003
2219 Words
“Ace Kane, let’s get a divorce.”
The words hit harder than any punch he’d ever thrown.
Tomorrow was supposed to be his twenty-fourth birthday. Tonight should have been the quiet, nervous calm before his “coming-of-age”—the night before everything changed. Instead, Emily Sunford chose this moment to hand him the cruelest birthday present he could imagine.
He sat on the worn-out couch in the living room, stunned for a heartbeat, the cheap ceiling light buzzing faintly overhead. Then, forcing himself to breathe, he tried one last time to pull things back from the edge.
“Emily… tomorrow’s my birthday,” he began slowly. “I was planning to surprise you. I wanted to give you something special—”
“I don’t need it.”
She cut him off with a tired flick of her hand, as if even listening to him finish a sentence was too exhausting.
“I can’t stand watching you like this anymore,” she said, her tone flat. “Working as some nobody in the office by day, then delivering food at night just to scrape together a little extra cash. Any ‘surprise’ you buy with that kind of sweat—I don’t want it. You’re working too hard. You’re pushing yourself too far.”
For a moment, Ace thought he saw a c***k—some lingering concern, some trace of the girl who used to hand him a towel and whisper that he’d done enough for the day.
A faint spark of hope flared inside him. He lifted his head, eyes brightening.
“Emily, I don’t feel like it’s too hard,” he said. “For you, it’s worth it. No matter how tired I am, I—”
“But I don’t want that,” she snapped.
The dam broke.
“I don’t want it, do you understand?!”
Her voice rose, sharp enough to rattle the thin walls. She stamped her foot, cutting him off again before he could finish, the frustration she’d been choking down for months finally erupting.
“I don’t want to accept your gifts and smell that sour sweat on them!”
“I don’t want my coworkers making a show of telling me that the guy who delivered their takeout last night was my husband!”
“I don’t want to cram into buses every evening, trying to dodge wandering hands from disgusting men who think a crowded commute is their playground!”
“I don’t want to come home and cook every single night! I hate the stench of grease and smoke clinging to my hair and clothes!”
“I want nightlife—real nightlife. I want romantic candlelit dinners, not instant noodles on a wobbly coffee table. I want a car that turns heads, one of those glossy German luxury cars everyone envies. I want handbags that make my coworkers’ eyes go green when I walk into the office. Do you understand any of that?!”
Ace had never truly understood.
He had thought these things could be dulled, hidden under hard work and patience, at least until he reached twenty-four. He had believed that if he just kept going, if he kept grinding for one more day, one more week, one more month, he could buy time until his birthday.
He hadn’t expected her to start hating even the smell of the effort he was pouring into their future.
But because he still loved her—because that love was the only reason he hadn’t collapsed already—he swallowed the pain and said quietly:
“Tomorrow… I can give you all of that.”
Emily let out a long, weary sigh and shook her head.
“I’m tired, Ace. I’m tired of your daydreams. Let’s just end this. We’ll file for divorce tomorrow.”
She didn’t give him another opening.
She walked into the bedroom and shut the door. A second later, the lock clicked, a small sound that nonetheless felt like a bolt sliding shut on his chest.
Ace sat there in the living room, staring at the glow of the television that wasn’t even on. His gaze drifted to the wedding photo hanging crookedly on the wall—two younger, brighter versions of themselves, smiling as if nothing could ever go wrong. Then he looked at the tightly closed bedroom door.
His lips twisted into a bitter smile.
Affection. Patience. Hard work. Relentless effort.
In the end, none of it could compete with one thing—money.
He sat there in silence for nearly half an hour, letting the minutes drip past like water leaking from a cracked pipe. Finally, he pushed himself up, deciding to lie down in the guest room.
He had just taken a step when the bedroom door swung open again.
Emily stood there, beautiful as ever, but her expression carried nothing but disdain. No softness. No hesitation.
Ace’s heart lurched. For a split second, hope surged again—maybe she’d cooled down, maybe she was willing to talk, to argue, to do anything other than end it like this.
Then something black and square flew through the air and landed at his feet.
A black velvet box with a pink ribbon.
The box he had placed carefully on the bedroom nightstand. The one containing the “special gift” he’d planned to give her on his birthday.
Now it lay on the floor like trash thrown out of a window.
He bent down and picked it up. A final, hollow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
He tried one last time.
“Don’t you even want to see what I got you?” he asked softly.
“I don’t,” Emily’s voice came cool and sharp from behind the doorframe. “I don’t want to smell that sour sweat again.”
The door slammed shut. The lock clicked once more.
This time, it stayed that way.
Ace stood alone in the tiny hallway for a while, the velvet box cold and heavy in his hand. Finally, he turned and walked into the guest room.
He sat down on the narrow bed, the springs creaking under his weight.
From his pocket, he pulled out a pack of cheap off-brand cigarettes that cost barely a couple of dollars. He fished out a stick that wasn’t too bent or crushed, straightened it between his fingers, and lit it.
The smoke hit his throat like a punch.
He had thought this brand was “good enough” before, something rough but tolerable. Tonight, it felt like sandpaper scraping both his throat and his chest.
He took a few long drags anyway, the ember burning brighter with each inhale, then clenched the cigarette between his teeth as he opened the discarded velvet box—the “gift” Emily had thrown away without even glancing at.
Inside, resting on a bed of gold-colored velvet, was a silver-white metal bank card and a phone that didn’t exist on any consumer market.
At first glance, the phone looked cheap, almost laughably so—no logo, no brand, the kind of uninspired casing that screamed generic knock-off. It looked like something assembled out of leftover parts in a back-alley workshop.
In reality, it was a dual-system custom device.
If you woke it with just a fingerprint, it displayed a standard Android interface, nothing unusual. But once it scanned your iris and confirmed your identity, it unlocked an entirely different layer—a hidden system accessible only through Global Nexus Kane Division.
This was the Kane-exclusive network.
Through it, the inner circle of the Kane Family handled their private communications, encrypted notifications, and remote conferences. It also granted access to several of the most elusive underground trading platforms in the world. Among the applications pinned to its core system, Luxander Treasury Manor was merely the most basic one.
Ace set the custom phone upright against the pillow, adjusted it so the front camera pointed directly at his left eye, and leaned in.
A soft beep broke the silence.
In an instant, the Global Nexus Kane Division interface flickered to life.
The first thing that appeared on the screen was an explosion of digital fireworks, showering his vision with animated lights, followed by eight shimmering characters:
“Happy Birthday, Ace Kane.”
He glanced at the time in the top corner. 12:03 a.m.
Ace let out a short, mirthless laugh. A stream of bluish smoke escaped his lips along with a low curse.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Hell of a birthday.”
He flicked the cigarette butt to the floor, grinding it out under his shoe, and tapped open his message inbox.
Congratulations poured down the screen.
Dozens, then hundreds of messages, most of them from names that meant little or nothing to him now. Distant relatives by marriage. Outer branches of the family tree. People who shared his blood only on paper. People who had never once called him in the two years he’d been struggling out here—but somehow remembered him perfectly now that his “coming of age” had arrived.
He didn’t need to open them to know what they said. There’d be obsequious flattery, fake warmth, careful reminders that they “had always respected him.” Nothing genuine. Nothing that mattered.
He ignored all of them.
He opened exactly one message—
the one from Luxander Treasury Manor.
“Congratulations, Mr. Ace Kane.
Your Luxander exclusive account has been activated.
Current balance: 10,000,000 USD.”
Ten million dollars.
That was the Kane Family’s idea of “a small coming-of-age gift.”
According to family rules, twenty-four was the true threshold of adulthood. Before that, no direct-line descendant was to receive any form of financial support. None. Especially those sent out into the world to “temper themselves”—they were expected to survive on their own. Not a single cent of support. No matter how hard things got.
But once you crossed that line, everything changed.
The ten million was just the opening gesture—a simple welcome. From that point forward, every month, a portion of the profits from the Kanes’ global empire would be deposited directly into his account as dividends.
That was the real privilege.
Especially if you were direct-line.
For those in his position, the numbers involved were staggering.
Ace stared at the message, but his focus seemed to slide off the digits. Ten million dollars could flip his current life upside down. He knew that. Rationally, coldly, he knew that.
Emotionally, he found himself strangely numb.
He set the phone aside and picked up the silver-white card.
The Luxander Card was heavier than it looked. He’d weighed one like this once as a kid, back when he was still allowed to poke around the family vaults. It came out to roughly two ounces—almost twice as heavy as a standard bank card.
The card itself was made of pure palladium. Even if you stripped away everything else—its status, its privileges—the raw metal was worth tens of thousands of dollars. That didn’t include the fine diamonds used to inlay the cardholder’s name.
And even that wasn’t what made it truly rare.
The real value was etched into the number on the back: 8888–0168.
Every Luxander Card issued to a top-tier client started with 8888 and contained only eight digits in total.
Which meant that Ace Kane was the one hundred sixty-eighth person on the planet deemed worthy of owning such a card.
Most oil magnates in the Gulf didn’t even know this kind of card existed.
Not because Luxander couldn’t win their approval—
but because they didn’t qualify to be approached.
They weren’t important enough to be told that Luxander existed at all.
Ace rolled the palladium card between his fingers, watching it catch faint traces of light from the bare bulb overhead.
Through the thin wall, he could see the outline of the bedroom next door in his mind: the bed, the nightstand, the woman sitting on the other side of that wall, already half out of his life.
“I wrote you a future full of wealth and glory,” he murmured, voice barely audible, “and you answered with ‘let’s go our separate ways.’ Beautiful.”
As he was still muttering to himself, the phone rang again—this time, not through the Global Nexus Kane Division, but via his regular line.
The caller ID flashed a name that caused his chest to tighten.
Fae Kane.
He hesitated only a heartbeat before answering.
“Brother! Happy birthday!” Fae’s voice burst through the speaker, sweet and bright and completely unaware of the wreckage on his side of the line. “I’ll come celebrate with you when the sun’s up. And I want to finally meet my sister-in-law properly this time—I even bought her a gift!”
Ace closed his eyes.
“Fae…” He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “Your brother is getting divorced.”
There was a long silence on the other end.
“…What? Why?”
He let out a breath that sounded too much like a laugh.
“Because,” he said softly, “your sister-in-law has decided she doesn’t want a poor man.”
- Writer
