Chapter 4
1065 Words
Zayne’s POV
It was pouring. The kind of rain that made the streets look like rivers and the sky feel like it would never stop crying.
I stood at the gate, soaked to the bone, holding a pizza box that sagged at the edges, soggy from the downpour. My hoodie clung to my skin, heavy and cold, and my jeans stuck to my legs like wet paper. Even my socks were soaked. I couldn’t feel my toes anymore.
The guards at the gate didn’t let me in.
“She said you should wait right there,” one of them said with a smirk. “She’ll come down when she feels like it.”
So I waited.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t beg. I just stood there like some lost dog hoping someone might throw it a bone. The rain didn’t stop. It felt like it never would. Drops slid down my face, mixed with the sting of cold air. I held the pizza close to my chest, trying to protect it, but the cardboard was too weak now. Just like me.
An hour passed.
Then I saw her.
Mildred.
The owner of Mildred Jewels. The same woman I’d seen on magazine covers and television ads. The woman who looked like she walked out of a movie.
Her heels clicked against the marble driveway as she stepped down like a queen arriving for a show. A silver umbrella floated above her head, and a designer handbag hung off her arm like it belonged there. It probably cost more than what I would make in a zillion years from the delivery work.
She didn’t say a word at first. She just stopped a few feet away and looked at me.
Up and down.
Like I was a stain she forgot to scrub off her mansion.
“You’re dripping everywhere,” she said, her voice flat.
I forced a smile even though my lips were trembling. “Sorry, ma’am. You told me to wait.”
She rolled her eyes. “I said I might come down. God, you poor people take everything so literally.”
My fingers tightened around the pizza box, though I knew it was ruined.
She didn’t take the pizza.
Instead, she reached into her handbag, her perfectly polished nails flicking through a thick stack of cash. Slowly. Lazily. Like she had all the time in the world.
Then she pulled out a thousand-dollar bill.
And threw it at me.
It hit my wet chest and fluttered down to the ground.
“Here,” she said. “Take this and go buy yourself a life. Obviously, the one you're living in is so pathetic.”
I bent to pick it up, but just as my fingers touched the bill, her foot came down fast. She kicked it, hard, sending it flying into a puddle.
The paper floated there, soaked, dirty.
“You stink,” she muttered with her nose wrinkled. “You always smell like... fried bread and failure.”
Her words didn’t hit my body, but they landed like punches. Heavy ones.
Still, I didn’t say anything.
My hands stayed at my sides, clenched now.
I hated how calm I looked when I felt like barking at her.
Then, without warning, she snatched the pizza box from my hands. For a second, I thought maybe that was it. Maybe she was done.
I turned around to leave.
But then it happened.
Splat.
Hot dough and melted cheese slammed against the side of my face.
She had thrown it. No—smashed it into me. Rubbed it in like she was trying to scrub away some invisible dirt. The sauce stung my skin. The cheese clung to my cheek like shame.
I stood there, frozen, the pizza sliding down my hoodie.
The box hit the ground with a wet thud.
“Ugh,” she said, wiping her hands on her designer coat like I was something disgusting she had touched by accident. “You’re so damn pathetic. Why do you keep coming back?”
My chest was tight. My throat is even tighter.
I wanted to shout. To throw something. To tell her how cruel she was. But I didn’t.
Instead, I slowly raised my head and looked into her eyes.
And for a tiny second… I saw it.
A flicker.
Behind the walls of disgust, behind the layers of makeup and pride, I saw something I wasn’t supposed to.
Loneliness.
Fear.
Pain.
But just like that, it was gone. Her face turned cold again.
Still, I had seen it.
“I come back because it’s my job,” I said quietly. “And maybe… because I see something in you.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I like you, Miss Mildred.”
She flinched. Just barely. But she did.
“You hate me,” I continued, not backing down now. “You hate people like me. But I don’t think it’s really me you hate. You hate what I remind you of—something broken. Something real.”
She stepped back like my words had slapped her harder than any hand could.
“I don’t need your little therapy sessions, delivery boy,” she snapped. “And don’t you ever spit out rubbish from that trash mouth of yours saying you like me. Are you okay in the head?”
“You can't even bag yourself a proper meal if I must say, because you look so lean, you have the guts to say you like me? Disgusting, that's utter disgrace to my name. People like you don't even deserve to sit at my table, and here you are telling me you like me?”
“You must be running like a mad delivery boy.”
I nodded, even though my chest hurt.
“Alright.”
I turned and walked away. The rain fell harder now, soaking the last dry thread on my body. It felt like the sky was crying for me when I couldn’t cry for myself.
Behind me, I heard her breathing hard, but she didn’t call me back.
She never did.
Day 3 of 7.
And I, the hidden heir of Leonard Kingston, stood drenched, humiliated, and covered in ruined pizza — all because I wanted something simple.
Love.
But maybe love doesn’t come easy to men like me.
Maybe love has to be earned… even if it costs me everything.
- Writer
