"Am I really that worthless?" The words escaped Lucas Reed's lips in barely a whisper, but they echoed in the empty apartment like a gunshot.
At twenty-seven, Lucas had never imagined his life would crumble so completely. The man who once commanded respect, whose coffee empire had stretched across three boroughs, now sat alone in the darkness of his studio apartment, staring at the divorce papers scattered across his coffee table.
It seemed like a lifetime ago when everything had been different. Lucas could still remember that night at prom—the way Diana's eyes had sparkled under the gymnasium lights, her laugh infectious as they danced to songs that now felt like relics from another world. They'd been young, reckless, and desperately in love. When she'd told him she was pregnant two months later, the world had seemed to shift on its axis.
"Lucas Reed, you got Diana Smith pregnant?" The whispers had followed them through the hallways of Jefferson High like shadows. Some pitying, others judgmental, all of them making the decision easier. They'd dropped out together, hand in hand, ready to face whatever came next.
Lucas had always been different from his peers. While other teenagers worried about parties and popularity, he possessed an innate understanding of business that seemed to flow through his veins like blood. Even his teachers had noticed it—the way he could analyze market trends during economics class, how he'd turned his part-time job at the local deli into a mini-empire by suggesting improvements that increased sales by thirty percent.
So when he stood in his mother's cramped kitchen, Diana's hand protectively placed over her still-flat belly, asking for help, he already had a plan.
"Mom, I got Diana pregnant," he said, his voice steady despite the magnitude of the confession. "Do you mind if I could borrow your brewing machine and a hundred dollars?"
His mother, Sarah Reed, paused in her dish washing. She'd been young once too, faced with similar choices and consequences. Her weathered hands gripped the ceramic plate as memories of her own teenage pregnancy flashed through her mind.
"Really, son?" she asked softly, then her expression softened into understanding. "Don't worry, I won't judge you. The same thing happened to me and your father." She dried her hands on her apron and reached for her purse. "Here's your hundred dollars."
Lucas had always been gifted with coffee. It started as a hobby in middle school, experimenting with his mother's old machine, learning the precise temperatures, the perfect ratios. By high school, friends would line up at his locker for his homemade blends. Now, standing outside his mother's apartment building with Diana beside him, their few belongings packed into cardboard boxes, that skill would become their lifeline.
The stand they built was nothing impressive—plywood, paint, and determination. "Reed Coffee" was painted in bold black letters across the front, Lucas's careful handwriting transformed into something resembling a logo. Diana, seven months pregnant by then, helped as much as she could, her small hands arranging cups and napkins while Lucas perfected his recipes.
Their first customer was a stroke of luck that felt almost too good to be true. Marcus Washington, a lifestyle vlogger with half a million subscribers, had been rushing to catch the subway when the aroma of Lucas's signature blend stopped him dead in his tracks.
"Wow! Your coffee is absolutely incredible!" Marcus had exclaimed, his professional camera already rolling. "I have to feature this place. What's your story?"
Within a week, Reed Coffee was trending on three different social media platforms. Lines wrapped around the block. Lucas found himself working eighteen-hour days, his hands moving with practiced precision as he crafted each cup like a work of art. Diana, now heavily pregnant, managed the register with a smile that could sell ice to Eskimos.
When Lianne was born, a perfect combination of her parents' best features, Lucas held her in the back room of what had become their first official location. The baby's tiny fingers wrapped around his thumb as Diana looked on, exhausted but radiant.
"I'm so proud of you," Diana had whispered, tears streaming down her face. "Look what we built."
They'd named their daughter Lianne, a combination of their own names—Lucas and Diana merged into something new and beautiful, just like their life together. The little girl inherited her father's striking green eyes and her mother's delicate features, growing into the kind of child who turned heads wherever they went.
Lucas himself had always been handsome in an effortless way that attracted attention without him trying. Tall, athletic, with the kind of easy smile that made people trust him instinctively. In high school, he'd been the guy everyone wanted to be friends with, the one who could have had his pick of colleges if life hadn't taken a different turn. Now, that natural charisma served his business well—customers came for the coffee but returned for the experience, for the way Lucas remembered their orders and asked about their families.
The success was intoxicating. By Lianne's fifth birthday, Reed Coffee had expanded to twelve locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Lucas had hired over fifty employees, each one trained in his exacting standards. He'd moved his family into a spacious apartment in Manhattan, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of Central Park. Diana had traded her thrift store dresses for designer labels, though she still insisted on working alongside Lucas most days.
But success, Lucas would learn, could be as fragile as morning mist.
March 2020 arrived like a thief in the night. The word "coronavirus" had seemed distant, abstract, something happening in other countries to other people. Then the lockdowns began.
"Temporary," they'd said. "Two weeks to flatten the curve."
Lucas watched his empire crumble in real time. Twelve bustling locations reduced to empty storefronts overnight. Fifty employees suddenly out of work, their faces haunting his dreams as he signed their termination papers. The rent kept coming, the loans kept demanding payment, but the customers simply vanished.
By December 2020, Lucas Reed filed for bankruptcy. The man who'd built an empire from a hundred-dollar loan and a dream found himself staring at legal documents that reduced his life's work to a series of debts and failures.
The money problems changed Diana in ways Lucas hadn't expected. The woman who'd once helped him paint their first coffee stand now spent her days scrolling through social media, comparing their reduced circumstances to the highlight reels of their former friends' lives.
"How can we earn money now?" she'd scream during their increasingly frequent fights. "I didn't sign up for this!"
"We'll figure it out," Lucas would reply, exhaustion heavy in his voice. "We did it before, we can do it again."
But Diana had tasted the good life, and the fall from grace was bitter on her tongue.
After the pandemic restrictions lifted, Lucas swallowed his pride and took a job as a business manager at a mid-sized consulting firm. The salary was decent but nothing compared to what he'd once earned. He left before dawn and returned after dark, pouring everything he had into rebuilding their lives one paycheck at a time.
It was during this time that his older brother Chris began visiting more frequently. Chris had always been the cautious one, the brother who'd taken the traditional path—college, corporate job, steady advancement up the ladder. While Lucas had been building his coffee empire, Chris had been quietly climbing the ranks at a financial services firm. Now, with Lucas's business gone, Chris's stable income suddenly looked impressive by comparison.
"Just trying to help out," Chris would say, bringing expensive gifts for Lianne, taking Diana out for lunch while Lucas was at work. "Family should stick together during tough times."
Lucas noticed the changes in his daughter gradually. Lianne, now sixteen, had once been daddy's girl, the little girl who'd spend hours in his first coffee shop, doing homework at a corner table and charming customers with her gap-toothed smile. But as Chris's visits became more frequent, she grew distant, critical, her eyes reflecting a disappointment that cut Lucas deeper than any business failure ever could.
The day everything fell apart started like any other. Lucas had worked late, staying behind to finish a presentation that might secure a new client for the firm. His key turned in the lock of their apartment at nearly midnight, his body aching with exhaustion.
"I'm home," he called softly, not wanting to wake anyone.
The sounds hit him before the sight did. Rhythmic, unmistakable, coming from the bedroom he'd shared with Diana for over eleven years. His feet carried him forward even as his mind screamed at him to turn away.
The door was slightly ajar. Through the gap, he could see them clearly.
Diana, his high school sweetheart, the mother of his child, the woman who'd stood by him when they had nothing, was straddling his brother Chris. Her head was thrown back in pleasure, soft moans escaping her lips as she moved with abandon. Chris's hands gripped her waist, his face a mask of guilty pleasure.
Lucas stood frozen in the doorway, watching the destruction of his marriage play out in real time. A strange calm settled over him, followed by something unexpected: laughter.
It started as a chuckle, deep in his chest. The absurdity of it all—his business-minded brother, who'd never taken a risk in his life, taking the ultimate risk with his wife. Diana, who'd complained for months about their reduced circumstances, finding comfort in Chris's stable mediocrity.
"HAHAHAHA!" The laughter erupted from him, loud and sharp and completely unhinged.
Both Diana and Chris froze, their eyes wide with shock and embarrassment. Diana scrambled for the sheet, her face flushing crimson.
"Wait, Lucas! This isn't what it looks like!" Diana's voice was high with panic.
"Yes, we didn't mean it this way!" Chris added, his voice cracking like a teenager's.
Lucas's laughter died abruptly, his face settling into an expression of cold understanding. The man who'd once commanded boardrooms and built empires looked at his wife and brother with the detached interest of someone examining insects under a microscope.
"I get it," he said quietly, his voice carrying a finality that made both of them flinch.
Diana's panic transformed into defensive anger, the way cornered animals lash out when they know they're caught.
"I want a divorce!" she declared, as if she were doing him a favor. "You're worthless now! You have nothing, unlike your brother!"
"Oh, I'm worthless now," Lucas repeated, tasting the words. They were bitter but strangely liberating. "Yeah, you're right. Let's end it here. I accept your divorce. Make sure it's ready tomorrow."
"Fine! And by the way, I'm taking Lianne!" Diana's voice grew shriller with each word. "Chris and I are going to live together. He's better than you anyway—stable, successful, reliable!"
That's when Lianne appeared in the doorway, her sixteen-year-old face twisted with a cruelty that Lucas had never seen before. His little girl, the child he'd worked eighteen-hour days to provide for, looked at him with the same disdain her mother had just displayed.
"Yeah, Mother's right," Lianne said, her voice dripping with teenage contempt. "You are a worthless father."
The words hit Lucas like physical blows. This was the daughter he'd taught to ride a bike, who'd helped him serve customers at the original coffee stand, who'd once told him he was her hero. Now she stood there, Chris's expensive gifts probably hidden in her room, choosing the man who could provide over the man who'd sacrificed everything for their family.
"Yeah, you're right, Lianne," Lucas said, his voice eerily calm. "Make sure after the divorce, you guys stop looking for me."
"Why would we look for a worthless man!" Diana spat, her earlier panic now completely replaced by vicious satisfaction.
"Alright, I've had enough!" Lucas's composure finally cracked. "You pack your things and make sure you leave today!"
"Fine! Good riddance!" Diana replied with a dismissive wave.
Lucas watched from the living room window as they loaded their belongings into Chris's sedan. Diana had packed quickly but thoroughly, taking everything she considered valuable, including the few pieces of jewelry Lucas had bought her during their successful years. Lianne barely looked back at the apartment where she'd grown up, her attention focused on her phone and whatever new life awaited her.
They were laughing as they drove away. Lucas could see them through the car windows—Diana in the front seat, already reaching for Chris's hand, Lianne in the back, probably texting her friends about her upgrade in father figures. Their laughter echoed off the empty street like the sound of his world finally, completely, coming apart.
Now Lucas sat alone in the apartment that suddenly felt cavernous. His parents were both gone—his mother had succumbed to brain cancer during the worst of the pandemic, his father following six months later, his liver finally giving out after years of drowning his sorrows in alcohol. His business was gone, his family was gone, and the silence pressed against his eardrums like a physical weight.
"HA... HA... HAHAHAHAHA!" The laughter came back, building from somewhere deep in his chest. It echoed off the empty walls, growing louder and more manic with each breath.
He laughed until tears streamed down his face, until his sides ached, until the laughter transformed into something else entirely. The tears kept flowing even as the laughter turned to sobs, then to screams of pure rage. His fists pounded against the coffee table, sending the divorce papers flying like confetti.
"HUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! YES! YES! I'M WORTHLESS!!" His voice cracked with the intensity of his emotion, the words bouncing off the walls and coming back to mock him.
The neighbors began pounding on the walls, their voices filtering through the thin apartment barriers.
"Hey, shut up in there!"
"Some people are trying to sleep!"
"Keep it down!"
Lucas stumbled to the door, his face streaked with tears, his hair disheveled, his eyes wild with a mixture of grief and something darker. When he yanked the door open, Mrs. Chen from next door stood there in her bathrobe, her face twisted with annoyance that quickly shifted to concern when she saw his condition.
"Am I worthless?" he asked her, his voice barely above a whisper now, the question hanging in the air between them like a challenge to the universe itself.
Mrs. Chen's expression softened, her anger replaced by something approaching pity. She looked at this man who'd once been the successful entrepreneur from 4B, now reduced to standing in his doorway at three in the morning, asking strangers to validate his existence.
But Lucas didn't wait for her answer. He already knew what he'd see in her eyes—the same thing he'd seen in Diana's, in Lianne's, in Chris's. The confirmation that maybe, just maybe, they were all right about him after all.