Chapter 4

The ride to the Davies estate was long and silent.

Alex sat by the window, watching the small town recede and the landscape transform into manicured suburbs and then sprawling countryside dotted with massive homes. He knew they had been looking for him. Not just for a few days, but for years.

His investigator had told him everything. Three years ago, a distant relative of the Davies family, who worked at the hospital where he was abandoned, had died. In her personal effects, a letter was found, a confession. She had helped a young, terrified Catherine Davies cover up the birth and subsequent abandonment of her illegitimate son. The Davies family had received this information, confirmed it with a secret DNA test using a sample they acquired through deceit, and then... they did nothing.

They sat on the information. They let him continue to live his life in that "shack" while they maintained their perfect public image. They only acted now because they were desperate. His investigator' s reports were clear: the Davies Corporation was hemorrhaging money thanks to a series of disastrous investments spearheaded by their darling adopted son, Mark.

They didn' t want a son. They wanted a savior. A bank.

He felt his sisters' eyes on him. They sat on the opposite seat, as far away from him as possible, their bodies angled away as if he were carrying a contagious disease.

"When we get to the house," Sarah said, breaking the silence, her voice sharp and condescending, "you need to understand a few things. We have a reputation to maintain. You will not speak of... that place," she gestured vaguely in the direction of his town. "You will be polite. You will let mother and father guide you on what to say."

"And get rid of those clothes," Emily added, her gaze sweeping over his simple t-shirt and jeans with contempt. "And for God' s sake, get a haircut. You look like a vagrant."

Alex didn' t respond. He reached into the small basket beside him, pulled out a golden loquat, and calmly began to peel it. The sweet, citrusy scent filled the sterile, leather-scented air of the car.

His sisters watched him, horrified.

"Are you seriously eating that in here?" Sarah hissed.

Alex popped the fruit into his mouth, the sweetness a small, private pleasure. He chewed slowly, deliberately, savoring it. He looked out the window, ignoring them completely. To him, they were just noise. Annoying, but ultimately irrelevant.

Richard and Catherine, in the front seats, heard the exchange but said nothing. They were letting their daughters do the dirty work of trying to tame their wild, uncultured son.

"He probably doesn' t even know how to use a fork properly," Emily muttered to Sarah, just loud enough for Alex to hear.

"Don' t worry," Sarah replied in a stage whisper. "Mark will teach him. Mark is so good and patient."

Alex almost laughed. Mark. The golden boy. The charming, incompetent fraud who was bankrupting their family. They were going to have Mark, who had likely never done a hard day' s work in his life, teach him, a self-made billionaire, how to behave. The irony was thick enough to choke on.

He finished his fruit, placing the small seed neatly in a napkin. He looked at his reflection in the tinted window. They saw a poor, uneducated mechanic' s boy who had gotten lucky. They saw someone they needed to scrub clean and mold into their world.

They had no idea who he was. They had no idea that he knew all their secrets. They had no idea that he was watching them, analyzing them, calculating the trajectory of their inevitable fall. And he was going to let them play their game. For now.