"No!" the old man cried out, his eyes widening in panic as he realized the gold watch had vanished into the billionaire's coat. "No, you can't take it! I didn't steal it! It's mine!"
The security chief reached them, grabbing the homeless man by the back of his ragged collar and hauling him roughly to his feet. The old man cried out in pain, grabbing at his bruised ribs, but he didn't stop struggling. He thrashed weakly against the guard’s massive grip, keeping his desperate eyes locked on Charles’s chest.
"I've had it forever!" the old man shouted over the driving rain. "I had it when I woke up! When the car burned! It's mine!"
The words hit Charles like a physical blow.
When the car burned.
It was him. By some impossible, catastrophic failure, it was him.
The blood roared in Charles’s ears. His mother had paid two men a fortune to cut the brake lines on William’s Aston Martin and run him off the cliffs. The police report stated the car exploded on impact. There was a closed-casket funeral. Charles had stood at the cemetery, nineteen years old, playing the grieving younger brother while secretly calculating how quickly he could take over the board of directors.
If this man walked into a police station... if someone ran his DNA...
Charles currently held Vanguard Equities by a thread. The board was already attempting to oust him after two disastrous quarterly losses. If it came out that the true heir, the man who legally owned seventy percent of the voting shares according to their father’s iron-clad trust, was still alive... Charles wouldn't just lose the company. If the investigation into the crash was reopened, he and his mother would go to federal prison.
"Sir, do you want me to call the police?" the security chief asked, easily holding the struggling old man at arm's length. A small crowd of wealthy hotel guests had begun to gather near the glass doors, watching the spectacle with murmuring curiosity.
"No," Charles said sharply. His mind raced, calculating a dozen different terrifying variables. "No police. The man is clearly deranged. I don't want a public scene, and I don't want to spend my evening filling out paperwork for a stolen trinket."
"My watch!" the old man sobbed, the fight leaving his malnourished body. He sagged against the guard’s grip, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his face. "I don't know who I am... the watch is the only thing... it's all I have..."
A profound, sickening realization settled over Charles.
The man didn't know his own name. He had survived the crash, likely thrown from the vehicle before it went over the cliff, suffering severe traumatic brain injury. He had been wandering the streets for two decades, a ghost with no memory, holding onto a multi-million-dollar inheritance symbol like a cheap lucky charm.
Charles had all the power here. He was a titan of industry standing in front of a five-star hotel. This was a nameless vagrant. Nobody would believe a word he said.
Charles adjusted his cuffs, forcing his heart rate to slow down. The terror in his chest hardened into a cold, ruthless resolve. His mother had failed to finish the job twenty years ago. Now, Charles would have to clean up her mess.
"Take him around to the loading dock alley," Charles ordered the security guard, his voice dropping into the low, commanding register he used in boardrooms. "Keep him out of sight of the guests. I'm going to make a phone call to a private transport service. We'll have him dropped off at a psychiatric facility outside the city limits. I won't have this hotel’s entrance littered with aggressive vagrants."
The guard nodded respectfully. "Right away, Mr. Sterling. Come on, old timer. Move."
"Wait," the old man begged, dragging his boots as the guard began pulling him away from the lights. He looked back at Charles, his pale blue eyes suddenly catching the ambient light in a way that made Charles’s stomach turn violently. It was exactly the way their father used to look at Charles when he was disappointed.