Chapter 1

My name was Nathaniel Wentworth.

I was the eldest grandson of the first branch of the Wentworth family and the sole direct heir to Wentworth Group.

By all accounts, I should've been living a picture-perfect life, born with a silver spoon in my mouth. But I was already eight years old, and I still hadn't spoken a single word.

Everyone in the household knew that I was a total idiot.

Mom came from a highly educated family in Jandor. Gentle, elegant, and deeply cultured, she poured every ounce of her love into me.

She would hold me in her arms, patiently trying to teach me over and over again.

"Nathaniel, say Mommy…"

I would just stare right back at her, completely silent.

The spark in her eyes would gradually dim until she turned around to discreetly dab the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

She assumed I didn't notice, but I understood everything.

It wasn't that I couldn't speak. I simply chose not to.

I had been born with all the memories of my previous life completely intact.

In my previous life, I was a fast-talking financial analyst on Broadwell Street. I spent 30 years running my mouth until I was thoroughly burned out.

This time, I planned to quietly coast along as a useless trust-fund baby and enjoy the high life.

Unfortunately, I heavily underestimated the sheer weight of my position.

Being the eldest grandson of the Wentworth family wasn't a ticket to endless luxury. It was a gilded cage.

Dad was the chairman of Wentworth Group, a cutthroat businessman to his core. Yet, every time he looked at me, a tiny flicker of desperation would dance in his eyes.

"Nathaniel, do you know what these figures represent?" he asked, pointing to the numbers on a quarterly financial statement.

I nodded.

"Can you point out our net profit margin for this quarter?"

I reached out with my small hand and pointed precisely at the correct percentage.

The expectation in his eyes flared. Then, he leaned in closer, asking the one question he desperately wanted answered.

"Nathaniel, can you say 'Daddy' for me?"

I looked at him, maintaining my absolute wall of silence.

The light in his eyes vanished instantly. Nothing remained but disappointment—a thick, suffocating wave of it.

He sat in heavy, agonizing silence for a long time before suddenly getting up and striding out of the room.

Dad let out a heavy, defeated sigh that felt solid enough to shatter every glass partition on the floor.

I knew that if I weren't the only direct grandson, and if Mom's family didn't hold such massive leverage, my spot as the heir would've been stripped away years ago.

Over time, even my cousins started treating me differently.

Their initial caution quickly devolved into blatant, unmitigated mockery.

"Hey, Nathaniel, did you actually understand a single word the tutor said during our Erudian class today?"

The boy speaking was Sebastian Wentworth, my Uncle Frederick's son.

He was only a year younger than me, but he was incredibly articulate and a massive favorite of Dad's.

I shot him a glance, not bothering to respond, but my total lack of reaction only made him grin wider.

"Oh, right, I completely forgot," Sebastian said. "You're a once-in-a-generation prodigy. You were born knowing everything in the universe, unlike us mere mortals who actually have to hit the books."

"Sebastian, don't talk about Nathaniel like that," Charlotte Wentworth, my Uncle Edmund's daughter, chimed in with a fake display of sweetness. "He just doesn't deign to speak to commoners like us; that's all. As the saying goes, speech is silver, and silence is golden."

They bounced off each other flawlessly.

The nannies kept their eyes glued to the floor, but their shoulders were twitching in amusement.

They were laughing at the mute.

I walked right past them with a completely deadpan expression. It was like watching two monkeys in a barrel.

They were a bore and incredibly childish.