The Devilish Billionaire

PROLOGUE

It was the tallest building in the world.

A token of pride to whoever owned it.

An industrial empire that stole selfishly in the name of success.

A giant that overshadowed its competitors’ comparatively smaller establishments under the risen sun.

And everyone knew whose devilish strategies it came from…

From the topmost loft of the building stood a man with a glass of red wine in his hand. He was smirking; not at the taste of the fine wine but at the misery of his rivals.

“Master Sean, everything happens at your will.”

“I know. And that makes everything else boring.”

“Seventy-two percent of the overall economic businesses of the world are already under your name and only the remaining twenty-eight percent are still government property. Shouldn’t we acquire all of it?”

A dart arrow swished through the air and landed at the heart of the dart board.

“I don’t think we should. It will be no fun if I gain all of it. Let them grow it and if they make it, I will cut them again,” he smiled at the thought of his game plan.

Sean Herald.

He’s the owner of Herald Monopolies of Businesses and of most businesses in the world; all sorts of transportation, entertainment companies, real estates, banks, technological and research facilities, academic institutions, and many more to specify. Even the mafia was within his authoritarian powers.

No one ever imagined that the commoner he used to be would rise as the richest person in the world from the rags of his sweets processing start-up. His multi-trillion mercantile business started from his interest in a board game called Monopoly. But the game that he used to play in a little rectangular box became a real life gamble. He grew bakeries, confectioneries, and pastry institutions until his monopoly business dominated the top level for an uncontested seventeen years up present.

He called his strategy Monopoly Tricks and he was the zero-sum player.

He bought businesses that were nearly bankrupt and revived them. In most cases, he himself would move secretly to drive other businesses to bankruptcy and tempt them to sell it to him no matter how low his bargain was.

A huge Monopoly board game was placed at the heart of his workplace. It was his real wealth map. It was a strategy that made him devilishly powerful. But although his reputation instilled fears to most, his monopolized businesses were managed by grateful and loyal secretaries. Under the secretaries was the hierarchy of board directors and presidents ruling the company’s numerous branches.

Those that tricked him were easily tracked and punished under the ubiquitous influence of the Herald Groups. And the payment was always a life. This agreement was known to anyone prior to recruitment. Each employee was aware of the odds beforehand, so unfaithfulness is a death wish each makes in his own volition. Through this, nobody dared to cheat Sean Herald.

Herald Monopolies was the biggest contributor to the economy of the world. It can either raise or break the economy of a country. But despite this power, Sean forbade his people to boast and abuse their position in the company. He wanted everybody to be treated fairly and whoever would break this law should settle in exchange of his own life.

Only Sean Herald could use that power. Everybody knew that name but nobody outside his trusted circle really knew what he looked like.

He only met his executive secretaries, trustworthy counsels, and his private bodyguards. He was sometimes in disguise as a customer and often an ordinary man freely roaming the world. Not even his father, who was a commoner, knew of Sean’s true identity.

His father was a morally decent man who taught him never to revenge, for revenge can only kill the beautiful person inside an individual. Sean abided by his father’s beliefs and perspective. He became a just and empathetic man. But he was silently thirsty to destroy the kin that ruined his own family.

So he lived two lives at once.

An ordinary man with a father living in the countryside.

And a rich man who waited to revenge.

Sean collected influence until he’s ready to strike the Madrid Empire, an *untouchable that no country ever planned to war against. He knew the empire was under the support of the illegal industry, a world that could be bigger than the supremacy he made legally.

But he waited.

Until he could finally rage war against his only enemy.

^{*definition not the noun pertaining to the lowest caste in India.}

@Death Wish