The Secretly Rich Man

Gerald Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible or Poorest) Chapter 411

“Gerald, did you come here to have lunch?” Morgana enquired, with no small amount of disbelief.

At the table sat Morgana, her boyfriend, Cameron, and several others. Everyone was smiling his way.

Mead Hall was unmistakably an upper-crust establishment, and you paid by the head here, from a starting minimum of thirty dollars per pax. After accounting for drinks and so on, each meal could easily cost hundreds.

Everyone knew Gerald wasn’t rich, so this was a fairly peculiar circumstance.

Gerald smiled back at them. “That’s right! I’m meeting with some friends, and I thought I’d treat them all to lunch here! Who would have thought I’d run into you guys here, too!”

“Pfft! We eat here all the time!”

“Ah, Gerald… It’s nice that you’re treating your friends to something, but do you know they charge at least thirty dollars per person here? Are you sure this is a good idea?” This was coming from a girl seated beside Morgana, who had also gone to the same high school with them.

Sully was her name. Not a bad-looking girl. She pursed her mouth as she gave him that warning.

This was a high-class place, after all, meant only for people like her, who already held a certain standing in society. It wasn’t as though she took especial pride in eating here, but… come on, a hobo like Gerald taking his lunch here? That just put her off her palate.

People like him ought to just stick with fast food joints and hot dog stands, that sort of thing.

It was downright disgraceful. Did Gerald presume to being their equals?

That was why she’d taken such an acrimonious tone with him.

“Hey now, Sully! You shouldn’t talk to Gerald like that—he’s got his pride, too! If he wants to eat here, then that’s that. Anyway, this is a chance for us to get to know the friends he’s made! Hahaha!” Cameron sneered as he said this.

Whether in terms of family background or career prospects, he was indisputably the alpha at this table, making him the keystone of the group.

Sully cackled. “Goodness, Cameron… The sort of friends a guy like Gerald would make—are you sure you’d like to shake hands with them? Anyway, I only said that for his own good: Without taking stock of his own capacities, thinking to eat wherever he pleases… are appearances all he thinks about? Living beyond his own means… no one respects a person like that!”

She had disliked Gerald since high school: some impoverished bum prancing about before her… Pathetic! She could hardly care less about his feelings.

Anyway, for Gerald to be eating in the same restaurant as her showed that he didn’t care about her feelings, either.

“Alright, Gerald’s friends will be here any moment. Pipe down, you guys!” Morgana couldn’t bear to watch any longer.

Gerald gave her a smile and a nod.

“Cameron, who’s this guy? A classmate from high school?” An exquisitely made-up girl beside Cameron inquired curiously.

“That’s right, ahahaha! Think he’s cute? If he’s your type, Gerald’s still single—you could be his girlfriend!” Cameron burst out laughing.

“Hey! Cameron, you’re the worst! Keep this up, and I’m not talking to you anymore!” The girl pinched the tender portion of his arm.

Everyone chuckled. Gerald kept quiet and continued nodding away.

“Hey, look! Gerald’s blushing! I know… he must really like the idea of Maybelline becoming his girlfriend! Otherwise why would his face be turning red like that? Haha!” Another one of the guys decided to join in.

“Yo! Serious offer, Gerald. If this girl’s to your taste, she’s all yours. My word is good!” Cameron guffawed again.

“That’s alright—I already have a girlfriend!” Gerald replied in exasperation, although he understood that they’d only been making fun of him with that. It had been the same back in high school. Gerald knew it was best to just keep quiet.

Gerald Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible or Poorest) Chapter 412

He couldn’t very well go around telling everyone that he was rich, like some fool who’d just won the lottery, and try to show up everyone, right?

Feh. What would that achieve?

“Heaven have mercy! Gerald’s actually found himself a girlfriend?” One of the guys exclaimed. “Holy hell, this is big news! We’ve got a high school reunion coming up in a few days, right? Everyone will be floored when they hear about this!”

“Gosh, what sort of girl would take a fancy to him? Oh, no… who’s grandma is it?” Sully shook her head, and took a sip of her juice.

This elicited a round of merry laughter from everyone at her table.

Morgana watched Gerald with a growing sense of disquiet. Then she said, “Gerald, today we’re actually celebrating my promotion at work—to the Reserve Department, no less. Cameron’s my guest here today. How many friends of yours will be coming? I’d be glad to have them join us.”

“No, I can’t accept that. There may be seven or eight of them!” Gerald said with a laugh.

So Morgana had finally settled that problem of hers. He remembered bumping into Zack Lyle, there. However, Zack hadn’t followed up with him on that matter, probably because he considered it too minor to be worth his attention.

As for her recent stroke of good fortune… Gerald couldn’t say if that was thanks to him, or Cameron. As such, he didn’t offer any comments, only nodded. Then he took a seat at the next table.

Honestly, he felt embarrassed to be here, too. However, the restaurant was packed right now, and there were no other tables available further away—even if there were, it would be too awkward to switch places now. Neither could he just walk out of here…

He could only sit there and sweat.

Just then, Giya and Tammy entered. Following after them, besides Tammy’s cousin, were also two other guys and girls each—presumably Tammy’s aforementioned distant relatives.

“Wow, wow, wow! Babes! Hot babes!” Cameron and the other guys had noticed the new arrivals, and were too stunned to do much more than gape. Such beauty as had suddenly graced this hall!

“Who are they? They’re smoking hot! Absolute, top-tier charisma!” One guy beside Cameron noted.

“Hmph! They’re not that hot. They’re just really tall and sorta skinny. Pah!” Sully actually thought Giya and Tammy looked like celebrity supermodels, and had been moved by envy to speak.

As for that girl in the heavy make-up, sitting on Cameron’s other side… Compared to the girls who’d just walked in, she looked like a party clown.

“Anyone got the stones to go ask for their numbers? Whoever steps up, I shall know him as my lord!” The guy who said this was positively drooling.

And then, all eyes turned to Cameron.

After all, whether in terms of family background, or career prospects… he was the alpha!

Cameron was already getting up from his seat. He cleared his throat, smoothed out his shirt…

“Watch this. I’m going in!”

“Oh, yeah! Cameron rocks!”

“All our hopes ride with you, my lord!”

But Cameron had already intercepted the targets. “Hey there, sweet things… Here for lunch? Found a table yet? Maybe I could be of assistance—I come here all the time!” They were even more dazzling up close. Cameron’s heart was racing out of control.

“We’re fine, thanks!” Giya and Tammy calmly deflected his advances. Something about him just put them off.

Cameron fished out his phone. “Ahem… Could I ask you ladies for your numbers? Call me Cameron. You may have heard of my family—”

“He’s over there! Come on, let’s go!” Spying her target across the hall, Tammy completely ignored Cameron, and led her entourage straight towards Gerald.

Gerald Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible or Poorest) Chapter 413

“Hmph! Gerald, don’t you even know how to wait for us outside once you’ve got a table?” When Tammy reached him, Giya was by her side. The first thing that spewed out of her mouth was abuse.

Gerald put down his phone and smiled faintly. He’d been preoccupied with reading investment reports coming in from Zack Lyle.

Meanwhile, Sully and the others were staring as though their eyes might pop out of their sockets. “What? What! These are the friends Gerald was going on about?”

Cameron still stood there, phone in hand, his face now turning blue.

They ignored him, but yet, they were so friendly to Gerald? Blast! It was indeed a vicious slap across the face!

“Huh? Gerald, happen to know those people at the next table?”

Giya had taken a seat beside him, and she now wondered why everyone at the adjacent table seemed to be gawking strangely in his direction.

“Hey, hey! Gerald, why don’t you introduce your friends to us? When I went up to welcome them, those ladies just brushed me off, you know?”

Cameron, smiling stiffly, tried again.

He thought Gerald perhaps hadn’t moved to receive the girls, hoping that Cameron might get some humiliation there.

He continued in an aggravated tone, “How are you doing, ladies? We went to the same high school as Gerald! How lucky we must be to meet such gorgeous girls today… Really, this isn’t right of you, Gerald—the ladies have already taken their seats, so why aren’t you ordering anything to eat? How could you bear to watch these beauties starve?”

Desperate to salvage his dignity, Cameron was now hovering beside Gerald’s table, trying to assert himself as someone handy, hoping to attract the attention of those girls.

“Indeed, they’re my ex-classmates from high school. What a small world we live in!” Gerald reluctantly admitted.

Giya laughed merrily.

“That’s great! You ought to introduce these old friends of yours to me! After all, as your girlfriend, I can’t possibly not know who your friends are.”

To her, it was simple: Gerald’s friends were her friends and though they were just masquerading as a couple, it was becoming more real to her with each passing moment.

However, that last thing she said left everyone at the next table wholly disconcerted.

What? Really? This epitome of loveliness was Gerald’s girlfriend? Seriously?

Fires of jealousy flared in the eyes of the other guys.

Who were they? Uptown boys they were—filthy rich, set for life.

Who was Gerald again? Some loser who couldn’t even rub two pennies together.

Not all of them had even found their own girlfriends, yet here was Gerald, a supermodel by his side. Who wouldn’t be jealous? Without a doubt, Cameron was turning viridian green with swathes of envy oozing out of his chest.

“So you’re Gerald’s girlfriend, I see! How do you do? I’m Cameron. My parents are in the Health Bureau. I do hospital work. Ahaha!” As he made clear his superiority, Cameron reached out to shake hands with Giya.

With a flick of his wrist, a watch with the commanding price tag of well over a thousand dollars slid into view.

Giya considered this fool before her, one who felt the inexplicable need to introduce not only himself but his parents as well. What an odd way to go about things.

She decided not to take the hand he was offering her.

Anxious not to embarrass Cameron too much, Gerald shook his hand instead, at least so he wouldn’t be left hanging there.

“Haha! Who would have thought: Gerald Crawford, the renowned tramp of our year, back in high school… reviled and loathed everywhere he went…” Cameron went on. “Who could have possibly imagined that he might have caught himself such a ravishing beauty of a girlfriend?”

As he said this, he shot a meaningful look at one of the other guys back at his table.

The indicated henchman slapped the tabletop hard! “That’s right! Gerald,” he shouted. “I can’t believe your luck! Do you all still remember that one time when Gerald almost couldn’t pay his own tuition fees because he was just six bucks short or something? Great Scott, our teacher chased him right out of the classroom! Hahaha! And guess what—I think it rained heavily that day!”

“Of course I remember,” Sully sneered. “Gerald trudged through the rain looking for trash to sell and somehow managed to scrape together those last six dollars, just so he could stay in school. Hahaha! No one in class cared to lift a hand to help him! He’s sure come a long way, hosting his own table at Mead Hall with that doll at his side… Well done!”

There was a strange parade of veiled hints getting passed around here. They were digging up all manner of dirt from Gerald’s past, all to be stripped bare before Giya and her friends.

Predictably, Tammy’s cousin and several of her friends were already peering at Gerald’s askance. Thus far, he sounded all but a sorry loser.

“Never mind that, Gerald!” one of the guys hooted. “To commemorate your girlfriend’s first-ever visit to Serene County, you can’t start lower than sixty dollars each, right?”

Cameron frowned.

“What nonsense are you spouting over there? Only sixty dollars?! This pair of goddesses are worth far more than that! Gerald, if you don’t go straight for the best quality at a hundred dollars per person, you don’t deserve the company of these ladies! Haha! But worry not, Gerald—if you’re strapped for cash, I’ll pay for you. It’s important to keep up appearances, after all!”

Just then, the waiter arrived to take their order.

Gerald Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible or Poorest) Chapter 414

“What grade will you select today?”

Across all tables, all eyes turned to Gerald.

best. A hundred

what he’d been

and company tried to

drinks—the final bill would add up to a thousand

of the table was equally shocked by the turn of events. They reached the same conclusion: Gerald was a complete fool. Anyone could see that Cameron was up to no good, provoking him

affluence was hardly news to Tammy. She’d already agreed with Giya not to allow

most expensive option available? Argh! May the heavens

your pardon—that’s not what we want. Something simpler will do just fine,”

losing his temper under the barrage of jeers

what he does

house was brought to their table. Cameron’s table deliberately ate as slowly as possible. As Gerald’s table was

already,

smiled and waved when

in full view as he waved back. “That lady’s a good friend

please accept this exquisite tea set and our best compliments! Each set is worth quite a bit, and it’s just a promotion we are running

clearly older than Cameron, beamed as she

out with Cameron Laver means good times all the way,” cheered one

but Cameron continued to hang around—Gerald

of yours, Mr.

she’d have to extend certain courtesies

pretended he didn’t hear it,

understood what

nine hundred and seven dollars in all. Cash or

you can round off the last seven dollars,” Gerald chuckled. Cameron could leave him out in the cold if it were what suited

her face resting idly on her palms, the cashier

not open to haggling. Seven dollars or

counter—Cameron had deliberately coerced that fellow into going for the top of their line. It was apparent the man didn’t have much in the way of money.

thirty-percent discount!

was first to lose her patience after seeing how everyone ganged up to give Gerald

Giya. We’ll just pay

least? We’ve spent over a thousand bucks at your place!”

must forgive us, miss… These gift sets are only limited to fifty pieces per day—and the fiftieth has just been given to Mr. Laver. Perhaps if you come again tomorrow, I’ll make sure I

to appease a big spender like Cameron Laver. Furthermore, her own little sister was currently in the Laver

me

across the hall. Someone strode up and slapped a hand on

cashier, Cameron, and friends included, saw who it

Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible or

silly for waving his watch around earlier. He stood at attention, much like a misbehaving student before the discipline

mean?” the girl beside

could I have meant? Louie Lourdes, scion, and heir to the Lourdes family mining

“So, it’s that guy!”

was that handsome

the other girls gazed

guys, meanwhile, seemed afraid even

mentioning the cashier, who was already on her feet, displaying the

bothering to look at Gerald

“My bill!” Louie barked.

Lourdes. Your bill this time comes up to one thousand, two hundred dollars. To this, sir, we are pleased to offer you a 70%

leaned forward, inviting gazes at her cleavage. Who knew… perhaps her figure might entice the interest of

pay the full price!” Louie hurled a wad

Mr. Lourdes. Any of our promotional gifts tickle your fancy, sir?

of that hogwash! Just give me

this is the real Mr. Lourdes! What commanding

was about

the corner of their eyes, wondering when they’d be able to

in the mood to play games between Gerald and his stupid friends. Seeing somebody cutting the

now… haven’t you ever heard of first come, first serve? Don’t you know you’ve interrupted

First come, first serve. I’ve been waiting in line for a while

to run into Louie here. He could still see the fresh scars on his face. What a pounding

days later, here he was, coming out looking for

worked its way across

If Mr. Lourdes is here, you’ll all have

courtesy toward them. She rolled

you know Mr Lourdes? He’s obviously in a foul mood today… this Gerald

had started ridiculing Gerald. Louie, on the other hand, pretended to have heard nothing. Now,

planted his foot hard into Louie’s

Whack!

his wounds searing with pain once

smacked the counter hard. “God d*mn it; I’ll kill

believe their eyes. Gerald actually dared to strike Mr. Lourdes? The only thing that could happen

around to retaliate, his fist

“Cr… Crawford?”

Louie was paralyzed.

Crawford who’d summoned all those guys to clean his clock at the karaoke bar

skilled fighters. The beating he’d taken from them nearly crippled him, yet, they left

definitely hadn’t ended. That very same night, his dad had been summoned

with all his wrath and fury and leaving the men bowing and scraping

Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible

had even told him that he deserved to be beaten

explained that the person who had beaten him up was none

chills run

brought great trouble

after all. Maybe it could even get

with that possibility in mind, Louie was faced with a cocktail of surprise, fear, and joy at the same time the moment he saw

as well!” said Louie with a chuckle as he patted

‘What.’

and the others were all thinking the same thing. They had all been eager for some drama but Louie’s reaction

know Gerald? He even addressed Gerald in such a familiar

‘How is that possible!’

else could we have seen you cutting the queue?” replied Gerald with a

he was wondering if he had not beaten Louie severely enough

queue! But don’t you worry Gerald! Your meal’s on me today! Actually,

won’t even lower the price by a dollar for me. We aren’t being given any special gifts either. I’m afraid that this will be

me a minute,

it was the cashier lady who had offended Gerald, Louie turned to glare at her. She

this gentleman here is your

was terrified now. She began thinking up excuses in her mind as

treated him like that because Cameron had signaled me too! He told me to make

works in the health department so of course

so I didn’t think twice about it. To think

she could even begin explaining herself, a slap

“How could you look down on a customer! Isn’t Gerald just here to enjoy a meal? How dare you bully a customer you’re not even familiar

I… I only did it

cheek was swollen and red and in pain

even before she looked at him. He simply pretended as if the incident had nothing to

coward, but the situation was a difficult one so with a great reluctance and

his

for Gerald, he exchanged a few pleasantries with Louie before finally leaving with Giya and the

and useless brat so he didn’t want

and the others standing not too far away

wanted to

true for Cameron who had a terrible

Gerald

for Gerald had grown

respect! He said all that but Gerald was still the one who paid the bill in the end! It’s only a matter of respect. Don’t you know who Louie is? He would

was brimming

Gerald made up a story regarding him and Louie to casually explain what had just

then left and

god! Why is Gerald

not entered the hotel earlier, the little cousin was shocked when

meal they were treated to earlier. He also knew a lot of people.

they gave up immediately the moment they knew that they first had to

room, Gerald put his phone on the coffee table to wash some fruits

look!

little cousin picked the phone up to show her, an expression of

Tammy was equally stunned.

two to three thousand dollars… Why would Gerald

moment, his phone began to

The most beloved Mila? Who is this person?” said the little cousin as she looked

Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible

“Who is this ‘most beloved’ Mila? Doesn’t he like you most Giya? Let’s see

she could stop her, the little cousin

is this?” asked the

definitely not Gerald’s

she said that, the little

then looked toward Giya before saying, “Giya! This girl’s saying

Felicia! Hand

the phone from

who Mila was. She was Gerald’s girlfriend who was in a long-distance

about what Mila was like in person

inappropriate for her to say anything else

say again?” asked Tammy as she confirmed with

she was and she said that

as if she had

know that girl?” asked Tammy as rage brewed in her

and yet look at him! How bold and absolutely disgusting! To think that he still dares to fool around with other women when he

about? I have

moment, Gerald finally came back, holding a plate of fruits in his

fruits! Who’s this Mila, Gerald! You better have a good explanation!”

snatched the phone from Giya and held on to it as she

know how to begin explaining the

actual girlfriend

and

enough! Don’t scold him anymore! I already knew about this and… And let me

was no use hiding it anymore

You two aren’t a couple? Oh god, then why are you living with him if you’re not

Gerald’s cooperation to lie to my

I guess it really is impossible. It’s a little hard to believe that since Gerald’s been treating you so well today even though he already has a girlfriend. He’s even given you so many expensive things!” said Tammy as

hated vile

was clear that Gerald had

Didn’t your mom call earlier? Asking you to go home immediately? And you need to promise to

managed to

and Giya were

Crawford:The Secretly Rich Man Novel (Invisible or Poorest)

to explain the entire situation

time he was done, Mila

had never anticipated for that crazy girl to actually pick up

was stuck in an extremely awkward position

have something I want to ask you,” said Giya as she looked toward

fine standing. What’s

really like

I do!”

did you give me such an expensive gift in the first place? In case you weren’t aware, when I learned that it was