Chapter 119: The Insulting Price

The industrial district at night was a wasteland of rusted steel and long, hollow shadows. As the R8 pulled into the gravel lot, the headlights swept across the corrugated metal walls of the warehouse, catching the glint of the RS 6 parked near the loading dock. Jake sat in the passenger seat, his fingers tapping a restless, uneven beat on his knee.

His right hand throbbed. The bruises from the charity event gym session had turned a deep, angry purple, aggravated by the way he’d been white-knuckling the door handle for the last twenty minutes. It was a dull, grounding ache. It reminded him that despite the zeros in his bank account, he was still just a guy whose sister was currently shaking in a hospital bed because he’d been too busy staring at the horizon to notice the knife at his throat.

Elias cut the engine. The sudden silence was heavy, broken only by the ticking of the cooling manifold. Jake stepped out, the cold night air biting at his neck, and for a second, his legs felt heavy. He didn’t feel like a billionaire. He felt like he was back in the university library at 3:00 AM, heart hammering, just trying to survive the next hour of a world that felt far too large for him.

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