Cheating Fate

If you opened this story hoping for a heartwarming tale about a boy who dreams big, works hard, and eventually conquers the world through the power of friendship and positive thinking, I have some advice for you: stop reading now. Go find a biography of a billionaire who claims he started in a garage but conveniently forgets to mention his parents' trust fund. This isn’t that story. My name is Felix. In Latin, it means "lucky" or "successful." My parents thought they were blessing me. The Universe, however, took it as a personal challenge. It saw a boy named "Lucky" and said, "Hold my beer." For the first twenty years of my life, I tried to play by the rules. I was the nice guy. The honest student. The dutiful employee. And for every act of kindness I put into the world, the world spat back in my face with impressive accuracy. I didn't just fail; I failed spectacularly. I failed in ways that defied statistical probability. But this isn't a tragedy. Tragedies are for people who don't know when to quit. I didn't quit. I just… changed the game. They say cheaters never prosper. That’s the biggest lie ever told. The truth is, in a rigged casino, the only way to win is to mark the cards. It took me thirty agonizing lessons to learn that. Thirty moments where my soul was crushed, pulverized, and reassembled into something harder. Something darker. So, buckle up. I’m going to tell you how I lost everything, again and again, until I finally realized that being the hero is a sucker's bet. This is how I cheated fate.