Chapter 1

"Nini, Daddy is making the money needed for your treatment—"

"I don't need it!" Nancy Sheridan, my daughter, screamed in my ear as she kept hitting me repeatedly.

"Uncle Dmitri is the family's future! You don't know anything because you're just an outsider! You're not even a Sheridan!

"Uncle Dmitri told me that once he got married and gave birth to a son, he would be the one carrying the family legacy to the next generation!

"You're petty and stupid, and you keep using me as an excuse every time you can't make any money!" she continued to holler while pointing her finger in my face.

"I hate it when you go DoorDashing on your motorcycle and get all smelly and sweaty all over! You don't even deserve to lick the mud off Uncle Dmitri's boots!"

Nancy's scream nearly pierced through my eardrums, and my outstretched hand froze mid-air just as I was about to grab her hand.

Back then, I had felt sorry for my wife, Denise Sheridan, for all the pains and trouble she went through while being pregnant with Nancy. I was also considerate of her upbringing, in which her parents had also favored her brother, Dmitri, over her. And so, I suggested that Nancy take her last name instead of mine.

But in the end, this was the main reason why they now all treated me like an outsider who didn't share their last name.

Denise seemed to have realized that Nancy had gone overboard with her words, so she quickly clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Honey, Nini's still too young to understand. I also only said such words because I'd lost my temper earlier. Don't mind her…"

Was Nancy really still that young? She was already ten years old, for crying out loud. She should already know how to tell right from wrong at that age.

And even so, if she really didn't understand the severity of her words, who was the one she had learned them from, anyway?

I looked at Denise's guilty eyes and found it ironic.

Back then, I had come from a poor village, and we were barely scraping by. Denise used to sit on the back of my beat-up bicycle with her arms tightly around my waist, saying, "Aiken, I don't need you to be rich. I just need you to treat me well."

"As long as we're both on the same page, I don't care even if we can only afford to live on bread and cheese for the rest of our lives."

I had felt so touched then, and brought her straight home to meet my parents.

Dad spoke to me in private.

"This woman won't do. She has a sharp tongue and also looks very fierce."

I didn't believe Dad and said, "But Dad, Denise didn't have it easy growing up either. She's a kind woman who knows how to take care of others."

So, I ignored the protests from my family and stubbornly married her anyway.

After getting married, I didn't want her to suffer the same way I did, so I made sure to give her all of my pay.

We didn't earn a lot back then, but it was just enough for us to make ends meet.

After a while, Denise said that she wanted to have a child, and that we should start preparing for it. I agreed. And so, we began eating even less, sometimes leftovers for days, and shopping for out-of-season clothes at thrift shops, but I never once complained about it.

Then, Nancy was born, and she was plagued by a terminal illness.

To keep her alive, and for the sake of my family, I worked myself to the bone, juggling between working as a sales associate in the morning, DoorDashing in the afternoon, and being an Uber driver at night. When it was the weekends, I would take high-risk installation jobs that paid more.

I worked so hard that I developed a herniated disc in my lower back, and the pain was so bad that I couldn't even straighten my back. Yet, the thought of my family needing me made me grit my teeth and persevere anyway.

But now, they told me that at least three-quarters of all the money I'd earned with my blood and sweat was pocketed by somebody else. In fact, the three-quarter total included the money made from Dad selling his kidney for Nancy's treatment.

It was simply ridiculous.

The wife whom I'd loved for 12 years, and the daughter I'd cherished for ten, both ended up treating me like nothing but their personal cash cow.

When Denise saw that I wasn't responding to her, her expression immediately darkened.

"Aiken Collins! Don't push your luck! I'm only doing this so that this family will have someone to rely on in the future!

"If you think you're oh-so-capable after all, then why don't you go and make even more money instead?

"You're so useless and incompetent, and yet still so petty! Why are you even making such a huge fuss over two houses? Can you even call yourself a man? Can't you just be a little more generous instead?"