Chapter 1

With the final stroke, I pushed the pledge back across the desk to Riley Tucker. She had clearly come prepared with a whole speech, but every single word suddenly melted in her throat.

She said, "You actually signed it."

I glanced at my name, the ink still glistening. "Why not? You gave me all the reason to."

She froze for another second. "You're not going to think this over?"

"Think about what exactly?" I asked, capping my pen. "You just helped me fire an employee who earns more per hour than a CEO and has an ego bigger than mine. I should be thanking you instead."

Riley's expression fell. "Adam is not your employee! He's a living, breathing person, not some toy you can order around just because you have money!"

I nodded. "Okay. And?"

Her eyes rimmed red. "You think he'll come crawling back to you once you stop paying him, don't you?"

"Probably not," I said, doing the math. "He should be able to last until dinner tonight."

She clenched the pledge in her hand, looking genuinely stunned by my indifference. "I can live on two dollars a day. A person can be poor, but they should never throw away their dignity just for money."

I sized her up and down. "Adam Sterling spends 200 dollars on a single meal. Your two bucks might not even cover his after-dinner gum."

Someone nearby snickered.

Tears immediately rolled down Riley's face. "Even now, you're still flaunting your wealth. Adam is handsome, smart, and used to be rich.

"You're just taking advantage of him while he's down, enjoying the thrill of making the golden boy bow his head to you."

I didn't argue. Adam had bowed his head to me before, usually to check my shoelaces. I paid him thirty dollars for each inspection and another fifteen if he actually tied them.

We both knew what we were doing. One of us was shameless enough to name a price, and the other was willing to pay it. Only Riley made it seem like I had made him sell his soul.

She took a photo of the pledge and posted it on the campus confession page. The caption was impossible to miss. "He's nobody's toy. Stop using money to control your classmate, Sophie Williams."

Riley had thought everyone would join in and condemn me. At first, the top comments were exactly what she expected.

"Just because she's rich, she thinks she can treat people like household staff?"

"Taking advantage of Adam when he's down and ordering him around is just shameless."

Before long, a guy from the basketball team jumped into the comments.

"Hold up. Don't feel sorry for him just yet. The last time Adam wiped her sweat for her, he collected 150 dollars right in front of our entire team."

Another student added, "He got 45 dollars for carrying her backpack, too. I saw it myself. He took the money first, then held his hand out for the bag."

The mood shifted instantly. Before long, the top comment changed.

"So… is Adam's position up for grabs now?"

The comments then spiraled out of control.

"It must be nice being hot. You could be a sugar baby and still have the whole school feeling sorry for you."

"Look at me, Sophie. My dignity is highly negotiable."

"If Adam's out, I'll take the job. Forget carrying your backpack. I can even carry you up five flights of stairs."

"Is it true that he got paid 150 dollars for wiping her sweat? If it is, I'll show up with my own towel."

"Please hire me. I'm discreet and obedient."

Riley was furious. She started replying to the comments one by one.

"He's not a sugar baby. He's just overwhelmed by the humiliation!

"Does any of you have any self-respect?"

Someone quickly replied, "Yes. But for 50 dollars and above, I can leave my dignity at home."

Another student cut straight to the point. "Has Adam himself ever said he didn't want to do it anymore?"

Riley sat there clutching her phone, unable to type out a response. The truth was that she barely knew Adam at all. Whenever they crossed paths in the hallways, he never even acknowledged her.

In her mind, though, it wasn't because they were strangers. She had decided that he was the quiet, long-suffering type who kept all his pain buried deep inside.

After hearing about her analysis, I discovered for the first time that my brother apparently had a whole secret inner world I knew nothing about.

Nobody at school knew that Adam and I were siblings. He took Dad's last name, while I took Mom's. As for why we had never made it public, the reason was simple—he found me embarrassing.

On the first day of freshman year, he warned me, "Don't let anyone here know we're siblings."

"Why not?"

"Because if you do, no ladies would come near me."

Right then and there, I stuffed the half-eaten sausage I was holding into his backpack. After that, whenever we crossed paths at school, we stopped greeting each other altogether.

Instead, we'd just roll our eyes at each other.

Then he got caught street racing. Dad cut off his money, and that made him even more determined to keep our relationship a secret.

He said working for me was already embarrassing enough. He couldn't let the whole school find out that he was living off his sister, too.

Therefore, the so-called humiliation Riley thought he was enduring was actually a second chance at employment that Adam had begged me for.

Unfortunately, he had left with the basketball team yesterday for a closed-door tournament. All the players had been made to hand in their phones.

Even then, he had no idea that Riley had just rescued his precious dignity and, as a little bonus, destroyed his livelihood.