The Sympathy Card

Felix walked around the living room with his chin resting under his hand. He kept thinking of ways to bribe his cousins successfully and have them join his side.

The easiest way was to promise them some shares from the stocks he would obtain from the family when the hotel was revived successfully.

However, this option was unacceptable to him. He didn't work his ass off to hand all the profits to them. Not to mention they would make sure to rip him off, even if he tried to do so.

He sat down as he started to feel dizzy from walking around the couch.

"Think Felix, think. There must be some weakness I can take advantage of to pressure and blackmail them. I need to dig deep within my fuzzy memories about this period, and I might find something useful."

After a while, He suddenly fist-bumped his palm and stood up with a joyful expression.

"Found it, Kenny, you bastard, I should have known that your traitorous character did not act up only at that time, but way before." He grinned widely. "Hehe, with this, I am confident I will turn you into my lapdog. But first, I need to obtain solid evidence."

Indeed, without having evidence, threatening Kenny would only get him to bow down and help him convince the other cousins not to give him a hard time since he owns quite a few favors with them.

As for Noah, that sis-con, it was even easier to bribe him; Felix needs to please his little sister with a gift and ask her to speak some good words about him. Noah never refused a request from his little sister.

"Alright, this is the plan, for now, to deal with my cousin's interference; however, I still need to deal with the inspection team that will arrive later."

He must prepare a plausible reason for how he took advantage of the chaos. After all, his cousins were scared shitless to make a move. Meanwhile, the thug of the family, who only knew how to waste money and laze around, had such foresight that allowed him to reap plenty of benefits during the chaos.

Nonetheless, Felix was not worried about their interrogation at all. He already had the best shield for their accusations.

….

Three days later.....

Felix was standing in front of a tent, with two others behind him, a man and a woman.

"You guys came just in time; my underling just informed me yesterday that they are going to start cleaning the area to make it fit for building an apartment complex."

He smiled at the inspectors who arrived suddenly just ten minutes ago and added, "It's for the employees who will get hired later after the official opening of the Sky Pearl Island to the public."

"I see, Mr. Felix, you really astonished us when we heard the things you accomplished from the servant's mouths. You managed to pull off this huge remodeling under the eyes of the family. Although our understatement of your capabilities was the reason, it is still a good achievement." The dark-haired man complemented Felix with a smile.

"True, I honestly don't know if he was acting like an unproductive thug in the family before so that he can focus on the family tradition without being in the spotlight. Thus managing to revive his business without his cousins' interference, who will definitely harm his operations if they found out about it. But now it is quite too late, I assume." The inspector woman shared her own opinion on how Felix played everyone.

"From what we heard from the servants, you already have everything prepared, and you just gave the green light to start the construction. Now they truly can't do anything to stop you." The inspector man supported her claim.

"Seniors, you are truly giving me too much credit. There was no major plan, as you mentioned since I never acted like a thug before."

Felix shook his head and said, "That was just a kid in pain, using his actions to express his hidden trauma. But sadly, everyone started to call me a rogue, thug, and unproductive, lazy bum, just because I played some pranks on my cousins, and my grades in school fell a little bit. The family is a really heartless place to be. That's why I decided to choose this island, which is in the middle of nowhere so that I can be as far as possible from their despise and getting constantly looked down."

The woman's expression softened a bit as she realized that what she said was quite farfetched.

After all, who can spend years being looked down upon by everyone just for one moment of glory?

Indeed family tradition was quite important for everyone's future, but to use your childhood for it, no kid on the planet would be able to think so or do so.

"Well, I quite believe you a little bit, but how can you explain being able to have such foresight and invest your entire budget on a gamble that may turn out right or can just flat-out ruin you and your future?"

Even though her expression softened, that didn't mean she would stop doing her job. So she began her grilling to expose any underhanded methods Felix used to have such a great achievement.

"Everyone knows that you missed all your classes in the family special school. You did not learn how to manage a business, economics, or how to invest properly. You learned nothing of such knowledge, but here you are on an island that was given a death sentence by everyone, trying to revive it using only a 30 million dollar budget."

"So please explain yourself properly without lying. Otherwise, everything you did here will be investigated so we can have a clear image of how you did it." The woman instructed Felix strictly to scare him into admitting if he played any tricks to cheat.

Saddened, Felix lowered his head with watery eyes and said, "Even now when I did my best to honor the family tradition and help them obtain an asset that can propel them even further than their rivals. I am still getting doubted over my capabilities. You said how I did so? Well, it is simple. Would a prodigy need to learn common people's knowledge to perform better than them? No, a genius needs no such thing; he only needs some basic information and can use it to make miracles, and this is what sets a genius apart from the common people."

His slumped shoulders were no more, as he puffed out his chest and began listing all of his close family talents.

"My Grandfather was a business monster who dominated all of his rivals and made our family one of the top worldwide."

"My father brought the family a massive amount of wealth using his senses that only a few people in the entire world possess. His investments were all based on his senses, not his information or experience, and those senses never failed him before."

"My mother was one of the most charismatic women on the planet; anyone in her presence would feel the urge to follow her leadership. She turned tens of 5 stars hotels and restaurants into everyone's number one pick."

He stared at their stiff eyes and sighed dejectedly, "I have the blood and genes of all three of them, but I am still doubted because of my past actions that were only a cry for help, nothing more or less. None of you had thought that maybe I inherited some of their talents and used them to revive this massive undertaking. You only judged me based on my childish actions and figured that I played tricks to be able to do something which none of you can do."

"Well, guess what, I am a genius who inherited both my grandfather and parents' talents."

He didn't avoid having eye contact with them, as he extended three fingers in their faces and began listing how he used those talents to remodel the island.

"My father's investment senses alerted me that there is a profit to make when I was watching the chaos on the TV."

"My grandfather's business talent allowed me to create a complete plan to revive this hotel and turn it into one of the best ones there is, using only a little information I searched from the internet and analyzing the extraterrestrial transmission."

"And finally, my mother's talent helped me convince and charm the servants into taking my side and helping me finish this mission successfully, without reporting the events that transpired here to you guys. So my cousins won't hinder me."

"I used those talents properly and took advantage of the economic crash that happened during the chaos. While my cousins feared the future, I was thinking of the present and using it to my advantage."

He clutched his hand into a fist and shrugged his shoulders, "The only thing that you guys might find, if you searched for any tricks I used, is my aunty's assistance of transporting those resources here safely. Even though I didn't use my budget to do so, I told her to invest in the economic crash just like me, as payment."

"It depends if you thought of it as me cheating or me treading on a grey line to help the family gain an asset that they can't refuse."

Without waiting for them to digest his bullshit excuse, he entered the tent, leaving them standing outside with stunned expressions. They truly didn't expect such a reason.