The son abandoned 15 years ago suddenly returns to seize the entire empire of his faithless father!
Tonight, as the city’s brilliant neon lights reflected through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the chairman’s office, that man finally understood what it felt like to fall from the pinnacle of fame into the abyss of utter destitution, and the person who pushed him down was none other than the flesh and blood he had ruthlessly abandoned by the roadside years ago.
In a poor city, where the red dirt roads were muddy every rainy season and dilapidated level-four houses leaned against each other to get by, my small family once sank into a gray palette of hardship. Yet, poverty was never something that shattered family happiness faster than human greed and inconstancy. The man who bore the title of father, after years of being nurtured through thick and thin by his devoted wife, began to loathe the muddy quagmire of reality. He yearned for tailored suits, lavish parties, and the power of high society that he believed he deserved to belong to. On lonely, cold nights, my mother’s heavy sighs and my self-pitying cries hidden behind the rotted wooden walls were scars deeply etched into a child’s mind. I early on had to learn to taste the bitterness of contempt and the pain of rejection.
Yet, the climax of humiliation and cruelty was not those impoverished days, but that fateful afternoon. As the evening sun cast its glow against mold-stained walls, that man grandly strode back into the shabby rented house, leading a gorgeous woman in an expensive dress exhaling the heady fragrance of imported perfume. He threw a crumpled stack of cash onto the worn-out wooden table and coldly declared before the mother and child: “From now on, she will be your new child’s mother. As for the two of you… pack up and go wherever you please, don’t stay here and burden my future any longer.”
The moment the “new mother’s” gaze swept across us with utter contempt, and my biological father nonchalantly turned his back and walked away without casting even a single glance back, the fire of hatred in my heart officially ignited. I rushed forward to embrace my mother’s trembling shoulders, feeling hot tears soaking her tiny frame. I clenched my fists until they bled, vowing to myself: There will come a day when I make the man who trampled upon my mother’s self-respect pay with everything he owns.
From that day on, the lives of the two of us drifted to another secluded street corner. Mother fell seriously ill due to physical exhaustion and tearing emotional pain, but her eyes looking at me were always tinged with sadness and anxiety. I worked hard at all sorts of heavy jobs while studying to make a living and buy medicine for my mother. Having no money for books, I scavenged torn, old books from scrap yards, cleaned them up, and stayed up all night under the dim flicker of an oil lamp to devour knowledge. I turned my ultimate resentment into intense survival energy. I told myself that weakness was the ultimate luxury that a penniless person was never allowed to possess.
The year I turned eighteen, mother passed away on a freezing winter night, taking along her unreleased grievances. Before closing her eyes, her thin, freezing hand gripped mine, gently twitching as if wanting to impart some final words, only to slip away into eternity. Mother’s funeral took place in the utmost chill of the poor neighborhood. No funeral wreaths, no words of inquiry from the wealthy man on the other side of the city. That night, standing before the fresh red soil grave, I no longer cried. My tears had dried up long ago. Inside my chest remained only a block of ice and an extreme, ironclad determination.
I abandoned all hope for tolerance or family affection. I passed the entrance exams to a top economics university thanks to my stellar academic achievements, which I had paid for with sweat and blood. In a university environment rife with wealth-based discrimination, I tightly concealed my impoverished past behind a cold, sharp, and detached exterior. I cared nothing for romantic games or the pointless social relationships of youth. All my time and energy were focused on researching financial markets, the operations of underground capital flows, venture capital funds, and dark-room corporate takeover tactics.
With a cold mind and innate data analysis skills, I quickly caught the attention of professors and major investors. I worked while studying at financial firms, step by step accumulating experience and pooling tiny capitals to establish an anonymous investment fund of my own. Throughout ten grueling years, while that unfaithful man was busy expanding his business empire, building skyscraper towers, and enjoying a lavish life with his new wife and their shared child, I was on the other side of the battle line, quietly weaving an invisible net to engulf his entire fortune.
I did not choose direct confrontation through violence, because violence only brings brief satisfaction and lands me in prison. I wanted him to experience the feeling of losing everything bit by bit: from power and wealth to honor, so that when he realized the truth, he would be left utterly empty-handed amidst the world. Step by step, I acquired the bad debts his corporation was carrying, bought floating shares on the market through shell companies, and planted loyal people in crucial positions within his financial management apparatus. He thought he was an invincible tycoon, unaware that every signature he put on investment expansion documents was a self-inflicted slash to his own throat, remote-controlled by the very son he had once abandoned.
And then, the fateful moment arrived. Tonight, in the ultra-modern boardroom on the top floor of the downtown skyscraper—once a symbol of that man’s pride and power—an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting was taking place in a heart-stopping, suffocating atmosphere. The crystal chandeliers cast their light down onto the vibrant red velvet carpet, reflecting the anxious expressions of the board of directors.
That man walked into the boardroom with his familiar arrogant demeanor, wearing an expensive designer suit, his hair speckled with gray, yet his stride still exuded authority. He swept his cold gaze around the conference table, thinking this was just another routine meeting to resolve minor issues. But the moment he stepped up to the central chairman’s seat, he froze. His seat was already occupied.
From the shadows at the end of the table, I leisurely stood up. I wore a sharp, unwrinkled suit, my face expressionless and cold. I slowly buttoned my jacket, taking steady steps toward the chairman’s chair, and casually sat down amidst the utter shock and confusion of all the board members.
That man widened his eyes, his face drained of all color, pointing at me and stuttering incoherently: “You… who are you? How dare you sit in this seat? Security, drag this impostor out!”
Not a single person in the room moved. The board members all lowered their heads in silence, because they knew very well who truly held the power of life and death over the corporation at this moment.
I smiled faintly, a chillingly flat smile, and slowly pushed a thick dossier neatly clipped with a brass paperclip across to him. “There’s no need to call security, former chairman,” my voice rang out warm, calm, yet as cold as piercing ice through the silent expanse of the boardroom. “Open that dossier and look closely at the final lines. The investment fund you still think of as a strategic partner saving the corporation has actually completed the acquisition of ninety percent of the voting shares three days ago. You are completely bankrupt.”
The man trembling grabbed the dossier, flipping through the pages with uncoordinated, trembling hands. Striking his eyes were numbers, legal transfer contracts, and the glaring red seals of law enforcement agencies. Each page felt like a hammer striking directly at his psyche, causing his chest to tighten and making breathing difficult. He snapped his head up, glaring at me in utter terror, stammering: “This… this is impossible! Who is behind you? Just who are you to swallow this entire corporation in silence?”
I slowly stood up, placing both hands on the conference table, leaning forward to look straight into the man’s eyes, now clouded with fear and helplessness. I whispered every single word clearly, loud enough to echo deep into his soul: “Have you truly forgotten? Fifteen years ago, in a shabby rented room in a poor street corner, you abandoned my mother and me out on the street to chase after wealth and glory. Today, the son you once despised and cast aside… has returned to reclaim everything that belongs to my mother and me, and to teach you the true price of betrayal.”
Hearing this, the man staggered backward, collapsing into the expensive leather chair, his eyes rolling back, his chest heaving gasps as he could not utter another word. The brilliant chandelier lights outside still shone down on the prosperous city, but inside this room, history’s game had officially concluded. The stage of arrogance had completely collapsed, returning a ruthless justice to the resentment buried in darkness for all those long years.
