I rubbed my stomach gently, feeling the slight curve that would soon become impossible to hide.
“We are going home, babies,” I whispered.
I had enough capital to start ten companies.
I had the brains they always underestimated because I was quiet, because I was kind, because I did not fight back.
And now, I had four reasons never to lose.
Four reasons to build something that would make the Sterling fortune look like pocket change.
Julian Sterling could enjoy his new life, his new bride, his father’s approval.
Because in five years, I was coming back.
Not as the girl who was not good enough.
But as the woman who owned everything.
The San Francisco sun was blinding as I stepped off the plane, my hand instinctively going to my stomach.
I had moved the one hundred twenty million dollars into that Swiss account within hours of leaving the Sterling house, making it invisible to anyone who might try to track me.
By the time Arthur realized I was gone for good, there would be nothing to follow.
I stood at the airport, looking at a map of Silicon Valley posted on the wall.
This was the place where empires were built from dorm rooms and garages.
Where nineteen-year-olds became billionaires.
Where your background meant nothing if you could code, pitch, and execute.
I rubbed my stomach gently, feeling the slight flutter that I now knew was four tiny lives beginning to grow.
“We are home, babies,” I whispered.
The first three months were the hardest.
I rented a small apartment in Palo Alto, nothing like the mansion I had left behind, but it was mine.
Every morning I woke up sick, my body adjusting to carrying four babies at once.
The doctor had warned me it would be difficult, that I would need to be careful, that quadruplet pregnancies came with serious risks.
But I did not have time to be careful.
I had a fortune to build and only a limited window before my body would no longer allow me to work eighteen-hour days.
I started attending every tech meetup, every venture capital pitch night, every startup event I could find.
I wore my old clothes, the jeans and t-shirts, blending in with the hoodie-wearing founders who lived on energy drinks and ambition.
No one knew who I was.
No one knew I had one hundred twenty million dollars sitting in an account, waiting to be deployed.
I listened. I learned. I studied the patterns of what worked and what failed.
And then I met Marcus Chen.