Chapter 2 - The Ghost of Bellamy Holdings
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating the manicured courtyard of the Bellamy estate.
My father’s hands trembled slightly as he held the black envelope.
Richard Bellamy did not tremble.
Not during market crashes.
Not during hostile corporate takeovers.
Not even when he completely erased me from his life seven years ago.
"This is a forgery," Marcus snapped, snatching the papers from our father’s slack grip.
Marcus's eyes scanned the legal headers, his confident smirk rapidly evaporating line by line.
"Apex Capital? What the hell is Apex Capital? This is some backyard shell firm—Dad, he's playing a sick joke. Security!"
"Shut up, Marcus," my father whispered.
His voice was hollow, stripped of its usual boardroom authority.
Richard looked up from the document, staring at my faded jacket, then down at my worn sneakers.
"You... you were living out of a shelter in Chicago three years ago," my father said, recalling the private investigator’s report he had commissioned when I first vanished.
"People change their living arrangements when they start making money, Dad," I replied calmly.
"Money?" Marcus threw the papers onto the concrete driveway.
"You couldn't afford a new wheel on your suitcase! You expect us to believe a bum picked up a controlling stake in Apex? Apex is worth four hundred million dollars!"
"Five hundred and twenty million, actually," I corrected him, adjusting my collar.
"And it's not a shell firm. It's the parent entity that has been quietly swallowing up Bellamy Holdings’ commercial debt since the autumn of last year."
My mother gasped, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth.
"Ethan... why would you do something like that to your own family?"
I turned my gaze toward her, feeling the cold echo of the day she told me not to return without something to be proud of.
"I didn't do it to the family, Mom. I did it to survive the people running it."
Seven years ago, when I discovered a massive accounting fraud within Bellamy Holdings—a fraudulent scheme engineered by Marcus to inflate corporate assets—I brought the proof directly to my father.
Instead of investigating, Richard Bellamy protected his golden-boy heir.
He called me an ungrateful liar, accused me of trying to sabotage my brother out of jealousy, and stripped me of my shares, my trust fund, and my dignity.
He threw me out into the rain with two hundred dollars and a warning that if I ever used the Bellamy name again, he would ruin me legally.
So I dropped the name.
I went to Chicago.
I starved, I slept on concrete, I took entry-level grunt jobs in logistics firms, and I used every ounce of the sharp analytical mind my father claimed I never possessed to climb from the absolute gutter.
Now, the chickens had finally come home to roost.
"The transfer agreement you're holding," I told my father, pointing down at the papers on the concrete, "requires your signature to consolidate Apex's assets legally under my direct individual name."
"And if I refuse?" Richard asked, his spine stiffening as old executive instincts kicked back in.
"If you refuse, Apex calls in the thirty million dollars in short-term liquidity loans currently keeping Bellamy Holdings' shipping division afloat. By Monday morning, your accounts will be frozen, the board will oust you for gross negligence, and you'll lose the house, the cars, and your legacy."
Marcus lunged forward, his face turning a deep, furious crimson.
"You little bastard!"
He swung a heavy right hook aimed squarely at my jaw.
May you like
I didn't flinch.
I didn't even raise my hands.
