Chapter 2

A chilling, piercing laugh then rang in my ears after Dad was done talking.

I felt as though my heart had been ripped apart.

Back then, I had clearly been accepted into a very good university, but Mom and Dad said that they couldn't afford to put any food on the table, so I gave up on going to university and instead took on multiple jobs to feed them.

Now, I realized that my actions must have seemed so ridiculous in their eyes.

Randall laughed. "You and Mom are really something, Dad. Aren't you worried that Raven's going to find out one day and beat you both up?"

Mom and Dad didn't look like they cared. "Hah! We'll see if she even gets the chance to do that!

"Your mom and I have already talked things through. We'll just pretend to be deathly ill sometime later. We'll say we're deeply in need of 700,000 dollars for the surgery. Then, we'll sell her off to Leroy Buckley, the village idiot.

"And then, once we get the money, we'll go abroad for a vacation and then stage a deadly accident after coming back. It won't matter if she ever finds out about the truth then, because what right does a married woman have to her parents' inheritance, after all?"

I didn't have the courage to continue listening to the rest of their conversation. All I knew was that I felt so devastated as I left the dealership that I nearly collapsed to the ground.

I even thought of taking off my mask and cap and confronting them right then and there for a moment.

Why was it that their precious son could drive a Ferrari worth 500,000 dollars, while their daughter was told that they were too poor to afford her 100,000-dollar university tuition fees? How could they let their daughter only do odd jobs wherever she could to survive? Weren't we both their children?

However, I managed to suppress my impulses with reasoning and stopped myself from confronting them. I would only be humiliating myself if I were to reveal myself now.

If they had an ounce of pity for me, they would never have watched me pick up so many odd jobs every day without doing anything about it. So, I would still end up on the losing end anyway.

…

I didn't work overtime delivering food as usual that night.

Instead, I used the money I had on me to buy myself a nice cheesesteak sandwich, something that I had never allowed myself to buy because it was too pricey for me.

I cried while eating the sandwich. I wouldn't stop questioning myself about Mom and Dad's favoritism. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there had been many telltale signs since the beginning, and it all began to make sense.

For example, Randall didn't manage to get into any of the colleges or universities with his dismal SAT score, but Mom and Dad somehow managed to enroll him in an overseas college.

When I asked them how they'd manage to fund that, they told me that they had borrowed the money from a relative.

Now that I thought carefully about it, their lies weren't even that believable in the first place.

After all, what kind of relative would be so kind as to casually spend a few million dollars on my hopeless brother?

I had just been too stupid and naive before.

They didn't come home that night. Early the next morning, however, Mom, Dad, and Randall finally walked through the door, wearing the clothes they'd bought from thrift stores. They were also carrying a bag of white bread and some processed cheese from the grocery's clearance section.

They immediately flew into a temper when they saw the mess at home and the cheesesteak sandwich wrapping in the trash can.

"You brat! How dare you waste your money on things like that! We've already bought breakfast for you! Why the hell did you have to buy something so expensive for yourself? Don't you know how poor we are right now?"

I stared at Mom's furious expression as she continued berating me for "wasting" money and found it ridiculous.

If this were in the past, I would usually feel sorry for her for having to work so hard. I'd never even spare a glance at the sandwiches at the cheesesteak restaurant because I found them overly pricey.

However, now, after witnessing them casually dropping half a million dollars on Randall, I only felt sorry for myself for having been fooled by them for so many years. I had been tricked into overworking myself to death.

I chuckled coldly.

"What's the big deal? Didn't you just drop 500,000 bucks on a car for Randy just because you felt like it? And now, you're telling me that I can't even buy myself a sandwich?"

"What… What nonsense are you talking about?"

Dad panicked when he heard me say that. Realizing that they were about to blow their cover, Mom and Dad began stammering and stuttering as they fought to find the right words.

Even their precious Randall was looking like a deer caught in headlights at the moment.