1 I am the child of a mistress. When I was seventeen years old, my biological father kicked the bucket. At the funeral, wearing my cheap high school uniform, I stood in front of a room packed with Wall Street titans, brilliant tech innovators, and an A-list Hollywood actress. Trembling like a leaf, I stuttered: "I... I'm here to fight for the inheritance..." Before the words fully left my mouth, the legitimate heirs all turned their heads and stared dead at me. I was so terrified I started crying. "N-never mind... you don't have to give me anything..." The A-list actress's eyes suddenly lit up. "A little sister? A soft, squishy little sister?!" The tech innovator pulled out a pen and paper. "You're a high school senior? Come here, let's do some calculus so I can gauge your baseline." The Wall Street titan pulled out a sleek black Amex card. "Why do you care about the old man's spare change? Call me 'Big Brother,' and I'll give you ten times whatever he left you." My mother was a high-end gold digger, a kept woman stashed away by a very wealthy man. The original agreement was simple: the sugar daddy provides the cash, she provides the beauty. A clean transaction, no strings attached. But when you live the good life for too long, greed starts to fester. She got pregnant. Relying on her growing belly, she pulled a classic "runaway pregnant mistress" routine. Before she left, she broadcasted her new address all over Facebook and Instagram. She was terrified he wouldn't be able to find her. She fantasized that her sugar daddy would lock down the entire city and launch a dominant, aggressive crusade to win her back. She imagined the legitimate wife breaking down in an inferiority complex and willingly stepping aside. Unfortunately. She played her hand too far. The sugar daddy didn't look for her at all. He didn't want her, and he didn't want the baby. How could she accept that? Heavily pregnant and about to pop, she camped out at the gates of the sugar daddy's sprawling estate. Two massive security guards hauled her away and threw her literally into the dumpster out back. They also passed along a message from the legitimate wife: "If you have the skills to steal a man, go ahead. If you have the baby, I'll raise it. But money? You aren't getting a single red cent." After all her harassing yielded nothing, she finally gave up hope. But it was too late to get an abortion. She gave birth to me full of bitter resentment, and raised me in the most negligent, haphazard way possible. She didn't raise me because she loved me. She raised me because she wanted a payout. The phrase she said to me the most was: "You are his flesh and blood! He thinks he can just refuse to pay?!" "In his dreams! Even if he dies, a piece of that estate belongs to you!" As she wished, when I turned seventeen, my biological father kicked the bucket. The second she heard the news, she practically threw me out of a moving car in front of the funeral home. "Chloe Davis, you listen to me! Including you, your father only has four kids! You are entitled to one-fourth of his estate!" "Today is your last chance! If you don't get that money, don't you dare come back home!" Her twisted, furious face terrified me. "Mom, please don't leave me here, I'm scared..." "Scared, scared, that's all you ever say! Why do you think I raised you all these years?! To make money!" "You've eaten my food and lived under my roof for over a decade, and you ruined my chances of finding a new rich guy! Don't you owe me compensation?!" "Get that inheritance, give it to me, and maybe I'll still be your mother!" She stormed off a few paces, then suddenly stopped. She turned around, dug through all my pockets, and snatched the only ten-dollar bill I had on me. I froze. Without money, I couldn't take the bus. This funeral home was halfway up a mountain in the Hollywood Hills. Relying on my own two legs, I wouldn't make it home before dark. She shoved me hard toward the doors. "If I cut off your retreat, you'll actually put in the work!" "If you get the money, you can take a taxi home. If you don't..." She pointed casually at the surrounding hillsides. "This whole area is a graveyard. You can just stay here and keep the ghosts company!" 2 The cold mountain wind whipped past, making the hair on my arms stand straight up. It felt like every single headstone in the deep woods had a pair of eyes staring right at me. I braced myself and walked into the funeral home. The service was over, and the guests had completely cleared out. The only people left in the massive room were the sugar daddy's three legitimate children, discussing the final legal wrap-up with a lawyer. "According to Mr. Sterling's final will and testament, his remaining liquid assets, totaling two hundred million dollars, will be divided equally among the three of you." Two hundred million! That's so much money! No wonder my mom was so psychotic about it. No wonder she spent over a decade jumping through hoops trying to score a payout. And today, my job was to demand one-fourth of that two hundred million. Fifty million dollars! My palms were sweating profusely. Who would ever willingly let a bastard child from a mistress walk away with that kind of cash? It looked like a severe beating was absolutely guaranteed. I just hoped they wouldn't hit me too hard. I had AP exams tomorrow, and I still needed my hands to write... As I was having a mental breakdown, the division of assets began. Sitting at the head of the table was the eldest sister, Victoria Sterling. She had just swept the Oscars and was currently the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Even a simple, solemn black dress couldn't hide her breathtaking, absolute beauty. Her slender, manicured fingers took the legal document, skimmed it for one second, and tossed it carelessly to the middle brother. "This is it? Is this really worth wasting my time?" The second child, Ethan Sterling, was wearing a crisp white shirt and black slacks. Silver-rimmed glasses added a touch of maturity to his surprisingly boyish face. He kept his eyes glued to his laptop, typing furiously, not even glancing at the piece of paper worth two hundred million. "I have no use for money like this." I had heard of him. He was the country's most brilliant young innovator, absolutely dominating the high-tech aerospace sector. He really didn't need the money. Everything he did was funded by massive government defense contracts. The piece of paper fluttered over to the youngest brother, Liam Sterling. His long, articulate fingers pinched it, and then he casually ripped it in half. "Two hundred million is worth drafting a will over? Just donate it to charity." Liam radiated a casual, ruthless, cutthroat aura. For a guy who permanently resided on the Forbes Billionaires list, two hundred million simply wasn't worth the time it took to process the paperwork. The older sister and brother raised an eyebrow, neither objecting. Seeing that the lawyer was about to start drafting a charitable donation agreement, I weakly raised my hand in the air. "Um... excuse me... sorry to interrupt..." The moment the words left my mouth, the three legitimate heirs and the lawyer—four pairs of eyes—locked dead onto me. My scalp went completely numb. The lawyer spoke up. "May I help you, miss?" I swallowed hard, speaking as carefully as humanly possible. "I'm sorry, I... I'm here to fight for the inheritance..." 3 By the time I snapped out of my daze, I was completely surrounded. The three legitimate heirs were all exceptionally tall, striking, and radiated an intimidating aura of elite privilege. Compared to them, in my cheap, faded high school uniform, I looked like a pathetic, stunted weed hiding in the corner. I was so terrified I was on the verge of tears. Just because they didn't care about the money didn't mean they'd be happy tossing it to their father's mistress! I started shivering. "N-never mind... you don't have to give me anything..." Could you guys maybe just lend me two bucks... so I can catch the bus? I covertly glanced up, but the sheer, oppressive weight of their presence made me flinch. Forget it, forget it. It's only a twenty-mile walk down the mountain. I can walk it... I slowly began inching my way toward the exit. I had barely taken two steps when Victoria grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and effortlessly hoisted me back. "Tsk. Too light. She's practically nothing but bone." Victoria flipped me around, inspecting me from head to toe, her gorgeous face filled with absolute disgust. "First, we need to put at least twenty pounds on her. You have to be well-fed to be healthy." "Her hair is dry and full of split ends—needs intense deep-conditioning treatments. Her face is sunburned—needs medical-grade serums." "Her uniform is frayed, her shoes are the wrong size, and the zipper on her backpack is broken." "Replace it, replace it all! Everything has to be replaced!" She whipped out her phone and dialed her personal celebrity stylist. "Height: 5'3", weight: 90 pounds. I need a complete wardrobe from head to toe, ready immediately." "Who is it for?" Victoria's tone suddenly became incredibly cheerful and bubbly. "For my little sister, obviously!" 4 I shifted uncomfortably, incredibly anxious. "Do... do you guys know who I am?" Victoria wrapped an arm firmly around my waist, her usually icy, high-fashion face beaming with excitement. "Of course! You're the old man's illegitimate daughter~" She pointed at her genius brother and her billionaire brother, complaining to me: "Ethan was a prodigy. Memorizing the dictionary at three, doing advanced calculus at five. If you took him to a playground, within five minutes he'd pull out a textbook to do practice problems. So incredibly boring!" "Liam is a ruthless, calculating shark. He was born scheming. The second he learned to talk, he was setting traps for me. The second he could walk outside, he was figuring out how to monopolize the local lemonade stands. He is entirely immune to being 'cute'!" "Being the oldest sister to them gave me the title, but absolutely zero real power." "Now, I've finally caught a completely normal, average human sister. I don't care about the family drama or the outside gossip. I am finally going to experience what it's like to be a proper, doting big sister!" As she spoke, Victoria unzipped her designer makeup bag, preparing to give me a full facial cleanse and skincare routine right there in the funeral home. Ethan unceremoniously bumped her out of the way with his hip. He pulled out a pen and a notepad, his eyes gleaming with excitement behind his silver glasses. "Sister is a high school senior? How are your grades?" "Come on, let's do a quick derivative problem so I can see where you're at!" Looking at the massive block of complex Greek symbols on the paper, my brain completely short-circuited. "I... I don't know how to do that..." I'm a high school senior, not a college junior! What kind of high schooler knows advanced calculus?! Ethan scratched his head, looking genuinely baffled. "That doesn't make sense. No matter how slow someone is, by seventeen they should have mastered this, right?" Liam let out a cold scoff, shoved Ethan out of the way, and leaned in close to me. "You said you came here to fight for the inheritance?" That single sentence yanked me back to reality. I looked at Liam, my heart pounding. This is it, right? This is where we talk about the money, and then I get beaten up? Liam pulled out a sleek, solid metal Amex Black Card. His sharp, lethal features suddenly softened. "The old man didn't have that much cash anyway. Be a good girl, call me 'Big Brother,' and I'll give you ten times what he left." Their overwhelming enthusiasm was making me incredibly nervous and deeply confused. This was completely different from what my mom had told me. Before I came, she had drilled it into my head over and over: "The richer they are, the cheaper they are! If they refuse to give you the money, throw yourself on the floor and throw a massive tantrum!" "If they beat you, even better! The harder they hit you, the more money you can extort from them!" She told me the Sterling family were my mortal, blood-sworn enemies. But the way my "enemies" were looking at me right now... was kind of warm? 5 I couldn't shake the feeling that they were treating me like a Tamagotchi. Take right now, for example. I had been brought back to the sprawling Sterling family estate in Beverly Hills. Victoria had canceled all her upcoming Hollywood appearances and red-carpet events just to hover around me all day. On my very first day at the estate, she ordered the private chef to prepare an absolute mountain of premium wagyu beef, lamb, and imported seafood. Plate after plate of exquisite, Michelin-star-level dishes was placed on the long dining table. I was completely overwhelmed. Determined not to waste anything, I kept my head down and ate ferociously until I felt like I was going to throw up. Victoria was stunned. She quickly stopped me. "You're going to make yourself sick eating like that." "I only had the chef make all these different dishes so I could see what you like. You don't have to eat the things you don't like." I looked at her, dazed. What she was saying was... I was allowed to be a picky eater? But my mom always told me that being picky was wrong. When I was three years old, she brought home some leftover spicy stir-fried pork from a date. I took one bite, started crying from the intense heat, and pushed the plate away, tears streaming down my face. She flew into a rage, yanked me up by my arm, and beat me. "You're just a little kid, what right do you have to be picky?! You think you're entitled to eat gourmet food? Do you have the luxury of that kind of life?!" But it was so spicy. It physically hurt my mouth to eat it. I cried and only ate plain white rice, terrified to go near that dish again. But that wasn't good enough for her. She called me an entitled brat and said this "bad habit" had to be broken immediately. That leftover spicy pork... if I didn't eat it the first meal, she saved it for the second. If I didn't eat it for two days, she saved it for three. I wouldn't be allowed to eat any fresh food until I finished that specific dish. I was starved for three entire days. Finally, sobbing, I forced down the spoiled, rotting, spicy pork. That night, I spiked a dangerous fever. After my fever broke, she stood over my bed and lectured me: "Being a picky eater is wrong. Mommy is disciplining you for your own good. Have you learned your lesson?" I learned my lesson. So, faced with a table full of food, I forced myself to eat with everything I had. I was hoping to finish it all before it had a chance to spoil. Preferences? Favorites? I didn't have any. I didn't have the right to be picky. Victoria couldn't watch anymore. She gently took my chopsticks away and softened her voice. "Chloe, don't be afraid. You're still just a kid. You are completely allowed to only eat the things you like." A sudden, overwhelming wave of grief and grievance swelled in my chest. It felt like the three-year-old me, forced to eat burning chili peppers, was finally being hugged by someone whispering softly: Did the peppers hurt your mouth? Be a good girl, we don't have to eat that. We'll eat something else! Summoning all my courage, I whispered, "I... I don't want to eat anything spicy..." Victoria waved her hand. Several maids immediately stepped forward and swiftly removed every single dish that contained even a trace of spice. And it wasn't just that. From that day forward, I never saw a single spicy dish on the dining table ever again. So this is what it feels like to be favored. Just saying "I don't like it" was enough to make that thing completely disappear from my world. Under her meticulous care, I plumped up rapidly, my skin turning bright and healthy. My hair visibly transformed from dry straw into a thick, glossy mane. Victoria was incredibly satisfied, constantly showing off her "results" to her two younger brothers.
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