Chapter 487: You’re Not Good Enough for My Sister!

Once the greetings were over, everyone took their seats. Whether by coincidence or design, David arranged for Aaron to sit beside his heavily made-up daughter, and Aaron accepted the seat without comment. Lily immediately claimed the chair on his other side.

David's blond-haired son, however, had been staring at Lily ever since they entered the room.

Not glancing. Staring.

His eyes followed her with the kind of undisguised interest that made Lily increasingly uncomfortable. She frowned, shifted closer to Aaron, then quietly tapped his hand beneath the table.

Aaron noticed.

He turned toward the blond young man, a trace of coldness entering his gaze. "My sister's pretty, isn't she?"

The young man seemed surprised to be addressed so directly, but quickly grinned. "Yeah, she's gorgeous. Does she have a boyfriend?"

"What's it to you?"

"Heh. If she doesn't, maybe our families could get even closer."

His eyes drifted back toward Lily.

Aaron laughed.

The sound made him look over again.

"You're not good enough for her."

The young man froze. "What?"

Then he burst out laughing.

"I'm not good enough? Hahahaha! Holy shit, did you actually just say I'm not good enough for her?"

The commotion immediately drew the adults' attention. David's expression darkened.

"Tyler, mind your manners. What the hell are you laughing at?"

Tyler was still laughing hard enough to clutch his stomach. "Dad, this guy actually said I'm not good enough for his sister. How is that not funny?"

His grin turned openly mocking as he looked back at Aaron.

"I'm the heir to the Warren family. My family's worth over a hundred million, and you're telling me I'm not good enough?"

He leaned back in his chair.

"You people are just small-town nobodies. If you hadn't become the national top scorer this year, you wouldn't even be sitting at the same table as me. You know that, right?"

Victor and Aaron's mother both went still.

So that was it.

Their suspicions had been right from the beginning. The Warrens had not suddenly remembered an old friendship out of guilt or nostalgia. They had come back because Aaron had become someone worth knowing.

David immediately realized what his idiot son had just exposed.

"Tyler. Shut your mouth."

His tone was much sharper now.

Tyler looked genuinely offended. "What? Am I wrong? He gets one good result and suddenly thinks he's hot shit?"

"Tyler—"

"So what if he was the national top scorer?" Tyler snapped, pointing at Aaron. "At the end of the day, people like him still end up working for people like us. He'll just be some rich man's lapdog—"

SMACK!

David's hand cracked across his son's face before he could finish.

Tyler's head snapped sideways. A red handprint appeared almost immediately, and for several seconds he could only sit there with one hand pressed to his cheek, staring at his father in disbelief.

"I said shut your fucking mouth."

David's voice had gone cold.

"Are you deaf?"

Tyler opened his mouth, saw the look in his father's eyes, and thought better of it.

David was furious, but not for the reason anyone at the table might have assumed.

If Aaron had merely been the national top scorer, David would never have traveled all the way to Sealine City after fifteen years of silence.

What had truly brought him back was something he had discovered by accident.

The Trainer who had cleared the ninth floor of the Hidden Dragon Tower and taken first place on the Hidden Dragon Rankings was named Aaron.

And he lived in Sealine City.

The name had stirred a memory David had buried for years.

Victor's son was named Aaron too.

A little digging had confirmed it.

They were the same person.

That discovery had scared the hell out of him.

David had never imagined that someone as ordinary and straightforward as Victor could raise a son who would become the number-one talent on the Hidden Dragon Rankings. That title alone carried more weight in the Trainer world than David's entire business empire.

Worse—or better, depending on how he looked at it—David had heard that multiple Champion-level Trainers were already competing to take Aaron as a student.

Champion-level Trainers.

People David himself had never been important enough to meet.

That was when the old friendship suddenly became very useful again.

If he could repair his relationship with Victor and tie the Warren family's future to Aaron, the benefits would be enormous. Aaron was still young, but anyone with eyes could see where he was headed.

And then David remembered the childhood engagement.

His daughter and Aaron had already been promised to each other once.

If that old arrangement could somehow become real and David became Aaron's father-in-law, his company would gain a connection most businessmen could only dream about. With a future powerhouse behind the Warren family, competitors that had threatened him for years would become far less frightening.

His business could climb to an entirely different level.

And now his moronic son had nearly blown the whole thing apart in less than five minutes.

David wanted to slap him again.

"Oh my God, David! Why would you hit him?"

His wife immediately pulled Tyler toward her and examined his cheek with obvious distress. "Sweetheart, are you okay?"

Tyler said nothing. He could tell his father was genuinely furious now, so he swallowed whatever argument he had left and settled for glaring at Aaron with naked resentment.

David took a breath, forced the anger from his face, and turned back toward Victor's family with an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry about that. My son has no filter and apparently no common sense either. Don't take anything he said seriously."

He picked up his glass.

"This one's on me."

David drained it in one go.

Victor seemed unsure how to respond.

Aaron, on the other hand, had not moved at all.

He simply watched David with a cold smile.

...