Chapter 62
Far across the city, isolated within the cramped confines of his rundown boarding room, Garrett Richmond stared blankly at a television screen broadcasting highlights of the upcoming international digital arts awards ceremony. A sleek promotional graphic flashed across the screen, featuring Craig and Sloan as keynote speakers and nominees for their groundbreaking media empire. Garrett gripped the edge of his narrow mattress, a suffocating wave of bitter envy and crushing regret washing over him. The contrast between his brother's magnificent success and his own dismal reality—stuck working overnight stocking shifts at a discount warehouse with twenty-four dollars to his name—was a relentless psychological torture. He reached instinctively for his phone, his thumb hovering over Craig's contact before dropping his hand in hopeless resignation. He finally understood the profound magnitude of his own undoing: he had inherited four hundred thousand dollars and a grand estate, but possessed zero capability to preserve them, while Craig, given nothing by a blinded matriarch, had built an indestructible kingdom through sheer discipline, talent, and unyielding character. The golden-child crown had proven to be a fool's cap, leaving him utterly destitute in a world where nobody owed him anything.
