Investing In My Four Crippled Yandere Wives Get 1000x Returns
Chapter 1|Welcome to the Slums, Mr. Trash

Chapter 1: 1|Welcome to the Slums, Mr. Trash

A/N: This story is a slow burn so please don’t come for me if the MC hasn’t been able to slice a mountain in half by 50+ Chapters or that the ’investment points ’ are stacking...

The car ride was the quietest hell Allen Veton had ever sat through.

Four women shared the back of the sleek black vehicle with him, and not one of them said a word. He could feel their eyes on him though — sharp, assessing, unreadable — the kind of stares that made the collar of his shirt feel two sizes too tight. Outside the tinted windows, the glittering towers of central New York slowly gave way to cracked roads, sagging power lines, and buildings that looked like they’d been chewed on by something with very large teeth.

’My life resembles a webnovel at this point,’ Allen thought dryly, staring at his own reflection in the window. ’Disowned, sold off in an arranged marriage, and now I’m being driven into exile with four women who used to be legends.’

He glanced sideways. Myria sat closest to the door, her deep blue hair pooling over her shoulder like spilled ink, her crystalline eyes fixed on some distant point outside. Her legs — motionless beneath a blanket someone had draped over her lap — hadn’t twitched once since they’d left the estate. Beside her, Irene drummed her fingers restlessly against her knee, crimson hair catching the light, her gaze flicking to Allen every few seconds like she was daring him to say something. Everlyn sat with her hands folded primly in her lap, emerald eyes closed, an expression of practiced calm on her face. And Vivian — blind, silent, her purple eyes staring at absolutely nothing — sat with her head tilted slightly, as if she were listening to the sound of his own heartbeat.

Allen cleared his throat. Nobody reacted.

’Great start to a marriage,’ he thought.

By the time the car rolled to a stop, the neighborhood outside had shifted entirely — no more towers, no more glass and steel, just narrow streets, boarded windows, and the distant, tired hum of a district the world had decided to forget.

"We have arrived," the driver said flatly, not bothering to look back.

Allen stepped out first, more out of habit than gallantry, and immediately regretted it. Standing on the curb, arms crossed and lips curled into a sneer that had clearly been practiced in a mirror, was Reginald — his family’s butler for as long as Allen could remember. White hair slicked back, uniform pressed to perfection, looking entirely out of place amid the cracked pavement and dead streetlights of Hegeville.

"Ah. Master Allen." Reginald’s voice dripped with false courtesy. "Or should I simply call you Allen now? I imagine the title of ’Master’ no longer suits a man who couldn’t even awaken past F-rank."

Allen said nothing. He’d learned a long time ago that silence cost him nothing, while words handed to men like Reginald became ammunition.

The butler reached into his coat and produced a check, holding it out between two fingers like it was something faintly distasteful. "One hundred thousand dollars. A parting gift from the Veton family, so magnanimous of them, don’t you think? Consider it charity. Lord knows you’ll need it, living in a place like this." His eyes swept over the house behind them — squat, weathered, paint peeling from its face like dead skin — and he chuckled. "Though I suppose it suits you. Run-down and unremarkable. A perfect match."

"Is that all?" Allen asked evenly, taking the check without so much as glancing at it.

Reginald’s smile thinned. "Not quite used to being spoken back to, are you, trash? No matter. You’ll have plenty of time to get comfortable with your new life. Four broken toys and a house falling apart at the seams — a fitting inheritance for the family failure."

Behind Allen, he heard the faint creak of a wheelchair shifting. He didn’t need to turn around to know Myria’s jaw had tightened.

"That’s enough," she said, voice cold as the bloodline that ran through her veins. "You’ve delivered your check. Leave."

Reginald’s smile didn’t waver, but he inclined his head with mocking politeness. "Of course, Lady Myria. My apologies for lingering in such... humble company." He turned, got into the car, and was gone in a spray of gravel, leaving nothing behind but the echo of his laughter and the smell of exhaust.

Allen exhaled slowly. ’Well. That went about as well as expected.’

He turned to face his wives — his ’wives’, a word that still felt foreign in his mouth — and found all four of them watching him with expressions he couldn’t quite decipher. Not pity. Not warmth either. Something more distant, more guarded, like they were looking at him from across a canyon he wasn’t allowed to cross.

"Let’s get you all inside," he said, stepping behind Myria’s wheelchair and taking hold of the handles. "It’s getting cold."

"That won’t be necessary." Myria’s voice cut through the evening air like a blade drawn from its sheath. She didn’t even turn to look at him. "I would rather not have you bother yourself with such a triviality. Irene."

Irene blinked, then — reading the shape of Myria’s lips rather than hearing her — stepped forward without hesitation and took the handles from Allen’s hands. She shot him an unreadable look, somewhere between apologetic and firm, before wheeling Myria toward the front door.

Allen stood there for a moment, hand still hovering in the air where the wheelchair’s handle had been.

’Alright then.’

He turned to Vivian instead, ever the second option, and offered his arm to guide her toward the house — she was blind, after all, and the yard was uneven, littered with roots and loose stone. But she shook her head gently, a small, almost apologetic smile touching her lips as she reached instead for Everlyn’s hand. Everlyn — mute, unable to voice so much as a word of protest — silently laced their fingers together and led Vivian forward, footsteps sure despite her own blindness working against Vivian’s, the two of them navigating the yard through some wordless understanding Allen wasn’t part of.

He was left standing alone on the cracked path, watching four women who had once shaken the very foundations of the Hunter world walk past him like he wasn’t there.

’I don’t get it,’ he thought, following at a distance. ’They’re not hostile. They’re not cruel. They just... won’t let me near them.’

The inside of the house was worse than the outside had promised. Dust lay thick over every surface, cobwebs strung like tattered curtains between the beams, and the air smelled of mildew and neglect. Allen surveyed the wreck of a living room with a flat, unreadable expression, then rolled up his sleeves.

"I’ll clean the bedroom first," he announced to no one in particular. "You all should get some rest after a day like this."

None of them answered. None of them stopped him either. But when he returned twenty minutes later, hands raw from scrubbing grime off an old dresser, he found the four of them had cleaned their own space anyway — quietly, efficiently, without a word exchanged, as if his effort had simply been erased and redone the moment his back was turned.

He stood in the doorway, staring at the spotless corner of the room they’d claimed, and felt something twist uncomfortably in his chest.

’They really don’t want anything from me.’

He didn’t argue. He didn’t ask why. He simply nodded once, turned, and made his way back to the living room, sinking down onto a threadbare couch that groaned under even his unremarkable weight. Dust motes drifted lazily through the single beam of moonlight slipping through a crack in the curtains.

’Disowned by my family. Married off to four women who won’t let me touch a single wheelchair handle. Living in a house that looks like it’s one strong wind from collapsing.’

He let his head fall back against the couch, staring up at a water-stained ceiling.

’What a joke of a life.’

And then, in the quiet dark of that ruined living room, something flickered at the edge of his vision — a shimmer of translucent blue light, unfolding in the air before him like a page being turned.

[SYSTEM DETECTED]

Allen sat bolt upright, breath catching in his throat.

[Would you like to initialize?]