I read it and felt nothing.
No anger. No satisfaction.
Just emptiness where love used to live.
I blocked her number without responding.
But I wasn’t finished.
Simone told me to enjoy poverty.
Now it was time to send a message of my own.
The first thing I did wasn’t buy a mansion.
It wasn’t cars.
It wasn’t a yacht.
It was hiring a team of investigators and lawyers.
Not to protect my wealth.
To dismantle the people who tried to destroy me.
Victor Hullbrook built his fortune on questionable deals and borderline illegal transactions. It took my team less than three weeks to compile enough evidence to send to the SEC—insider trading, market manipulation, fraudulent schemes.
The man who whispered in ears to get me blacklisted had left a trail.
Nobody followed it until now.
I also acquired controlling interests in three construction companies that regularly contracted with Bowman and Associates.
Then I made one personal phone call.
Richard Bowman answered with a cautious tone like he already sensed the ground shifting.
“Mr. Bowman,” I said, calm as ice, “this is Nolan Webb. You probably remember me. I’m the engineer you terminated seven months ago because Victor Hullbrook played golf with you on Sundays.”
Silence.
I could hear him breathing.
“I’m calling to inform you Thornwood Holdings is terminating all contracts with your firm effective immediately,” I continued. “And Victor Hullbrook is under federal investigation for securities fraud. Information I personally provided.”
He stammered something about misunderstandings, difficult decisions.
I didn’t let him finish.
“Goodbye, Richard,” I said. “I hope you land on your feet better than I did.”
Victor’s fund collapsed within four months. Investors sued. Federal charges followed. His sixty million evaporated into legal fees and settlements.
Simone married Victor two months after our divorce finalized—trading me for what she thought was a permanent upgrade.
Then Victor’s empire crumbled.
She filed for divorce eight months later. Moved back to Ohio to live with her sister.
I never spoke to her again.
I thought about reaching out, not to reconcile, but to say something. To let her know I survived.
But every time I considered it, I realized silence was the most powerful message.
She would live with the knowledge that the man she discarded as worthless became one of the wealthiest people in the country.
That knowledge would eat her alive far more effectively than anything I could say.
Money changed my circumstances.
I refused to let it change who I was.
I didn’t buy a fleet of cars. I didn’t buy ridiculous toys. I bought a modest four-bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood outside Philadelphia.
I hired a small staff to manage the logistics of my new life.
I lived simply because simplicity taught me what matters.
Then I donated four billion dollars to the Thornwood Foundation. Elliot Thornwood built something meant to outlast him. I chose to honor that legacy, not hoard it.
The foundation expanded its work—education, healthcare, poverty relief.
I became involved in directing where the money went, making sure it reached people who needed it most.
My mother Dorothy moved into a cottage near Valley Forge with the garden she’d always wanted.
I visit her every Sunday.
She cooks pot roast and tells me stories about my father I never heard before. Sometimes she cries when she looks at me—still unable to believe how far we came from those months when I was mopping floors and wondering if life was worth living.
I returned to Philadelphia General Hospital last spring—not as a patient or janitor, but as a benefactor.
I donated fifty million dollars to build a new wing dedicated to nursing education and patient care.
They named it The Dorothy Webb Center for Nursing Excellence.
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