Chapter 11: The Lowest Point
Chapter 11: The Lowest Point
Winter hit the city hard.
Without a stable income, Andrew was forced to take the only job that didn't do background checks.
Manual labor.
He was working on a construction site, hauling bags of cement in the freezing cold.
His hands, once manicured and soft, were blistered and cracked.
His back ached constantly.
At the end of a grueling 12-hour shift, he sat on an overturned bucket, eating a cold sandwich.
He pulled out his cracked phone.
He opened a news app.
The front page featured a massive, high-resolution photo.
It was Mariana.
She was attending the Global Economic Summit in Geneva.
She was standing next to presidents and prime ministers.
The headline read: Mariana Escalante: The Hidden Billionaire Reshaping Global Markets.
She looked absolutely stunning.
She looked happy.
She looked entirely free of him.
Andrew dropped the phone and buried his face in his dirty, calloused hands.
He didn't cry.
He was too exhausted to cry.
He just sat there, letting the bitter wind whip around him, feeling the full, crushing weight of his arrogance.
He had held a queen in his arms.
And he threw her away because she refused to be his servant.
"Hey, Sterling!" the foreman shouted from across the site. "Break's over! Move that lumber!"
Andrew slowly stood up.
"Yes, sir," he muttered.
He walked back to the pile of wood.
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He was a nobody.
A ghost of a man who once thought he owned the world.
