Chapter 532: Owning Lincoln Heights

Quantum Tech would release the AI on Monday. That was going to be...

interesting

. Watching the world react to ARIA’s public-facing version—dumbed down to like O.001% of her actual capability because we couldn’t just drop a near-superintelligent AI on the market without causing, you know, complete societal collapse.

But even at 0.001%, she was going to change everything. The thought made my chest tight in that way excitement and terror feel identical.

The CIA meeting was around the corner. Ava Voss. Deputy Director. Resistance incarnate.

She’d been texting me—actual flirty shit I liked, the kind that made my brain short-circuit and she was sending me

winky faces

and complaining that I’d ruined other men for her.

Which, like...

yeah

. That was kinda the point. The suspense was killing her. The "

will he, won’t he

" of when I’d finally make my move, when I’d finally cross that line that we’d been dancing on since the moment I made her come without fucking her.

I missed her, if I’m being honest. Missed that sharp intelligence. That refusal to just fall at my feet like everyone else. She was a challenge, and my dick and my brain had very strong, very conflicting opinions about that.

But all that aside—Isabella and Maya were finally free. Their divorces finalized. No longer chained to inadequate men who’d never deserved them, who’d treated them like accessories instead of people. But Patricia’s was still pending.

Even after everything, the system hadn’t given me mission completion. Just like Charlotte’s mission still hung there, incomplete.

Something was missing in both. Some piece I hadn’t found yet, some key that would turn the lock. But I had time.

Let the roots of time unravel everything slowly, right? No need to force it. Forcing things was how you broke them, how you got mission fails and crying women.

And I was in love with the woman I’d grown up believing hated me. Patricia Morrison. The woman who’d loved me more than anything but couldn’t show it. Couldn’t claim me. Couldn’t even acknowledge me without destroying everything—her marriage, her career, her entire carefully constructed life.

I didn’t know how to tell her who I was. How to tell Mom the truth. Mom thought Patricia hated her too, just like I had. This misconception had poisoned everything for years, this toxic sludge of misunderstanding that we were all just... swimming in.

I didn’t want this to go on anymore.

But again—time’s roots. Fucking time, doing its thing, slow and patient and inevitable.

With a sigh that came from somewhere deep and tired, I focused on more immediate empire-building shit.

The land situation in Lincoln Heights was about to get very, very interesting.

According to Diaz Torres—Madison’s uncle and the family’s strategic land acquisition specialist, which is a job title that sounds like it was invented by someone who owns too many monocles—Lincoln Heights was a sleeping giant.

Most people outside or not immediately adjacent didn’t even know it existed. That’s how old money operated. Invisible wealth. The kind of rich where you didn’t need to prove anything because everyone who mattered already knew, and everyone who didn’t know wasn’t worth convincing anyway.

The most prominent families were the

Torres, Morrisons, and Delgados.

The three trinities of Lincoln Heights Elites, with Torres sitting at the top like kings on their throne, looking down at everyone else.

The Morrisons and Delgados only owned their mansions in

LH

but did business elsewhere—parachuting in to sleep in their castles then flying out to make money in the real world. The Torres, however, had realized the truth decades ago and started systematically buying every piece of land that came available, like a game of Monopoly played with actual lives.

Mercy Hospital—Patricia’s family business. The Voyeur Wellness Center where wealthy women came to pretend they weren’t falling apart inside. Both on Torres-sold land.

Strategic positioning at its finest, like chess but everyone involved had a net worth that could fund small countries.

Mercy Medical University, partially owned by Patricia’s family—no Morrison involvement despite Mrs. Morrison running the hospital.

Then smaller establishments. Clubs like this one. Pubs. Restaurants. All sitting on land the Torres controlled, all paying rent to the same empire that was about to become my empire too.

My restaurant was technically outside Lincoln Heights according to Google Maps, but local maps disagreed. The kind of jurisdictional fuckery that only mattered when it came to taxes and zoning laws and who you had to pay off to get shit built.

Here’s the breakdown: locals owned 30% of Lincoln Heights land. Torres Developments had acquired 65% over five decades of patient, strategic buying. The rest belonged to institutions and businesses, the unlucky bastards who’d gotten there first.

According to Diaz, only 18% of local landowners would sell—but only on condition of redevelopment. They didn’t want to just hand over family land to be turned into parking lots or left to rot. They wanted investment. Growth. Purpose. They wanted to see their shitty little town become something that mattered, something that proved their grandparents hadn’t been idiots for settling here.

So really, only money stood between me, Madison, and owning most of Lincoln Heights.

And money? Money I had. Money was the least of my problems at this point, which was hilarious because eighteen months ago I had negative forty-seven dollars in my bank account.

Could as well stealing ramen from the corner store.

After getting this information, I’d made a decision. I was going to start my empire here. Build a real kingdom from this forgotten town that the rest of LA pretended didn’t exist, this weird little pocket of old-money families and secrets and land deeds that stretched back generations.

It seemed ambitious—borderline insane—but I was going to develop Lincoln Heights and become its king while slowly expanding into other cities. Create a network.

A

web

of influence and power that stretched across California and beyond, that made me untouchable not because I had money but because I had

land

, because I had roots sunk deep into places people had forgotten to care about.

This forgotten town was going to be one of the most developed place in the world. I’d make sure of it.

Or I’d die trying, which honestly felt about as likely these days as me actually dying of natural causes. The way my life was going, I’d probably get shot by a jealous husband or a pissed-off CIA director or I’d just... forget to sleep for three weeks and my heart would give out while I was coding.

Either way, the empire was coming. And Lincoln Heights was just the beginning.