Discarded Genius Reclaims His Throne Chapter 2

The encrypted call request flashed for less than three seconds before it disconnected.

It felt like a phantom limb, a brief hallucination.

The screen went dark, returning to the pre-power-off black. I tried to turn it back on, but the phone was dead.

I gave a wry chuckle.

My immediate priority was finding a place to sleep.

I flagged down a cab and headed to a moderately respectable budget hotel nearby.

“A room, please.” I slid my driver’s license across the counter.

“That’ll be three hundred sixty-eight for the room, plus a five hundred dollar deposit. How would you like to pay?”

“Card,” I said, handing over the corporate bank card I’d used for years. It was a secondary card Victor Kingston had arranged, where all my salary and project bonuses were deposited.

But when the front desk clerk inserted the card into the POS machine, an insistent, high-pitched alarm sounded.

“Beep! Beep! Beep!”

The young woman looked confused, tried again, and got the same result. She looked at me apologetically. “Sir, I’m sorry, there seems to be an issue with this card. It won’t process.”

My heart sank.

“Try this one.”

I pulled out my personal savings account debit card. I’d opened it in college, and it held the modest savings from various scholarships and side projects—not a fortune, but certainly enough for a few nights in a hotel.

The result was the same.

“This one too…” Her voice was barely a whisper.

I asked the clerk to at least plug in my dead phone for a few minutes.

When it finally powered back up, an urgent text message from the bank immediately popped onto the screen.

“Dear Mr. Rhodes Montgomery, pursuant to an application filed by Mr. Victor Kingston, all bank accounts registered under your name have been placed under a freeze pending review of 'Maintenance Fee Reimbursement,' totaling $XXX,XXX.XX…”

I actually laughed out loud.

Victor Kingston, you magnificent bastard. You should have been a Chief Financial Officer.

So, a hotel was out of the question.

I dragged my luggage back out onto the street. The night wind cut through my suit, slightly chilling.

I opened my phone and found the number for Wesley. He was my chief programmer, the one I’d personally mentored, who always called me "Rhodes, boss" with an almost worshipful respect.

I dialed. It rang for a long time.

“Hello? Wesley, it’s me.”

The other end was silent, save for a faint, shallow breathing sound.

“I need you to help me retrieve the original development logs for the ‘Aether’ system…”

“I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”

He cut me off, and the line went dead.

Disbelieving, I called the number of another core team member. Number not in service.

The partners who had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me—sharing cup noodles through all-night coding sessions and the pure triumph of solving an impossible problem—were either hanging up, turning off their phones, or had become ghosts.

This was the complete severance. A cold, calculated move to starve me into submission.

I stood at the crosswalk, watching the traffic rush past, feeling a sense of bewilderment for the first time.

My money was gone. My home was gone. Even my comrades had been turned into enemies.

He was truly trying to destroy me.