Delilah laughed with a soft scoff that made her whole body shake against his side.
"For soone who doesn’t even have a real bank account, you sure have a lot of money you’ve got no use for."
Phei leaned deeper into the car seat and chuckled, the sound rolling out of him with genuine, wicked amusent at the absolute circus his financial life had beco.
"Planned kid, right? And here you are with just three billion in a trust fund while —the poorest person in Paradise a month ago—is sitting on hundreds of billions." He tilted his head toward her, eyes sparkling with mischief.
"Karma’s a bitch, right?"
Delilah punched his arm—soft and half-hearted, but it was more of a throw when she wants to hurt him but doesn’t have the heart for it.
"an. You’re so an."
She slumped against his chest anyway, cheek settling against his shoulder, legs curling up on the seat like she belonged there. "At least pretend to play along. Don’t just outright murder . Where’s the love? Where’s being on your woman’s side?"
He shrugged, lazy and unrepentant. "Well, the woman was attacking . I had to defend myself without being offensive."
She lifted her head and stared at him, eyes wide with pure disbelief.
"Calling poor wasn’t offensive? Then what the hell does offensive an to you?"
Phei grinned wider, that said he was enjoying this far too much. "For one, it would be pointing out that I’m now thousands of tis richer than every Legacy kid alive. The most insane rags-to-billions story the world has ever seen. Two—" he held up a finger "—it would be pointing out that I own fucking properties now."
He sat up straighter, voice rising with theatrical delight as he called out to the whole car. "Ladies and gentlen—" nodding at lissa driving, Sienna in shotgun, Victoria squeezed in the back with them "—I own fucking properties!"
Delilah rolled her eyes so hard they nearly left her skull.
Sienna chewed whatever she was chewing—gum, jerky, or soone’s last nerve—eyes glued to her phone, not even bothering to look up.
Victoria and lissa spoke at the exact sa ti.
"He sure talks big for soone who just inherited everything."
lissa added from the driver’s seat, eyes locked on the road, "Should we remind you that you didn’t work for any of those?"
Phei laughed, open and bright, the laugh of a boy who had been eating scraps a month ago and was now technically a property mogul.
"That’s the whole point though, isn’t it? I made billions of money in the womb and the last ten years. And all I had to do to get it was beat the shit out of Harold. Should’ve been rich five years ago if I’d started swinging sooner."
Sienna finally glanced at him through the rearview mirror.
Scoffed.
"Harold would’ve folded you like a cheap lawn chair five years ago."
The whole car exploded with laughter.
Sienna went straight back to her phone like she hadn’t just dropped the most devastating line of the evening.
The divorce was done.
The girls had kept their trust funds—single digits, all three of them. It sounded pathetic until you rembered that single digits here ant billions, and most people would commit actual felonies for a fraction of a fraction of that amount.
Victoria had five. Sienna had four. Delilah got three, which she was pretending not to be annoyed about and was absolutely seething over.
Danton, the heir, got more. How much more, nobody said. Nobody wanted to know.
But the girls didn’t care about the money. Their mother was rich enough on her own, and behind their mother stood the Ryujin Tiamat family, which made their individual trust funds look like pocket change left in a jacket you forgot to wash.
It was enough. More than they’d ever spend in years. Decades. Lifetis, probably, unless Sienna discovered online shopping—in which case, give it six months.
lissa got the most from the alimony. Fifty billion. The divorce settlent plus the "trauma clause" Rune had added for the twin Harold had killed. Fifty billion dollars for a dead child that no amount of money could bring back, packaged in legal language that made murder sound like a line item.
What made Phei angrier—and he had expected it, had braced for it, had walked into that eting knowing exactly what kind of man Harold was—was how Harold showed zero remorse at the ntion of the twin.
Nothing.
His face didn’t change. His eyes didn’t shift. He sat there while the lawyer said the words "deceased child" and "wrongful death" and "compensatory damages," and Harold’s expression stayed the sa flat, beaten, blood-flecked mask it had been wearing all evening.
Like the twin was a number on a spreadsheet. A loss to be quantified and settled.
Nobody opened that wound today. Not today. Today was paperwork and money and the chanical dismantling of a marriage that should’ve never happened. The grief lived sowhere else—in lissa’s hands that gripped the steering wheel too hard, in Victoria’s jaw that locked every ti the silence lasted too long.
Later.
Phei, on the other hand, had inherited everything.
Every company Seiryū had founded. Every property Harold had absorbed into the Maxton portfolio as though it had always been his. Every share, every asset,every brick of every building that existed because Phei’s father had put Ryujin Tiamat money into the ground and watched it grow—all of it, ripped from Maxton hands and returned to the son it belonged to.
Which ant whatever Maxtons had bought with money from the companies Phei’s father had founded now belonged to the child they’d failed to kill in that accident!
A detail Phei didn’t know—that he’d been a target too!
**
Rune Natsuki was that surgical. She walked in with paperwork and walked out with an empire. The woman terrified him and attracted him in equal asure, which was becoming a concerning pattern in his life that he should probably address at so point but definitely wouldn’t.
And as it turned out, Phei was now worth hundreds of billions.
Unfortunately—
"Don’t forget that money isn’t yours until you’re eighteen!"
That was Victoria breaking the cal’s back with a smile.
Phei deflated instantly.
He sighed so deep his lungs touched his spine.
Being rich and not rich at the sa ti.
Having hundreds of billions with his na on it and not being able to touch a single coin because so clause, so rule, so legal frawork designed by adults who didn’t trust teenagers with money—which, fair enough honestly, he would absolutely blow a billion on stupid shit if given the chance—kept it all locked away until his birthday.
Does Chaos really have to be this dramatic about everything? he wondered. Was the bureaucracy necessary? Couldn’t the woman who had a harem of twenty-sothing won and enough power to flatten continents just... let her grandson have his money? Was that too much to ask?
You know what? Fine... I’ll just pay her back.
That beautiful, terrifying, woman from the eting—Rune Natsuki, newest mber of Chaos’s collection, the one who’d made Harold cough blood and the grandfather bow and Phei’s brain leave his body for a solid two minutes of fantasy—they were going to et her after this, weren’t they?
He’d use the opportunity.
The old woman doesn’t deserve soone that beautiful anyway. Phei’s grandmother was many things—powerful, legendary, feared across continents—but she was also the woman who’d left her grandson in a house of abusers for ten years and was now making him wait until eighteen to access his own inheritance.
So yeah... I amgoing to cuck her.
Take the newest woman from the collection. Make Rune moan my na instead of hers. The ultimate payback from the student who had learned everything from the master and was about to prove the education had been too good.
Eira’s laughter was already building.
He grinned.
This was going to be fun.
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