Chapter 1

I took a deep breath, my nails digging hard into my palm.

“Dad, if what you just said is true, then you broke the law.”

Ken Zimmer shook his head and let out a mocking laugh.

“Joe, who are you trying to scare? Even if I did break the law, who’s going to believe you? Your word alone?

“Even if you go looking for your real family, I can just say the babies were accidentally switched at the hospital. What can you do about it? Do you really think the city’s wealthiest family would give up Victor and choose you instead?

“Enough. I did raise you for nineteen years, after all. Finish this meal, then go off to that mediocre college of yours. I’ll give you ten thousand dollars for living expenses. After that, we’re even.”

With that, he stopped paying attention to me and lowered his head to eat.

I forced down the ache spreading through my chest and finally poured myself a glass of liquor too.

“Fine, Mr. Zimmer.

“After this meal, we’re even.”

For as long as I could remember, Ken had looked at me with disgust.

When I was little, he told me my mother had died from severe bleeding while giving birth to me, so I owed him for the rest of my life. I was the curse of the Zimmer family.

So starting when I was five, he forced me to do chores around the house. If I broke so much as a bowl, he would point at my nose and call me an idiot. A burden. A debt collector he could never get rid of.

He never celebrated my birthday.

But every year, on my birthday, he would carefully pick out an expensive gift and secretly leave it at the gate of the Jasper family’s villa.

When I was seven, a human trafficker dragged me into a van.

I bit the man’s hand with everything I had, threw the door open, jumped out, and ran for my life. In the end, a kind stranger took me to the police station.

I curled up on a chair there, covered in scrapes and bruises, with only one thought in my head.

Would Dad be scared?

Would he feel sorry for me?

But when Ken arrived, he didn’t look at me once. He just quickly signed the release form.

When he led me out, I clearly heard him mutter under his breath.

“What a pain. It would’ve been better if they’d taken him.”

Those words stabbed straight into my heart. Even now, they still ached.

That was the moment I realized he truly hated me.

He had never even attended a single parent-teacher conference for me. He always said he was too busy.

In sixth grade, I won first place in the school math competition.

I begged him over and over to come to the award ceremony. Even if he only stayed for five minutes, that would have been enough.

Maybe he saw the hope in my eyes, because for once, he actually agreed.

But the ceremony ended, and I never saw him.

Only later did I find out that Victor Jasper had a taekwondo match that same day.

Ken had rented a suit specially for the occasion. He sat in the front row with a camera and took pictures of the entire match.

When I got home, I asked him through my tears, “Why did you lie to me? You promised you’d come to my award ceremony.”

Ken hurriedly put away the camera and glared at me.

“I was busy. Who has time for your stupid award ceremony? Get lost. Stop bothering me.”

That was also when I discovered his photo album was filled with pictures of another boy.

He was handsome and clean-cut. In one photo, he was holding a brand-new game console worth thousands of dollars.

Ken would stare at those photos and murmur, “Victor, my good son…”

That was when I learned his name was Victor.

Victor, as in victory.

And Ken had named me Joe.

As in Average Joe.

He wanted Victor to win.

And he wanted me to stay ordinary for the rest of my life.

He wanted me to stay beneath Victor forever.

I felt so wronged that I wished Victor would disappear from our lives.

But I never expected Victor to end up at the same middle school as me.

Even worse, we were placed in the same class.

When Ken found out, he was so excited he could barely contain himself. He ordered me to take good care of Victor at school.

No matter how hard I studied, he only praised Victor. Then he turned around and mocked me.

“What’s the point of trying so hard? Poor trash will always be poor trash. Even if you get good grades, you’ll still end up working for Victor one day.”

Back then, I still didn’t understand.

Why couldn’t he see how hard I worked?

Why did he keep praising Victor, whose grades weren’t even as good as mine?

Naively, I thought that if I just worked harder, he would finally like me.

Then I came in first in my entire grade and won a five-hundred-dollar scholarship.