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The Real Heir Returns

The Real Heir Returns

By:  Luna BaaCompleted
Language: English
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10Chapters
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Synopsis

Family Emotions

Revenge

Homewrecker

Familial Bond

Bias

Plot Twists

Tragic Love

Face Slapping

I have a severe alcohol allergy. One drop can kill me. As the real son the family had only just found, I came home certain I would finally have my father's love. What I found was that he only had eyes for Tristan Ashmore, the stand-in, the son who wasn't. To prove to the board that I wasn't some spineless nobody raised out in the country, my father ordered me to a dinner that would decide the future of the company. At the table, I tried to get by on a cup of tea. Tristan and my stepmother took it out of my hands and set down a full glass of high-proof liquor. "Dad's giving you a chance here! "Show a little backbone. Don't let him down." Tristan smiled like he'd never done a thing wrong in his life. From the head of the table, my father watched me coldly and raised his own glass. "If I'm still your father, you'll drink that and win us this contract." I closed my eyes and swallowed it. My airway closed. It felt like drowning on dry land. As I went down I saw the disgust in my father's face, and then my soul came loose from my body. And even then I was sorry. I'm sorry, Dad. I embarrassed you again. I watched him shout that I was faking. I watched them leave my body in the private room. When the last of it was gone, a voice came out of the emptiness. "Heaven has taken pity on your suffering, and a reader from another world has been sent to turn your story around. "If he can carry you to the final chapter alive, he'll bring you back."

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Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My soul hung weightless above the table.

I watched the man from the other world snap his eyes open inside my body, and all at once I was seeing through him.

The same round table. The same full glass of high-proof liquor sitting in the middle of it.

The smell of it went straight to the back of my skull.

At the head of the table, my father, Victor Ashmore, held his face flat and cold and pushed.

"Drink it, or don't call yourself my son.

"Don't make me think bringing you home was a mistake."

He didn't go pale the way I had.

He didn't reach for the glass to make anyone happy, either. He just laughed, short and cold.

The eyes that had never been anything but gentle had gone hard.

Tristan Ashmore, the son who wasn't, leaned in from the next seat and kept fanning the fire.

"Come on, don't make Dad angry.

"Just drink it. He's giving you a chance to show him something."

Tristan smiled like a good boy. Behind it, the arithmetic was vicious.

He picked up the glass without a second's hesitation.

Tristan's smile stretched wider.

Then his wrist turned over.

A wet, heavy slap of sound.

The entire glass went out in one clean arc.

Every drop of it landed on Tristan's smug face.

The alcohol went straight into his eyes and up his nose.

The burn tore a scream out of him.

"My eyes! My eyes!"

He clamped both hands over his face, went down, and rolled across the carpet.

The room went dead.

Nobody had any idea what they'd just watched.

My stepmother, Daphne Ashmore, shrieked and threw herself at him.

"Tristan! Baby, what did he do to you?"

Victor came out of his chair in a rage.

He slammed a palm down hard enough to jump every plate on the table.

"Caleb! Have you lost your mind?

"You don't get to make a scene here."

He kept his face cold and pulled a folder out of his briefcase in one clean motion.

It was the allergy diagnosis, stamped and signed by Briarport University Hospital.

He brought his arm up and threw it in Victor's face.

White pages came apart and drifted down like snow.

Halfway down the first one, in heavy black type: HIGH RISK OF FATAL ANAPHYLAXIS.

His voice landed in the room and stayed there.

"Read it.

"I have a severe alcohol allergy. One mouthful kills me.

"The two of you swapped my tea for liquor. That wasn't a toast.

"That was attempted murder."

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10 Chapters
Chapter 1
My soul hung weightless above the table.I watched the man from the other world snap his eyes open inside my body, and all at once I was seeing through him.The same round table. The same full glass of high-proof liquor sitting in the middle of it.The smell of it went straight to the back of my skull.At the head of the table, my father, Victor Ashmore, held his face flat and cold and pushed."Drink it, or don't call yourself my son."Don't make me think bringing you home was a mistake."He didn't go pale the way I had.He didn't reach for the glass to make anyone happy, either. He just laughed, short and cold.The eyes that had never been anything but gentle had gone hard.Tristan Ashmore, the son who wasn't, leaned in from the next seat and kept fanning the fire."Come on, don't make Dad angry."Just drink it. He's giving you a chance to show him something."Tristan smiled like a good boy. Behind it, the arithmetic was vicious.He picked up the glass without a second's
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Chapter 2
It hit every client in the room.They looked at each other, and the look changed.Victor stared at the pages on the floor while the color came and went in his face.But he'd spent forty years owning every room he walked into, and his pride wouldn't let go."What kind of nonsense is this?"So you're allergic. One drink isn't going to kill you."You're useless, and now you're making excuses for it."That was when whatever was left in him for these people went cold.He looked at the two of them, at the parents who hadn't asked once whether I was breathing.Every board member and every major client was watching.He got both hands under the edge of the table and drove upward.The crash was enormous.The whole rosewood banquet table went over.Scalding soup went everywhere.Glass and china broke across the floor.Two of the biggest clients backed away with grease down the front of their suits."If you want a killer for a son that badly, keep him."He stood in the wreckage an
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Chapter 3
Daphne went straight out to the balcony and dialed a number she was sure couldn't be traced.She'd done this before. The man on the other end was Ray Kessler, and Ray took money to do things other people wouldn't.The plan was a traffic accident on the road he'd have to take to reach his grandfather.She wanted the real son gone, and she wanted it permanent.Early the next morning he checked out with one bag and a face that gave away nothing.He didn't call a car, and he didn't take the back road the original story sent him down.He knew where they'd be waiting. He took out his phone and called it in."I'd like to report a truck on South Belt Parkway. Driver looks impaired, and the plates don't match the vehicle."Heavy construction rig. He's been sitting there a while and he's making me nervous."Ray had barely gotten the truck into position at the intersection.He never got it moving. The sirens came first.Cruisers boxed him in from three sides.They had Ray facedown on
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Chapter 4
Evergreen Ridge was quiet. Old trees, birds, nothing in a hurry.He found Edmund in the back garden, moving through a slow set of exercises.Edmund had stepped back from running things years ago.But on the board of Ashmore Meridian Group, his vote could still kill anything.He walked up without a word of complaint, without the tears any other boy would have brought.He was calm in a way that was almost frightening.He took the allergy report out of his briefcase and set it on the stone table.Then he opened his phone and played the recording from the night before.He'd started it before he ever walked into that private room.Victor's flat, cold "Drink it, or don't call yourself my son."Tristan's eager little push right behind it.Both of them carried clearly across the quiet garden.Last, he laid out a copy of Ray Kessler's statement from that morning.He set every piece of it down in front of his grandfather, in order.Edmund listened to the recording and read the word
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Chapter 5
Edmund's voice filled the ballroom without a microphone anywhere near him.Victor's smile locked in place and the blood went out of his face.Tristan went white and stumbled back two steps.His shoe turned under him and he sat down hard on the red carpet.Leaning on Caleb's arm, Edmund climbed the steps to the stage.Victor rushed to meet him, voice unsteady."Dad, why are you here? Your heart, you shouldn't—"Caleb doesn't understand any of this. Don't listen to him."The slap cracked through the room.Edmund put everything he had into it.Victor's gold-rimmed glasses went flying off the stage.Nobody in the ballroom made a sound.Even the reporters forgot to press their shutters.Edmund threw a thick stack of paper in Victor's face.It was security stills from the private room, and the police report on the truck.Pages came down all around his shoes."You stand up here and call that boy reckless."Do you have any idea what your wife and your precious son did last nig
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Chapter 6
At midnight the building was dark from the lobby up.Tristan came into the executive office the way a rat comes into a kitchen.He didn't dare touch a light switch. He searched by the glow of his phone.His hands shook as he pushed the drive into the machine. Copy everything, then wipe it.Three seconds left on the progress bar.Every light in the ceiling came on at once.Tristan flinched back from the glare and got both hands over his eyes.Caleb was in the doorway with three senior directors and officers from the Lakemont Financial Crimes Bureau.They filled the only way out."Breaking into the president's office at midnight to steal proprietary records."You picked a bad night for it, Tristan."He held up the little remote for the camera system and let the contempt show.Tristan's legs went out from under him and he sat down on the cold floor.His face was gray, his lips were moving, and not one word of a defense came out.They cuffed him where he sat and walked him ou
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Chapter 7
Victor stared at the photographs on the screen.His eyes went bloodshot in seconds, and the cords in his neck stood out like they'd tear.He was shaking all over when he turned to look at Daphne.The crack of it went off like a gunshot.It bounced off all four walls.Victor put his whole body into the slap, and it took her off her feet.She screamed, hit the corner of the conference table, and split her lip open.Then he went after her like something that had stopped being a man.He got on top of her, eyes red, and brought his fists down over and over."You. You did this to me."You stole my money to keep some kid on a boat."Daphne, bleeding and swelling shut, screamed back and gave as good as she got.Her nails opened four lines down the side of Victor's face.The model couple, the ones who did the magazine spreads holding hands, were rolling around a boardroom floor with nothing left of either of them.His suit tore. A handful of her hair came away in his fist.Two do
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Chapter 8
Tristan kicked a water bottle across the concrete. Poisoned, and he'd done it hours ago.Drink it now, or he pressed the trigger and they both went.Caleb stopped about fifteen feet short of him and looked at him steadily.There wasn't a flicker of panic in it. Only pity, and something close to amusement.He slowed his voice down on purpose and went straight at the rawest nerve he could find."You were a placeholder, Tristan. That's all you ever were."You and your mother had exactly one skill between you, and it was taking things that weren't yours."You can put a forty-thousand-dollar suit on it. It's still you underneath."Whatever was holding Tristan together let go.He swung the trigger through the air and started screaming."Yes! I hate you!"I'm the one who swapped your tea for liquor."My mother paid the truck driver to put you through a windshield."The forty-two million was us, and I'd do it again tomorrow."You came out of nowhere and you took everything that w
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Chapter 9
Daphne and Tristan both went to prison.What waited for them was years of it, without much daylight.When the news broke, Victor came apart for good.The perfect family he'd been showing off for two decades turned into a joke the whole city was telling.The devoted-father act he'd spent half his life building went down with it.In the top-floor boardroom at Ashmore Meridian, the temperature dropped through the floor.The executives who used to follow him around waiting to agree with him weren't pretending anymore.They came at him together and threw the removal papers across the table into his face."Four hundred and fifty million in market value, Victor. Gone, because of your family."The board voted unanimously. You're out of every office and every committee."And the company's coming after you for what it can prove you cost us."Victor sat down in a chair with nothing behind his eyes.He reached for one of their sleeves and got shaken off like something unpleasant.Cour
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Chapter 10
Time moved, and the story came up on its last chapter.With Edmund behind him all the way, Caleb got Ashmore Meridian steady again.He moved fast and he didn't flinch at what had to be cut.Six months. That was all it took to put the company somewhere it had never been.He earned the shareholders' respect the hard way, on results.Nobody brought up where he'd grown up anymore.On a cold night that winter, the shopping district downtown was shoulder to shoulder.Victor's clothes were rags, and the smell came off him in waves.He was digging through a sour trash can like any other beggar, after half a cold roll.People covered their noses and stepped wide around him.Shivering, he happened to look up.The big screen in the middle of the plaza was running the year-end business news.And there was the son he used to call a coward.He wore a black suit cut to the millimeter and stood in the lights.He spoke without a note in front of him, easy and certain, lit up like he owned
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