Everyone in Manhattan high society knew that among the three heiresses of the billionaire Kingsley dynasty, the youngest was an irredeemable spendthrift. I had exactly one skill in life, and that was burning through money. The irony, of course, was that the rest of the Kingsley family was a fortress of ruthless overachievers. My eldest sister, Charlotte, controlled a multi-billion-dollar private equity portfolio by the age of twenty-four. My second sister, Sadie, had swept every international computer science accolade and algorithm prize in existence by twenty. And then there was me. At eighteen, I had become the undisputed patron saint of every flagship luxury boutique on Fifth Avenue. I bought limited-edition Hermès bags by the armful, weighed out high-end diamond suites like produce at a farmer’s market, and could wipe out the market cap of a mid-tier publicly traded company in a three-day shopping spree. To the outside world, I was the sole, shameless deadweight in a lineage of geniuses. What nobody knew was the truth: in my previous life, I had been the supreme grandmaster of celestial divination and esoteric geomancy. I had spent that lifetime peering through the veil, unraveling the hidden architecture of heaven and earth. But the universe demands payment for every secret you speak aloud. Heavenly retribution struck me down, condemning me to live and die in absolute, bone-chilling poverty. So, when I was reborn into the lap of the wealthiest family in the country, I made myself a solemn vow. Fate could keep its cosmic secrets. In this life, all I wanted was to be a carefree, brainless little parasite who spent obscene amounts of cash without a single thought in her head. Until tonight. At a high-stakes municipal land auction, the Kingsley empire found itself locked in a vicious bidding war over a parcel of raw upstate waterfront. The renowned metaphysical consultant my father had hired was practically begging him to stake our entire liquid fortune on the table. “Mr. Kingsley, this is a sacred nexus—an alignment of raw earth energy seen once in a millennium,” the old man urged, his voice trembling with manufactured gravity. “The hammer must fall before midnight. If you let this slip through your fingers, you will never see its equal again.” My father’s jaw clenched. His hand moved toward the bidding paddle, ready to sign our lives away. I couldn’t take it anymore. Under the stunned, frozen stares of the entire ballroom, I reached out and slammed my palm down over my father’s hand, pinning the paddle flat to the mahogany desk. “There’s a mass burial trench beneath that dirt,” I said, my voice cutting through the hushed silence of the room. “Three feet below the topsoil lies nothing but crushed, rotting bones. Whoever touches that land will see their men die violent deaths, their women scattered to the winds, and their fortune turned to ash within three days.” I spun around, planted my hands on my hips, and glared straight into the shocked eyes of the multimillion-dollar consultant. “You decrepit old fraud,” I snapped. “The Devil himself doesn’t have a heart as filthy as yours. I haven’t even finished blowing through the Kingsley fortune yet—who the hell gave you permission to steal my inheritance?” … “I’ve charted the planetary transits,” Master Thaddeus Drake said, leaning close to my father’s ear, his tone dipped in absolute certainty. “The imperial star aligns directly over this parcel tonight. It is an opportunity that comes once every seven hundred years.” Drake sat directly to my father’s right in our private VIP box. He was widely regarded as the most prestigious esoteric advisor in elite circles; my father, Richard Kingsley, had spent an eye-watering twenty million dollars just to retain him for the quarter. Now, Drake was insisting that we secure a desolate, unzoned tract of scrubland on the southern periphery of the county. The opening bid was five hundred million. For a plot of rocky dirt that didn’t even have municipal sewage hooked up, the price was already detached from reality. Richard sat with his brows furrowed, his fingers drumming against his knee, hesitating for the first time all evening. Meanwhile, I was slouched back on the plush velvet cushions with my legs crossed, tapping frantically on my smartphone screen, my cart filling up like water through a broken dam. “A limited-edition Chanel tweed jacket? Add all three colorways.” “That eight-figure sapphire necklace from the Sotheby’s private vault? Bag it.” “A preliminary deposit on a bespoke superyacht interior? Pay now, pick the teak later.” My thumbs flew across the glass. The corners of my mouth curled into a blissful grin. Sadie leaned over, caught a glimpse of my phone, and nearly choked on her breath. “Phoebe Kingsley! What on earth are you buying now?!” Her voice was tight with exasperation. “Do you not see Dad tearing his hair out trying to make a critical call? You’re sitting here in public, completely oblivious, scrolling and swiping like a spoiled toddler! Can’t you even pretend to care? Can’t you offer a shred of help?” I casually pulled up the parcel’s coordinates on my map app, squinted at the satellite view, and let out an involuntary scoff. “What kind of wasteland is that?” I muttered. “There isn’t even an Amazon locker hub within ten miles. Where am I supposed to get my parcels delivered? Five hundred million starting bid? I wouldn’t take that dirt if they paved it in gold and gave it to me for free.” A heavy beat of silence settled over our box. Charlotte and Sadie exchanged a look that screamed “of course she said that”. Sadie let out a bitter, mocking laugh, crossing her arms over her chest. “I really don’t know why I bother asking,” she sneered. “Does your head contain anything besides courier tracking numbers and shopping carts?” My father didn’t even bother turning his head to look at me. I shrugged, totally unfazed, and went back to adding designer cashmere blankets to my order. “Land that can’t receive same-day delivery has no business calling itself prime real estate.” Just then, across the mezzanine floor, a bidding paddle sliced through the air. The Monroe family. “One billion,” the auctioneer called out. A collective murmur rippled through the gallery. Charles Monroe, the patriarch of their real estate dynasty, raised a crystal tumbler of scotch across the mezzanine, nodding toward my father with a mocking, thinly veiled sneer. The Monroes and the Kingsleys had been bitter rivals for three generations. Both empires had been built on high-stakes property development, but the Monroes had perpetually lived in our shadow, second-best at every turn. To see Charles Monroe throw down a cool billion on an unremarkable stretch of scrubland made the air in the room turn suddenly thin. Did the Monroes know something we didn’t? Had their analysts discovered mineral rights, or an impending rezoning plan? Drake let out a quiet, knowing chuckle. “It seems that outside of Miss Phoebe’s endearing naivety, there are still men in this room who recognize true destiny.” I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. The nerve of this walking scam artist. In my past life, as the matriarch of the premier divination sect, I had crushed pretenders like Thaddeus Drake beneath my heel before breakfast. The moment I had glanced at the topographical blueprint of that land, the sinister rot festering beneath its contours had screamed at my spiritual senses. I had kept my mouth shut until now only because I had sworn never to meddle with fate again. I had paid for my past arrogance with a lifetime of freezing in cardboard shoes. In this life, born with a silver spoon practically fused to my teeth, my only ambition was to spend my family’s fortune in peace. Down on the podium, the auctioneer’s gavel hovered. “One billion, going once.” “One billion, going twice.” “Are there any further bids from the floor?” Charles Monroe’s grin widened, brimming with predatory triumph. Drake leaned in, his voice dropping into an urgent, conspiratorial whisper. “The price is inflated, Mr. Kingsley, but the cosmic return will be immeasurable. You must weigh the future of your bloodline. A billion is pocket change compared to what you stand to lose. Time is running out.” Richard’s knuckles whitened against the armrest. “One billion, for the third—” “Two billion,” Richard’s deep voice boomed into the microphone. “Two billion?!” A tidal wave of shocked gasps swept across the ballroom. “Two billion for raw dirt? Have the Kingsleys lost their minds?” “Wait… look who’s sitting next to Richard. Isn’t that Thaddeus Drake?” “It is! My God, if Drake is advising them, there must be something miraculous about that ground.” “Monroe went to a billion right out of the gate… they must have caught wind of it too!” In an instant, the room shifted on its axis. Skepticism vanished, replaced by the rabid, feverish scent of greed. Whispers died down, giving way to dilated pupils and rapid breathing. “Two point two billion!” the heir of the prominent Whitaker family shouted, throwing his paddle up. “Two point five!” barked old man Faulkner, his withered hand shaking as he gripped his placard, the raw avarice in his rheumy eyes impossible to hide. The auctioneer’s voice was growing hoarse, but the numbers were spiraling into madness. Three billion. Three point eight. Four point two. “Four point five billion!” “Four point eight!” “Five billion!” A plot of land that had opened at five hundred million had been inflated tenfold in a matter of minutes, hurtling far beyond any sane appraisal. Yet no one cared about reality anymore. They were caught in a gold rush, blinded by the scent of an ancient secret. Beside me, Sadie was staring at her laptop screen, her fingers frozen on the keyboard. Her pride and joy—her proprietary market-prediction AI—was flashing warning reds across every diagnostic panel. Charlotte looked no better. Having cut her teeth on Wall Street, she had seen market bubbles inflate and burst in real time, but the scene unfolding before us looked less like commerce and more like a room full of blood-drunk gamblers pushing their children into the pot. My father pressed his fingers against his temples, his brow drawn tight with anxiety. At that exact moment, Drake’s expression curdled into sheer panic. “This is disastrous! Mr. Kingsley, you must counter immediately, or the Kingsley dynasty’s lifeblood will be completely severed!” All three of us turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?” Sadie demanded. Drake’s face was pale, his eyes wide with theatrical terror. “The metaphysical currents have turned volatile! The cosmic fortune that was destined for your family is being actively hijacked by lesser houses! If someone else walks away with that deed tonight, the Kingsley empire will face twenty years of irreversible decline!” Richard turned, locking his gaze onto Drake’s eyes. “Drake… are you swearing to me that we cannot afford to walk away?” Drake met his stare with an unblinking, chilling intensity. “Whether a century of Kingsley legacy can survive this ruin is something only you can answer, Richard.” The color drained from my father’s face. He took a single, ragged breath, lifted his bidding paddle, and opened his mouth. “The Kingsley family bids one hundred—” Before he could finish the sentence, a cheerful, robotic chime rang out from my phone, echoing clearly over our booth’s speakers: “Ding! Your account has successfully processed a payment of one hundred billion dollars.” Richard’s voice caught in his throat. Beside him, my sisters froze, their heads slowly, mechanically turning toward me like rust-locked gears. Then, Sadie’s voice shattered the sound barrier, leaping an entire octave. “One hundred billion?!” she shrieked. “Phoebe Kingsley! What did you just buy?!” “What on God’s green earth costs a hundred billion dollars?!” “Tell me right now!” I blinked, looking up with wide, innocent eyes, and held out my screen to show them the confirmation receipt. “I bought the exclusive civilian rights to that new prototype deep-space orbital rocket,” I explained brightly. “There are only three being built on the entire planet. Honestly, you have no idea how fast my fingers had to be to snag the checkout slot.” Sadie stared at the screen, her pupils trembling. “You… you bought a rocket? What are you going to do with a rocket?! Are you trying to leave the atmosphere?!” I nodded earnestly. “Well, yes, Sadie. Why else would someone buy a rocket? To keep it in the garage? You’re asking silly questions.” Sadie stood frozen, her expression cycling from sheer shock to profound confusion, before collapsing into complete, unadulterated hysteria. She grabbed her head in both hands and let out a strangled, muffled scream. And in that brief, chaotic thirty-second window, Charles Monroe’s voice cut through the air like a butcher’s cleaver. “The Monroe family bids one hundred billion!” The entire grand ballroom went dead. The minor tycoons who had been clamoring moments ago pulled their paddles down as if they had caught fire. A hundred billion was a threshold so astronomical it wiped out the entire playing field. The collective gaze of the room shifted from naked greed to absolute awe, snapping toward Charles Monroe. Monroe leaned back in his leather chair, a lazy, triumphant smirk playing on his lips. He tilted his chin toward our box, his tone dripping with patronizing amusement. “My apologies, Richard. Looks like I beat you to the punch.” The air inside our box plummeted to sub-zero. My father didn’t say a single word. But when his gaze slowly drifted toward me, his eyes were heavy with a mix of crushing disappointment and pure exhaustion. Sadie whipped around, her eyes rimmed with angry tears, her index finger shaking inches from my nose. “This is entirely your fault! If you hadn’t interrupted Dad with your deranged rocket purchase, he wouldn’t have hesitated! In five seconds, you threw off his entire rhythm!” “Do you have any concept of what a hundred billion means? Most Fortune 500 corporations don’t clear that kind of capital in a decade, and you tossed it away without even asking!” She was shaking with rage, lunging forward to snatch my phone. “Give me that! I’m canceling every single order you just placed!” “Enough.” Charlotte rubbed her temples, looking ten years older than she had an hour ago. “Give her the phone back, Sadie. Phoebe… just take the car and go home.” Sadie spun on her heel. “Char, are you still defending her? If you keep coddling her, she’s going to drag this entire family into the gutter!” I shook my head, settling deeper into the velvet. “I’m not going home. This auction is just getting entertaining. Why would I leave?” Watching my complete lack of remorse, both of my sisters slumped their shoulders in defeat. “Fine,” Charlotte sighed, looking away. “Do whatever you want.” I looked at them quietly. They were furious, yes, and they thought I was a reckless disaster. But beneath the shouting, neither of them had ever truly abandoned me. Charlotte had once stood up at a high-society gala and told an entire circle of sneering matrons that she didn’t care how much money I spent—the Kingsleys made enough to keep me in diamonds forever. And as vicious as Sadie’s tongue could be, whenever I casually mentioned wanting something impossible, she would grumble, curse, and then quietly move heaven and earth to hand it to me on a silver platter. Suddenly, Thaddeus Drake leaned across my father, snapping at Richard’s personal assistant. “Didn’t you hear Miss Charlotte? Escort the third daughter out of this room immediately.” He waved his hand dismissively, his chin tilted high. “Esoteric matters are infinitely delicate. The energy of this space cannot be polluted by trivial, ignorant distractions.” He spoke with supreme authority, acting as though he owned the box. I raised my eyes, giving him a flat, unimpressed look. “A hired gun my dad bought for twenty million, and he actually thinks he’s royalty.” Richard’s eyebrows knotted. He turned toward Drake, his voice dropping an octave into a low, warning rumble. “Master Drake. Phoebe is my daughter. She is not an ‘ignorant distraction.’” Drake’s face stiffened, the smugness evaporating into awkward embarrassment. Richard turned back to me, his jaw tight. “Phoebe, your behavior tonight has crossed every line. Go home and reflect on what you’ve done.” He looked at Charlotte. “The moment we get back, freeze her credit lines.” He paused, exhaled heavily, and added under his breath, “Or at least… next time. If she pulls something like this one more time, freeze them!” Across the room, Charles Monroe’s voice rang out once more, dripping with honeyed venom. “Well, Richard? Are you staying in the game, or have the Kingsleys run out of steam? If you’re stepping down, I’ll take this miraculous ground off your hands with my compliments.” Hundreds of pairs of eyes swiveled toward us, sharp and expectant. Richard’s face flushed an ugly shade of crimson. He raised his paddle. “Two hundred billion.” Monroe didn’t flinch. A razor-thin smile touched his lips. “Three hundred billion.” Richard shot up from his seat. “Monroe! Does your family even possess that level of liquid reserves? Don’t let your petty grudge drive you into bankruptcy!” Monroe looked utterly unbothered. “Save your breath, Richard. Whether I can pay is my problem, not yours.” He leaned forward, his eyes flashing with raw malice. “All you need to know is that whatever you bid, I will match it, raise it, and bury you.” Richard ground his molars together. “Four hundred billion.” Monroe countered instantly. “Five hundred.” “Six hundred.” … “One trillion.” The jump from six hundred billion to a staggering one trillion sucked the remaining oxygen out of the hall. The room descended into tomb-like silence. Monroe set his paddle down flat, resting his palms on the table. “Let’s stop playing games, Richard,” Monroe called out, his voice echoing in the dead quiet. “One trillion is every last cent of liquid capital the Monroe family can mobilize across every domestic and offshore account. If you add so much as a single dollar to that figure, I won’t say another word. I’ll pack my bags, walk out that door, and the land is yours.” He paused, his grin turning lethal. “Otherwise… step aside and watch me take it.” Richard’s face was an unreadable storm of shadows. One trillion. A month ago, the Kingsleys could have written that check without blinking. But three weeks ago, my father had locked nearly two trillion dollars into a high-stakes deepwater port infrastructure initiative. Our unencumbered cash reserves were dangerously tight. Monroe hadn’t just placed a bid; he had aimed a scalpel directly at our jugular. Charlotte’s face went completely ash-white as she tapped furiously on her tablet. “Dad…” her voice wavered, “I just ran the liquidity sweep. Our current unpledged cash, combined with our immediate credit lines, totals only nine hundred billion.” Richard snapped, “What do you mean nine hundred? We should have had a full trillion available!” Charlotte swallowed hard, her voice shrinking to a whisper. “Dad… you forgot. The missing hundred billion… was just spent on Phoebe’s rocket.” From the neighboring boxes, stifled snickers began to circulate. “The legendary Kingsley spendthrift strikes again.” “Tragic, honestly. To build an empire that grand, only to have it undermined by a spoiled little brat.” The murmurs grew nastier by the second. Richard’s expression was thunderous, but before the gossip could spread further, he slammed his fist on the railing. “That is enough!” he barked, his voice echoing with authority. “A daughter of the Kingsley house is not subject to the gossip of this room!” The whispers choked off instantly. Right then, Thaddeus Drake leaned in again, his tone dark and pressing. “The Monroe and Kingsley bloodlines are cosmically opposed,” Drake whispered urgently. “If this parcel had fallen to any other house, there would be room to navigate the fallout. But if Monroe claims it, the two forces will collide, the negative energy will invert, and the Kingsley lineage will suffer an apocalyptic collapse.” Richard’s fists clenched until the skin stretched white over his knuckles. Beside him, Charlotte and Sadie looked entirely lost, stripped of their usual corporate brilliance. Drake took a step closer, dropping the final lure. “Mr. Kingsley… rumor has it that your family safeguards an ancient consecrated heirloom—an ancestral anchor passed down through generations. Surely, the historical provenance and spiritual weight of that artifact would be more than enough for the house to accept as collateral for the remaining hundred billion?” Charlotte’s head snapped up. “No! Absolutely not! Dad, Grandfather made you swear on his deathbed that we would never, under any circumstances, leverage that heirloom!” “Miss Charlotte,” Drake interrupted smoothly, his tone polite yet suffocatingly dismissive. “Circumstances change. The foundations of your house are crumbling beneath your feet. What good is hoarding a dead trinket if you have no empire left to house it? If the Kingsleys fall into bankruptcy tonight, that heirloom will simply be seized by liquidators anyway.” Across the mezzanine, Monroe’s taunting laugh echoed again. “What’s the matter, Richard? Intimidated by a trillion? It seems the great Kingsley fortune was nothing more than an empty myth!” Every gaze in the room was pinned on us, watching like vultures waiting for a wounded lion to collapse. We were trapped: either swallow public humiliation and admit defeat, or risk total financial annihilation on a blind gamble. And in that split second, I saw it. A tiny, imperceptible shift in posture. A fleeting, knowing glance exchanged between Thaddeus Drake and Charles Monroe. It was so subtle an ordinary person would have missed it. But to someone who had spent a lifetime studying the micro-movements of human deception, it was as loud as a gunshot. A coordinated trap. A staged drama. Their target had never been the land. They were hunting our ancestral anchor. Richard’s trembling hand reached for the paddle once more. “Take the land, Richard,” Drake whispered, his voice silky with persuasion. “Take it, and everything will be saved.” Drake’s smile deepened. Monroe’s eyes glittered with ravenous anticipation. Looking at the two of them, the ghost of my past life flashed before my eyes—the cold, the hunger, the bitter irony of dying in squalor while knowing the secrets of the cosmos. I had earned this life. I had earned my silk sheets, my champagne breakfasts, and my platinum cards. And these two miserable parasites were trying to smash my golden bowl. If the Kingsleys lost their ancestral anchor, the cursed land wouldn’t just drain our bank accounts. The malevolent energy beneath that soil would consume the Kingsley bloodline entirely. And if my family died… who the hell was going to pay for my shopping? The sheer audacity of it snapped my patience in half. I lunged forward, ripped the bidding paddle straight out of my father’s grip, and turned to face the entire assembly. “That dirt covers a mass burial trench from a forgotten colonial massacre!” I projected, my voice ringing like a bronze bell across the hall. “Three feet down, it’s nothing but shattered skulls and rotting marrow! Whoever builds on that ground will see their men drop dead, their daughters ruined, and their vast billions scattered to the winds within seventy-two hours!” I pivoted, pinned my glare on Thaddeus Drake, and jabbed a finger directly into his chest. “You decrepit old fraud! The Devil himself doesn’t have a heart as black as yours!” “I haven’t even had the chance to burn through the Kingsley fortune yet—who gave you the right to rob me?!”
🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “572331”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel
Leave a Reply