Chapter 1 On our eighteenth birthday, my sister received company shares, a luxury car, and a mansion. I received a DNA test confirming we weren’t biologically related. My mother smiled coldly. “Chloe, since you aren’t our biological daughter, you’ll need to repay the cost of raising you for the last seventeen years.” My father scoffed. “Starting today, you’re the family maid. We’ll credit you five hundred dollars a month toward your debt. Room and board are not included.” I didn’t ask how it was possible that my twin sister and I, who looked like carbon copies of each other, weren’t both their daughters. I just calmly nodded. Because the night before, standing outside their door, I had heard everything: My sister, Mia, had whined while holding our parents’ hands. “Mom, Dad, my only birthday wish is to be the sole heiress of the Vance family and get all your love to myself. Can we just make Chloe be a maid for a year? Please?” My father looked at her with pure indulgence. “Of course. Anything you want.” My mother laughed and agreed, “For this entire year, Mom and Dad belong only to our precious Mia.” After everyone had gone to bed, I stared at the leftover birthday cake, stuck a candle in it, and made a wish: I want to leave the Vance family. Not for a year, but for the rest of my life. … My sister, Mia, covered her mouth in an exaggerated gasp. “Oh my gosh, Chloe! No wonder you’re so ugly and don’t look like Mom or Dad. You really are a fake!” She shrieked loudly and dramatically. It was as if she had completely forgotten that we were twins and looked at least 80% alike. “Oh wait, you aren’t my sister at all. You’re just some stray mutt who crawled in from nowhere.” My mother’s face was distant and cold. “Chloe, now that the truth is out and you aren’t a Vance, this birthday party is exclusively for our precious daughter, Mia. You have no right to be here.” I looked up at Mia, who was gloating. She was wearing a custom-made princess gown and a tiara that cost as much as a house. Then I looked at myself, wearing a faded, washed-out button-down and jeans with frayed cuffs. I smiled bitterly. Right. I never had any “rights” in this house to begin with. So how could I lose them? My father raised his voice. “Starting today, move into the servant’s quarters. For the sake of the years we spent together, you can work here as a maid until you find your real parents. I’ll credit you five hundred dollars a month to pay off the seventeen years of expenses we wasted on you. Room and board are not included.” The guests whispered among themselves. Like a pathetic clown performing under a spotlight of mockery and disdain, I bent down and picked up my backpack. Mia suddenly rushed forward and violently yanked my bag. The broken zipper, held together only by a safety pin, burst open, spilling my belongings all over the floor. Mia shrieked, “Aha! I knew it! You’ve been stealing from us!” Laying among my scattered textbooks was a single, pink sanitary pad. My mother looked slightly embarrassed. “Mia, let it go. It’s just a sanitary pad.” Mia immediately threw a tantrum. “Mom! I’m the only daughter of the Vance family now! Who does she think she is?! She’s leeched off us for years, and now she’s stealing our stuff! If I say she doesn’t deserve it, she doesn’t deserve it!” Seeing her get angry, my mother quickly softened her tone to coax her. “Okay, okay, baby, don’t be mad. You’re right. You are Mommy’s only precious girl now. You can do whatever you want.” Satisfied, Mia stomped directly onto the sanitary pad, grinding her heel into it. “There. I don’t want it anymore. You can have it.” I stared at the sanitary pad covered in dirty footprints. My throat felt like it was stuffed with wet, heavy cotton. I couldn’t breathe. Chapter 2 In the end, I bent down and only picked up my books. After the party ended, our housekeeper, Mrs. Miller, led me to a storage closet. It was barely fifty square feet. The only things inside were a wooden board bed piled with junk and a rusted iron window. Mrs. Miller stood in the doorway, hesitating. “Miss… Chloe, Mr. and Mrs. Vance remember the good things about you. Once they cool down, you’ll be the Vance family’s eldest daughter again…” Before she could finish, two cockroaches scurried out from a dark corner and disappeared. I pretended not to see the awkward pity on her face. “Thank you. I understand.” Mrs. Miller shook her head and walked away, muttering softly to herself, “They look exactly alike, how could they not be related? Sigh…” I sat on the hard wooden board, staring blankly out the rusted window into the pitch-black night. It’s fine. Just one more year, and I can leave forever. That night, my cramps were agonizing. Having no sanitary pads, I had to fold up layers of toilet paper. When I stepped out of the bathroom, I heard my parents whispering in the hallway. “Honey, do you think Chloe will hate us for treating her like this? She is our biological daughter, after all.” My father scoffed. “It’s her fault for always bullying Mia. She’s the older sister; she should know how to yield to her younger sister. Letting her taste some hardship is for her own good.” “After Mia has her fun for a year, we’ll just make an excuse and say the DNA test was a mix-up. Once we restore her status as the eldest daughter, she’ll be too thrilled to hold a grudge.” My fingertips went ice cold. It was absurd. It was hilarious. Why on earth did they think they could trample me into the dirt, and I would just stand there waiting for them like an obedient dog? The next day, I went out to buy sanitary pads. But when I tried to pay, my card was declined for insufficient funds. I knew for a fact I had exactly two hundred dollars saved up. When I walked back into the mansion, the three of them were laughing around the dining table. There was a gift bag sitting on the table. My mother was lovingly caressing a silk scarf. “Our Mia is such a sweet, thoughtful girl. Knowing how to buy gifts for her mommy now! I’m so happy.” My father twirled a cheap plastic water bottle in his hands, grinning from ear to ear. “Dad loves his too! That’s my precious daughter.” Mia pouted, leaning her head on our mother’s shoulder. “But both of those only cost two hundred dollars combined. You guys aren’t mad I bought something so cheap, are you?” My mother immediately shook her head. “Of course not! As long as my baby bought it, even a two-dollar gift is a treasure to me.” My father didn’t miss the chance to put me down to lift her up. “Exactly. Unlike your sister, who only knows how to spend our money and has never bought us a single gift. She’s a heartless parasite. She could never compare to my Mia…” Noticing me standing in the doorway, they abruptly stopped talking. Mia tilted her head, looking at me with a sickeningly sweet, malicious smile. That two hundred dollars. That was two months’ worth of my living expenses. It was every single penny I had to my name. My whole body went cold. Something in my brain violently snapped. By the time I realized what I was doing, I had already grabbed Mia and raised my hand to slap her. But before my hand could fall, my father delivered a brutal kick to my stomach. I flew backward, my spine slamming agonizingly against the sharp corner of the glass coffee table. My vision went completely black from the pain. Mia held up her arm, showing off a tiny, faint red mark, and started wailing like the sky was falling. “Mom! Dad! It hurts so much! Is my arm broken?!” My mother panicked, screaming, “Call an ambulance!” My father quickly interrupted, “Don’t bother with an ambulance, it’ll take too long! I’ll drive Mia to the hospital myself.” Mia pointed a shaking finger at me as I lay gasping on the floor. “I don’t want to ride in the car! That stray mutt hurt me! I want her to carry me to the hospital on her back!” Chapter 3 The mansion was over twelve miles away from the nearest hospital in the city. My mother glared at me with eyes like ice. “You are a parentless stray. We fed and housed you for over a decade, and you dare lay a hand on my biological daughter? You will do exactly as Mia says.” Seeing me struggling to get up, my father grabbed me by the collar and hauled me to my feet. “Stop faking it. It was just a light tap. Hurry up and get Mia on your back. If you delay my daughter’s treatment, I swear I’ll throw you out on the street.” I believed him. But I couldn’t leave yet. I was broke. I had no choice but to let Mia climb onto my back and begin the agonizing trek toward the hospital. My father drove his luxury car slowly, trailing right behind me. He continuously yelled out the window, “Chloe, you better hold her steady! If you drop my precious daughter, I’ll skin you alive!” My mother complained from the passenger seat, “Walk faster! Did you not eat?! Don’t you dare delay my baby’s treatment!” Mia clung to my back, giggling viciously in my ear. “See? Nobody in this house loves you! You’re just an unwanted stray dog.” In the past, words like that would have easily pierced my heart. But now, perhaps due to an overdose of pain, I was completely numb. Seeing that I wasn’t reacting, Mia stopped talking. But just as we were finally approaching the hospital… She pulled a safety pin out of her pocket and jabbed it violently into my back. I stumbled in blinding pain, collapsing face-first onto the pavement. My parents immediately slammed on the brakes, bolted out of the car, scooped up Mia—who had fallen on top of me—and sprinted toward the emergency room. My mother glanced back at me, my face chalk-white on the concrete, and tossed a careless comment over her shoulder: “We’re at the hospital anyway. Go find a doctor yourself. We don’t have time to deal with you.” I never made it inside the hospital. Because I had no money. With zero energy left to walk back, I sat on the hospital steps until the sun went down, finally making my way back to the mansion long after dark. They were already home. Standing in the opulent living room were a filthy, cowering, middle-aged man and woman. “You’re back.” My father pointed at the couple. “These are your biological parents. Pack your things and leave with them right now.” The silence in the room was deafening. My mother walked over and grabbed my hand, though she couldn’t meet my eyes. “Chloe, we were mother and daughter for a long time, and this breaks my heart. But since your real parents have been found, there’s no reason for you to linger in the Vance household.” I thought I had run out of tears. But they spilled over my eyelashes and streamed down my face anyway. These were the parents I had cherished and loved more than anything for seventeen years. And they were entirely unwilling to let me stay, even in the darkest, smallest corner of their home. Seeing my tears, my mother looked guilty. She reached out to wipe them away, but Mia quickly latched onto her arm. “Chloe! Congratulations! You’re finally not a parentless stray anymore!” The middle-aged woman immediately grabbed my other arm. Her filthy, blackened fingernails dug painfully into my skin as she began a ridiculously exaggerated wail. “Oh, my sweet daughter! Mommy finally found you! Come home with Mommy!” The man claiming to be my biological father started dragging me toward the door. “Yeah, yeah, let’s go! You’ve bothered Mr. and Mrs. Vance long enough. Don’t be a shameless parasite!” “Wait,” Mia said, her eyes gleaming as she smiled wickedly. “Chloe, finding your real parents is a massive deal. It wouldn’t be right to leave without kneeling and kowtowing to them in gratitude. Or… are you disgusted because they’re poor? Do you look down on your own parents?” I froze, turning to look at my mother and father. “Do you also think I should kneel and kowtow to them?” Chapter 4 They instinctively avoided my gaze. Mia kept pushing. “Hurry up and kneel! We’re all waiting!” I smiled. Something inside my chest completely, irrevocably shattered. I dropped to my knees, but I didn’t face the strangers. I faced my mother and father, and bowed deeply, my forehead touching the floor. “Thank you for raising me. This ends my obligations to you as a daughter. From this moment on, I have absolutely no connection to the Vance family.” My parents exchanged a panicked look, a flicker of unease crossing both their faces. But I had already stood up and turned to leave with my “biological parents.” My mother chased after me, her voice shrill with fake bravado, “We aren’t even! Not until… not until you pay back every single penny we spent on you over the last seventeen years!” I stopped walking, but I didn’t turn around. I simply replied, “Okay.” They genuinely believed they had spent a fortune on me over the years. But they conveniently forgot that the daughter they extravagantly spoiled and threw money at was Mia. Meanwhile, I got an allowance of three hundred dollars a month. And even that was constantly extorted by Mia, whose allowance was thirty thousand. If I refused to give it to her, she would go home crying. She would claim I was turning our classmates against her and bullying her at school. As punishment, I would be locked in my room without food. There was even a night during a torrential downpour where Mia claimed I was bullying her so much she wanted to die. For that, I was locked outside in the freezing rain all night. I caught a fever of 104 degrees, and no one cared. From childhood until now, it had always been exactly like this. One word from Mia dictated whether I was right or wrong, happy or miserable, and even if I was allowed basic human dignity. My explanations, my tears, my grievances… in this house, they were utterly worthless. Just like me. Incredibly cheap. That night, I arrived at my “biological parents’” dingy, run-down apartment in the slums. Because there were no extra rooms or blankets, I spent the night curled up in a ball on the floor of the tiny, grimy bathroom. The freezing wind howled through the broken, newspaper-patched windows. By the next morning, I was delirious with a dangerously high fever. Fading in and out of consciousness, I heard the woman frantically speaking on the phone. “Mr. Vance, Mrs. Vance! The… the girl has a massive fever! She’s burning up, it’s 104 degrees!” “Well, what are you waiting for?! Take her to the hospital!” The phone was on speaker. Mia’s voice rang out, crystal clear. “Mom, Dad! She just left last night and she magically has a high fever today? That’s too much of a coincidence. It’s obviously a trick to see if you still care. If you fall for it, she wins!” After a long silence, my father’s icy voice replied, “Leave her be. She said it herself: she has no connection to us anymore. Let the ungrateful brat learn a hard lesson.” My mother sounded incredibly annoyed. “She’s your daughter now. Stop calling us over every little thing. We’re busy packing for our daughter’s round-the-world graduation trip. I’m hanging up.” No one cared if I lived or died. I was abandoned in that miserable slum apartment. Using the very last shred of my willpower, I clawed the front door open and dragged myself out into the hallway before passing out completely. When I opened my eyes again, a nurse was standing by my bed. “Sweetheart, you’re finally awake! 107 degrees! If a kind stranger hadn’t found you and brought you here… ten minutes later, and you wouldn’t have made it.” “Alright, hurry up and call your family to come. And you need to pay your admission fees.” I was silent for a long time. My voice was paper-thin. “I don’t have any money. And I don’t have a family.” The nurse was stunned. I stared blankly at the IV tube taped to the back of my hand and licked my cracked lips. “But… I have blood.” When school started again, I was officially a high school senior. I began running errands for my classmates—buying their lunches, delivering packages. One dollar per trip. I could save about twenty dollars a day. Chapter 5 One day, I had just finished buying someone’s lunch and was walking out of the cafeteria when I ran straight into Mia. She simply crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. Her lackeys immediately lunged forward, snatching the lunchbox from my hands and smashing it onto the ground. The food mixed with the mud and dirty puddles on the pavement. “Aww, sister. You look so hungry. Let me treat you to lunch,” Mia sneered. Her friends grabbed the back of my head and forcefully shoved my face toward the muddy, trampled food. Ms. Harris, my homeroom teacher, happened to be walking by and furiously reprimanded them. She pulled me up and helped me wipe the mud off my face. She had heard rumors about what happened at the birthday party and knew I was desperately poor. Without asking too many invasive questions, she helped me secure a weekend tutoring job for a middle schooler. The only condition was that I could only work half-days on weekends, ensuring it wouldn’t affect my grades. I thanked her profusely. But I never could have imagined that Ms. Harris’s singular act of kindness would result in her being anonymously reported for “accepting bribes from parents” and subsequently fired. And me? My face was plastered all over the school’s public bulletin board. Someone had taken a photo of the middle schooler’s father driving me home from a tutoring session. The caption labeled me a high school escort being funded by a sugar daddy. My “biological mother,” Brenda, rushed to the school. Without asking a single question, she slapped me across the face twice. She viciously grabbed my hair, yanking and pinching me. “You little slut! Barely a teenager and you’re already spreading your legs for men! You might not have any shame, but I do!” My head snapped to the side from the impact. Through my messy, disheveled hair, my eyes locked onto my real parents, standing with the school administrators, looking at me like I was radioactive trash. And standing right behind them was Mia, a massive, triumphant grin splitting her face. My hair fell forward, hiding my line of sight, and hiding the tears I couldn’t hold back. I lowered my head and said quietly, “I’m sorry. I know I was wrong.” That night, right after I stepped out of the shower in the slum apartment, a pair of massive hands violently dragged me into a bedroom. My “biological father,” Bob, was shirtless, his eyes bloodshot with pure lust as he lunged at me. “If you’re giving it away to men outside, you might as well give it to me!” I pulled a hidden box cutter from my sleeve and slashed wildly at his face. He stumbled back, panting heavily, looking like a starved animal. “I’m a minor! Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in prison, get the hell away from me!” Living in the slums, there was no way I wouldn’t be prepared for the worst. Bob spat on the floor, wiped the blood from his cheek, and flashed a sickening, yellow-toothed grin. “You just wait, you little bitch. Your real parents sold you to me. I’ll get what I want eventually.” The door slammed shut. I collapsed against it, sliding down to the floor, my entire body shaking violently. The tears flooded out. I bit down on the back of my hand so hard I drew blood, just to stop my sobbing from making a sound. My phone buzzed. A notification from the Vance Family group chat. My mother: “Chloe, you are a pathetic, depraved child. Thinking about the fact that I called a filthy, shameless girl like you my daughter for seventeen years makes me physically sick.” The next second, my father removed me from the group chat. Staring at the chat group that now only had three members, my mother felt a sudden, inexplicable pang of unease. “Honey, did we go too far? Didn’t the investigator say she was just tutoring that man’s kid?” My father huffed angrily. “If she hadn’t forced Mia to eat food off the dirty floor, Mia wouldn’t have cried until her eyes were swollen! All Mia asked for was to kick her out of the group chat. She got off easy.” He thought for a second, then softened his tone. “It’s only for a year anyway. I already transferred enough money to Bob so she won’t starve. When the year is up, we’ll go pick her up immediately.” One year later. The day of Mia’s and my nineteenth birthday. My parents left the house early in the morning. My father drove fast. “Did you bring the real DNA test results?” My mother nodded repeatedly. “I have them. We haven’t seen Chloe in a whole year. When we bring her home, we have to properly make it up to her.” Chapter 6 My father smiled. “Of course. I’ve already reorganized the company shares. Mia is too playful; she can’t handle the responsibility. After this year of hardship, Chloe has definitely matured and won’t bully her sister anymore. At the birthday banquet tonight, I’ll officially announce Chloe as the primary heir.” The two of them hurried out of the car, navigated the filthy, trash-filled stairwell of the slum apartment, and went straight to Bob’s door. But they knocked for ten minutes, and no one answered. Finally, an older woman poked her head out of the neighboring apartment. “Stop knocking. Bob got arrested and sent to prison a long time ago for raping that girl he brought home last year.” The hallway went dead silent. My parents’ faces froze, as if they had been struck by a sledgehammer. After a long time, my father, his face deathly pale, finally managed to find his trembling voice. “Did… did Bob bring several girls home last year?” The neighbor smacked her lips, completely shattering his delusion. “Several? No, just the one. He told everyone she was his long-lost daughter that he finally tracked down.” “Yes! She’s his daughter!” my mother interrupted, her voice shrill and panicked. “She’s his daughter! A father wouldn’t touch his own daughter! There must be a mistake!” My mother seemed to believe that if she yelled loud enough, she could bury the horrific truth staring her in the face. But the neighbor wasn’t buying it. She let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “What daughter? Everyone in this building knows Bob is shooting blanks. He’s got a medical condition; he can’t even have kids.” “He kept bragging that the girl was his long-lost kid. But look at Bob and Brenda—they’re both ugly as sin! There’s no way they could produce a girl that pretty. He obviously kidnapped or tricked her into coming here.” Seeing that my parents were well-dressed, the neighbor leaned in, her eyes shining with morbid, gossipy excitement, hoping to impress them. “Let me tell you, the walls in this building are paper-thin. The night Bob got arrested… that poor girl’s screaming and crying echoed through the entire building. It was horrific.” My mother stumbled backward, the world spinning around her, and grabbed the rusty staircase railing for support. Usually a severe germaphobe, she didn’t even notice the thick, black grime coating her hands. Her face was completely blank as she muttered lifelessly, “Impossible… It’s a lie. It has to be a lie.” The neighbor waved her hand defensively. “I’m not lying! Ask anyone in this building! He brought that poor girl here, and within a few days, he forced himself on her. The man is an absolute animal.” The neighbor described the events with vivid, terrifying detail, completely oblivious to my parents’ rapidly deteriorating complexions. My father, usually a ruthless, commanding presence in the corporate world, was trembling like a leaf in the wind. It took every ounce of his willpower just to keep his buckling legs from collapsing. “Where… where is the girl now…?” “Oh, don’t even ask.” The neighbor sighed heavily. “The second the cops hauled Bob away, the girl jumped off the roof. She looked like she was just a student. Such a sweet, pretty face, completely ruined by that monster. I don’t know who her real parents are, but if they ever found out, their hearts would shatter into a million pieces.” Having finished her story, the neighbor finally noticed my parents looked like they had just seen a ghost. A dawning realization hit her. “Wait a minute… you don’t think that girl was your daughter, do you?” “No! No, she wasn’t.” My father denied it frantically. “We were just passing through…” Looking like a man fleeing from hell itself, he grabbed my mother’s arm and practically dragged her out of the building. Running out of the stairwell, he nearly tripped over a pile of rotting garbage. They didn’t speak a single word until they were safely inside the luxury car. I don’t know how much time passed, but a suppressed, agonizing sob finally broke the silence. My mother covered her face, completely breaking down into hysterical wails. “My Chloe… my baby girl…”
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