THE BILLIONAIRE'S LEGACY

It was the day after graduation. Every senior class 3 student at Princeton was excited about going back home. Well, not every one of them, to be honest. Eden Lorenzo, Hyacinth Sterling and Alexandra Allende weren't. I can’t tell you why Eden and Hyacinth weren’t happy, but I can tell you why I am unhappy.

Yes, I am Alexandra Allende.

I wasn’t exactly unhappy…well, I wasn’t unhappy yet because I didn’t know about the horrible news I was going to receive at home, but I was sad. I was sad because my best friend, Hyacinth, who was also my roommate, was sad. I really can’t give you too much information about why she was sad because that is her story to tell, so you can check out her story to know why.

As for me, after Hyacinth left, I sat back in my room in the residential area of school and waited for my driver to arrive.

Let me tell you a little bit about me. I am nineteen. I’m short, but that’s unimportant because my beauty outweighs my lack of height. If you don’t believe me, you can just ask my best friend Hyacinth. Or you could just look up Alexandra Daddario. I love men – yeah you heard me right. Men. I don’t do young boys because you know some of them can be immature. The older the man, the hotter the s*x. I’m sure you know what I mean.

Anyway, my dad is rich – like, very f*ck*ng rich. You should have guessed that by now though. I mean, I’m pretty, and I attend Princeton. You don’t expect me to be poor, do you?

So I sat in my room waiting for my driver to come pick me up in a limo or a Bentley or something equally expensive from my dad’s garage. After about two hours of waiting – within those two hours I had cursed and raged and gotten angry because why the hell would my driver have kept me waiting – I finally got the call that my escort was waiting downstairs to pick me up.

My escort? Well, that’s new. I’ve had a bodyguard and a driver but never an escort, so what the hell?

Well, no time to think about that now. I went downstairs to the reception to see that my driver was waiting there with a strange man. He’s probably the new bodyguard my dad hired. He did have the build for it. He was tall, dark and menacing to look at.

“Miss Allende,” my driver greeted me. 

Now you might think that I am a rich, spoiled brat. Well, I might be that, but one thing I am not is a rude, spoiled brat. Look, I used to get bullied a lot because I used to be overweight, that is, until I lost some weight and all the knock heads in school wanted to date me. After experiencing bullying, do you think I would be rude? Of course not.

Now, why have I diverted from the story I was telling you? 

I know a lot about the people my dad hires to work for me. I know a lot about Henry, my driver. He is a short, pudgy man with a bald spot on his head who always has a smile on his face because he enjoys working for me. He enjoys working for me because I am nice. You can ask him. 

Every time Henry comes to pick me up for the holiday he has a smile for me, and he always asks the same question, “Is Princess Alexandra ready for a great holiday?”

But on that day, Henry had no smile for me. If anything, he looked worried as he cast a quick look at the tall dark man beside him.

“Henry, you are late,” I told him. “My things are upstairs.”

He cast another glance at the man before nodding. “Yes, ma’am.” Turning to the man, he asked, “Would you be kind to…”

The man said nothing. He simply began to make his way toward the stairs and Henry had no choice but to follow him, avoiding my eyes as he did.

Weird.

I went outside to the car park and looked out for my car. It wasn’t there. There wasn’t any familiar car among the fleet of cars that had come to pick other students out there either. A few of my classmates were getting into their cars. Some waved and I waved back. As strange as this sounds, I know I won’t be missing any of them after today, even though most of us might never meet each other again. 

The only person I’ll miss is my best friend Hyacinth. She’s my best friend in the world, and she’s the only person I will miss.

Frowning, I decided to wait for Henry to return. It didn’t take long for him to return with my bags, most of which were carried by the stranger. The man was staring intently at me, his dark eyes devoid of emotion or even servitude. I found that strange. All of my dad’s workers are usually respectful towards me, they are loyal. They would never stare into my eyes with such defiance.

I don’t know how to explain it, but this man’s eyes were cold. I stifled a shiver and turned my attention to Henry.

“Henry, I don’t see the car. Has daddy gotten me a new car?”

Henry seemed to want to shuffle from foot to foot, but the weight of my bag hindered that, so he settled for adjusting my bags in his hand.

“The car – the car is right there, Miss.”

“Where?”

“There.”

I looked in the direction of his chin, which he was tilting toward the left. 

And I nearly passed out from shock.

It was a private taxi, black and sleek but with the unmistakable taxi sign at the top.

What the hell?!

“Henry, what the hell is going on here?” I probed with a fake smile on my face, unable to get rid of the hunch that something was wrong. 

Henry looked like he was going to puke. His face had gone suddenly tight, the lines around his eyes deepened, his normally bright coffee-colored eyes looked dull. He looked like he was itching to scratch at the bald spot on his head, but he couldn’t quite reach it when he was carrying all my things.

Surprisingly, it was the stranger who answered my question and his voice sounded like what I expected it to sound like. It was hard, deep and heavy, causing me to nearly jolt out of my skin.

“You will get all the answers to your question when you get home,” he said blandly.

I couldn’t shake the chill I felt at his words, neither could I explain why I suddenly felt scared after he spoke. He was terrifying in ways that made me want to hide. Something about him did not seem right. He was too grave.

As if sensing just how frightened I was, Henry offered a small smile. “I will put your things in the car, Miss. You should get to the car.”

My feet felt like lead. They felt like someone had stuck glue under them and pressed them against the cold concrete floor.

Henry went ahead of me to the taxi, but I couldn’t bring myself to follow him, that is, until the stranger spoke again.

“You should get going, Alexandra Allende, we have a plane to catch.”

A plane to catch? What the hell happened to Daddy’s private plane? 

I wanted to ask, but I knew that I wouldn’t get any answer, especially because Henry seemed to be trying to avoid talking to me by loading my things in the trunk of the car while the stranger simply moved past me to help Henry with my things. When my feet finally moved, they were heavy as hell. I moved as if I was in a daze. I don’t even know how I got into the car, but somehow I ended up in the back seat with the strange man beside me, while Henry took the driver’s seat. Throughout the ride I could only look out of the window while trying to guess what could be wrong. No one was saying anything to me. 

I opened my phone to check my messages. I had several messages from friends who congratulated me on my graduation and many who wanted to know where I was going to spend my holiday before heading to university. Not that I want to go to university. I don’t need to go to university to learn how to be the heir of my father’s company.

There was no message from my dad. That should be a good thing, right?

Dad barely ever calls or messages me unless he wants to know whether I want some more money or if I need to use a different car in his garage. But if something was wrong – would he not call to tell me?

I tried not to think too much about it, but my heart was beating heavily in my chest, I could almost taste blood in my mouth.

I didn’t even notice the rockiness of the roads, I didn’t even know when we left the island where the school is located. One minute, we were leaving school and the next thing I knew, we were arriving at the airport and my things were being carried to the airplane which was already loading up with passengers. We were in business class.

Business class? Me?

Yet as I took my seat in the tight space that I was unaccustomed to, I got another hunch that flying in business class would soon be the least of my worries and that I was even lucky to get a plane ticket at all.

What the hell is happening?

Why the hell do I feel as if my life is about to come to an end? 

Throughout the flight no one said anything to me. Luckily, I had the window seat, so I could look out into the vast sky at nothingness and get lost in my thoughts. What happened to my car? What about Dad’s private jet?

The flight back home, to the bustling city of Port Amazon where the richest men played the game of power, where money ruled. There were two taxis waiting to take us home, but home wasn’t the place the taxis took me to. They took me to a hotel and not just any hotel, it was a 3-star hotel that I had never heard of with the most shitty service ever. I was beginning to fear that I had been abducted, that Henry was working together with the strange man and that they had both kidnapped me for a ransom.

I would have screamed and shouted for help if they had not led me to a room and opened the door to reveal my father, Leo Allende, if not the most powerful but definitely one of the most powerful men in the country.

But looking at him just then caused my blood to run cold. He didn’t look so powerful anymore.

My father sat on a worn-out chair with a glass of cheap whiskey in his hand. He looked… My father has always been a handsome man. I got my good looks from him and some from my mother. But Leo Allende looked like a shadow of himself in a pair of slacks and an ill – fitting gray shirt.

He opened his eyes at my entrance. My father was never an affectionate man. Even now, he didn’t smile, and I wasn’t even sure that he saw me. He looked up, but he probably did not acknowledge my presence.

Or so I thought until he stood up. “Alexandra.”

“Dad…what is going on?”

He didn’t respond but suddenly the strange man who had been holding my bags dropped them, reached into his pocket and took out a pair of handcuffs. 

I could only watch in wide – eyed shock as he walked toward my father, who put out his hand to be handcuffed.

“Dad…?”

The cuffs clicked into place.

“Dad!” I shrieked, my eyes suddenly blurred with tears.

“I’m sorry, Alexandra dear. I have lost everything. Everything. Tomorrow…tomorrow you will understand.”

Tomorrow you will understand.

Yet no one was saying anything to me. I had watched in shock as my father, Leo Allende, was led out of the hotel room without a word. No one could say anything to me, not even when I cried like a fool and begged to be told where my father was being taken to and why.

The stranger who had carried my bags had mumbled a few words to Henry before heading out. I hadn’t expected many words from him anyway, because up until the moment when he walked into the hotel room, he hadn’t really said much to me besides trying to hurry me into the taxi at school.

Not even Henry, who had been in my father’s employ for as long as I could remember, could say a word to me. Eventually, I had to accept that perhaps the silence was golden. Maybe I didn’t want to know what was going on, after all, because deep in my heart I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

So I slept that night. I slept without eating or talking to anyone, not even Henry, who la