that event. She's not in the condition to be at such a rowdy place,” Phil humbly implored the female guard.She exchanged an amused glance with her colleagues, and together, they erupted into laughter.“You really expect us to believe that you are married to Mrs. Eve?” She scrutinized him harshly with a disgust-twisted face and continued, “I know what you really want to do here. You just want to enter the party, pick as many pockets as you can lay your fingers on, and leave. Countless people like you have tried, but we stopped them all. So…” Drawing out her pistol, she pointed it at Phil.“Leave,” she ordered, and the other guards joined in, pointing their cocked pistols at him.Recognizing the now unwavering seriousness in their expressions, Phil knew he needed to explore an alternative method to enter the Sinclair estate. Although he spoke the truth about his relationship with Eve, convincing them seemed an insurmountable task, as only a select few were privy to their connection.However, time was of the essence, and he was determined to attend the extravagant joint birthday party that Lily Sinclair was hosting for her and her daughter, Eve.Yesterday, Phil had fervently besought Eve not to partake in the celebration. Nonetheless, everyone knew that Eve Sinclair was a pampered heiress who would sooner defy her pauper husband's wishes than concede.She and her mother had even conspired to keep Phil as far from the city as possible, so he wouldn't ruin the party with his presence. But he managed to piece together their plan and returned intending to extricate Eve from the event, even if it required force.Withdrawing from the front gates, Phil quietly made his way to the back gates of the estate. He heaved himself up the golden-tinted gates and sneaked into some well-trimmed bushes, deftly avoiding incoming guards.Phil noticed he was suddenly bleeding from his arms and looked back at the gate to see pieces of his clothes hanging in the gate's barbed wire. He had injured himself trying to enter. But he bore the pain and continued with his retrieval plan. His safety didn't matter to him; the woman he loved and his unborn child's safety were most important.Observing that there were no guards in the immediate vicinity, he cautiously proceeded toward the mansion's kitchen and, subsequently, inside the grand abode. Although no uniformed security personnel were in sight, there were men donned in impeccably tailored military suits dispersed throughout the lively party. Phil discreetly scoured the premises for any sign of Eve.He sashayed past the prestigious guests of some of the city's most prominent families, some worth billions, and made sure to ignore their gazes whenever they rested on him.The contrast between their appearance and his was stark, and it didn't take long for someone to notice and call him out for his ragged, bloodstained, smelly clothes. Sadly, that person ended up being Eve's snobbish cousin, Ethan, who had made it his sole purpose to either beat or ridicule Phil at any time he saw him.“Hey, who the hell let this smelly street dog in here?” Ethan yelled with his deep baritone voice, making the entire guest at the party, despite the music playing, shift their attention to him and then to the person he was talking to.He snickered. “I guess street dogs will always find a way to come back to the place they are being fed.”The entire event immediately echoed with laughter after Ethan was done talking. The guests, the rich and influential, always love when commoners like Phil are put in their place, and witnessing this unfold before them brings joy to their souls.Ethan, whose smugness was now radiating from every part of his being, parted his lips to insult Phil even more but was stopped by his twin brother—not to reprimand him for insulting the no-good pauper, but to add his salt to the wound.“I think he must be starving. Look how unkempt he is. He mustn't have eaten anything for days. Please, somebody give this beggar-looking man something to eat before he attacks one of us here.” Aiden Sinclair chimed in, and the entire event reverberated with more laughter. Out of mockery, the guests started throwing little bits of their food on the floor, so he could eat it, while making condescending puppy noises.Phil could only watch with almost tear-filled eyes as prominent families mocked and ridiculed him. He however tuned out their mockery and made his way to the foot of the mansion's spiral stairs, in the hopes of finding his wife on higher ground. As he scoured the guest, he noticed there was a peculiar lady staring up at him, not out of pity, but strangely out of hope.He didn't dwell on why she was staring at him in such a manner.After not spotting Eve, he proceeded to go upstairs but was stopped by a voice — the voice of his mother-in-law, the one woman who had single-handedly tried whatever it took to get him out of the family after the passing of Eve's father a month back.The one woman who hated him more than the devil was Lily, because when he became the lawful husband to her daughter, those who knew about the marriage mocked the Sinclairs.Apart from the mockery she endured, Lily's hatred for Phil ran deep. She loathed him primarily because, by marrying Eve, he singlehandedly thwarted her chances of gaining complete power over Labyrinth City. As she had always envisioned Eve marrying a man who would prioritize the family. But that dream was momentarily shattered when Eve's father married her off to the kind-hearted pauper.“Shouldn't you be at Oases City picking trash? What the hell are you doing here?” Lily asked as she cat-walked over to where he was. Making her way from the crowd of laughing guests, her aged beauty radiated, complementing the elegant black skimpy dress she donned. One would doubt she was in her 50s.“I came to take Eve out of this party. You are her mother, right? Why did you let her attend such an event when you know she is heavily pregnant?” Phil asked indignantly, but Lily, doing what she does best, shunned and yelled at him.“You street dog! How dare you question my duty as a mother? You were and still are a poor garbage picker when my timid husband married you to my beloved daughter. So, don't you ever question me. We ain't of the same class for you to question the decisions my daughter and I make.” Darting her eyes warily upstairs and back at Phil while she spoke. It was evident that she was hiding something, and Phil took the hint.“Eve is upstairs, isn't she?” Squirming around, Phil proceeded to make his way to the top floor, but was swiftly held back by Lily.“No matter how hard I try to get rid of you, you always crawl your way back into our lives. I've picked you out of the company, the house, and tried to file for a divorce, but still you don't leave. No more!” Looking Phil dead in the eyes, Lily spluttered. Phil tried to shrug her hands away from his, but her grip was firm.“Security! Security! Come and take this smelly street dog out of my house.” Lily yelled hysterically. Seeing that his chance at getting his wife might be thwarted, Phil forcefully pulled Lily's hands away and sprinted his way to the top floor.Lily skidded back from Phil's pull but balanced herself before she could stumble. The prestigious guests who were watching all this while, laughed at her predicament. She seethed and stalked behind Phil.The guests craved more of the drama, and they all followed Lily—to the dismay of Ethan and Aiden.Getting to the floor corridor, Phil heard girlish groans, but as he proceeded down the floor, the groans sounded more like intense moaning from a lady who was getting intimate. The sounds were coming from his supposed matrimonial bedroom.With shaking hands, Phil twisted the doorknob to see his pregnant wife engaged in an intimate act on their matrimonial bed. His heart sank at the sight.“What the hell are you doing?!” Phil wore a look of disbelief as he yelled.His outburst caused the other man to pause in his actions. The man, who was notably large and dressed in a midnight blue military uniform with gold braids, resembling that of a general, slowly withdrew from Eve.“Gosh that was good.” The burly man sighed.He staggeringly picked up a bottle of wine beside him, drew up his pants, and turned to Eve. “Who is this? Wait is he that no-good pauper—garbage collector husband that got you pregnant?” He asked mockingly and gulped down half the contents of the bottle.“Unfortunately, he is,” Eve replied with disdain, adjusting her dress. She leaned on the man, hoping that this would deeply wound Phil and ultimately drive him away.“How did someone like him get you pregnant? Look at him, he looks like… what's it called? Yes, a homeless man. How did he even get married to you?” The man, completely intoxicated by the drink he held, inquired. With a grimaced face, Eve answere
‘Wake up, child. It's time to claim what's rightfully yours. Your time of being seen as a street dog has passed. Now is the moment to shine and exact vengeance upon all who those that wronged us,’ the injured woman from earlier whispers out to Phil while he was unconscious.Slowly, his eyes crept open, and he found himself lying on a king-sized bed in a prestigious, see-through glass-walled room, sparsely adorned with medieval-era antiques.Phil heard beeping sounds of a heart monitoring machine, and he could hear people quietly chattering among themselves in the room.It was only when he felt a brief, fleeting pain in his arm, that disappeared almost immediately, that he remembered what had happened to him.How he had died.‘Where am I? Am I dead? No, I'm alive…But how?’ Phil's racing thoughts almost caused him a migraine. Tilting his head to the side, he scanned every corner of the prestigious room.While he tried to discern where he was, sounds and visions from the torturous night
Phil had been so invested in the story that he practically yelled at Kate when she suddenly stopped narrating. Kate, who halted her story to analyze his expression after revealing to him that he was a trillionaire, was stunned that he cared more about his identity and parents than his inheritance.“...Wait, how did you find me then? Why haven't the Del Rosarios been thrown in prison for what they did? The Sinclairs are involved in this as well? Are there still human trafficking operations in the country?” Phil sputtered. The sad demise of his parents mixed with suspense from the incomplete story made him mildly distraught. “Don't you mind that you're the richest person in the entire country?” Kate asked, as if testing his virtues. “You should be leaping—dancing, even.”“My parents are dead, I was killed, and the people who did all that are free. Why should I care about money when my family is no more?” With a substantial amount of pain in his voice, Phil muttered and slumped in his c
Arriving at the ATM, Phil inserted the card given to him, entered the pin, and while the machine scanned his card for authenticity, his eyes darted to a somewhat large concave mirror at the side.In the reflection, he saw himself carefully, noticing the drastic change in his appearance and overall build. He had more facial hair than ever, glowing skin, a chiseled body, and a bulked-up physique. He looked different from his wimpy past self and wondered how he had glowed up during his coma.Was it the medicines or the food they supplied him? Phil wondered as he checked out his massive muscles. His attention was drawn back to the ATM screen after it finished analyzing his card.[Lord Platinum card analyzed, please select your desired amount: $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000. You can input the desired amount needed.]Phil's mouth hung open at the sight. He remembered that the highest you could withdraw from an ATM was usually at least ten thousand dollars. But why was the machine showing him
“Men! I hate that ****ing thug. He thinks, just because he is a general and somehow married to our cousin, he can control us as he wishes. A**hole!” Ethan exclaimed as he made his way to the booth seat in front of Phil.“It hurts more that Aunt takes his side than ours. She really thinks we will give up our shares in Black Mercury just because he needs it to take over the company. Hell no,” Aiden added, following him from behind and slumping into a chair with some girls, while a few bodyguards stood to watch.“Men, I'm so angry right now. I could beat someone up,” Ethan said disgruntled, hitting his hand on the table. “I really wished that pauper… was his name? Yes, Phil, was here, so I could vent my anger on him,” Ethan added.Phil listened with anger boiling inside, clutching his glass tightly as they talked. Memories of the insults and physical pain inflicted by the brothers haunted his thoughts.“Yeah, I really loved beating the s**t out of that dog. I really wished he hadn't kill
The driver pulled up in front of the Lord's grandeur mansion, but strangely this time there was a line of knights standing outside the car, waiting for Alex despite the sudden outburst of rain.All clothed in customized black suits that were now mildly wet, the knights exuded sheer bravery and loyalty. As Alex stepped out of the car, all the knights synchronously bowed and saluted him, yelling, “Welcome back, boss Lord!” at the top of their equally baritone voices.Witnessing this, Alex smugly grinned at the respect they showed him and made his way inside to see Kate and a rather familiar towering bald Italian man across the gigantic sitting room.Kate and the bald man turned towards him after a servant announced his arrival. With an impressed smirk on her face, she locked eyes with him, and he closed some distance between them.The Italian man, however, turned towards him with a stern expression on his face. He was almost as scary and cold-looking as the dragon tattoos he had all ove
Despite now officially being a Lord, Alex was far from happy; the scowl etched on his face while staring at Kate made it clear. He couldn't believe that she had almost set him up for murder and was bewildered by the sheer nonchalance now lingering in her expression after what had just happened.At no point in his life had he been required to exercise more restraint than just now, and this was including the fact that he had shared a brutal history with the people he wasn't supposed to kill. What if he actually pulled the trigger? Alex contemplated, while his smoldering gazed fixates on Kate. She, on the other hand, stood rigid, wondering why Alex hadn't taken the Lord's badge from her or, at the very least, shown any sign of elation as he had passed the test. She dropped her arms and closed some distance, unswayed by the unwelcoming demeanor, he had on. Now a breath's length from him, her eyes caught his hands, which were twitching furiously. She held them in an effort to calm him an
Alex instinctively took a stance upon hearing; finally, the moment was about to unfold. The world was on the verge of getting to know him, and after they did, from that point onward, nothing would be the same.Turning back would be impossible, and frankly, he was fine with that.Just from the unpleasant test he had successfully undergone, he already recognized that, after the release of his identity to the world, his newfound life wouldn't be a walk in the park.There would be glamorous celebrations, meetings, handshakes, threats on his life, fights, a pursuit of power, and undoubtedly, a bloody quest for true justice. Yet, knowing all these things, he was prepared to take the first initiative.From where he stood, he signaled for her to proceed. Nodding firmly in affirmation, Kate pressed a button on her tablet. Consequently, she received a phone call and mouthed, “Release it!” to the person on the other end of the line. A sharp female voice assented to her demand, and a few keyboard