Chapter 4

The president and his wife finished all of the food.

After dinner, I bade goodbye to them. My mother was waiting for me to go back and take care of her.

Yelena held my hand tightly.

“Nina, will you do a paternity test with Nathan? Don’t feel pressured into it. Even if you’re not my daughter, I’d still like you to come and visit me. I really like you. Nathan will also keep giving you that salary, okay?”

My grin stretched from ear to ear and refused to fade away.

Of course I was okay with it!

I plucked out some hair and handed it to her.

Yelena patted my head, as if she did not like me plucking so much hair in one go, and asked whether it hurt.

I just kept grinning like an idiot. It did not hurt, not at all!

I was going to get 100 thousand dollars a month, which was 1.2 million dollars a year!

I was going to be Yelena’s emotional support for the rest of the year.

I was going to be with her for all sorts of events and the weekends and provide her with all the comfort she needed.

…

I practically skipped out of the mansion while planning how I was going to spend my money.

After the New Year, I could buy a car for my mother. When she went to work in winter, she would not be so cold anymore.

Since I wanted to put all of my attention into providing emotional support for Yelena, I had turned off my phone.

When I turned it on again, I found that Stanley had made eighty-eight calls, while my mother had made eighteen.

I immediately called my mother to tell her that I was fine. I also wanted to tell her about the good news.

But before I could say anything, she started yelling at me.

“Come to the company right now! Nina, I thought that you were an obedient child, but you’re no different from those materialistic girls!”

I sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll go over right now. Things aren’t as you think they are, Mom.”

When I arrived, I found my mother kneeling in front of Stanley.

Everyone was watching and doing nothing about it. There was also a huge stack of money in front of Stanley.

Rage immediately shot up to my head.

“Mom, your knees are still recovering! Get up!”

Coral gave me the stink eye. “You’re finally back, Nina. Listen. You youngsters often make mistakes, and that’s fine, but you have to be considerate of your mother. You’re immature and got your mother kneeling for four hours! That’s not right.”

I dragged my mother up and yelled at Coral, “If anything happens to my mother’s knees, you’re taking responsibility because you’re the team leader!”

My mother broke free of my grasp. “Are you always this uncouth when you’re in public? Everyone already told me that you went into your boss’s office, and he transferred 100 thousand dollars into your bank account! That money was transferred right into your bank account without even going through the finance department! Can’t you see the underlying message and how disgusting it is? You did something dirty, and you have the gall to yell at someone else?!”

I was so furious that my face turned red.

My mother was gullible and believed whatever everyone told her.

Coral poured a glass of water for my mother.

“Nina might be uncouth, but it has nothing to do with you. Some people are just born bad.”

My mother returned to kneeling on the floor and said, “I’ve already transferred 200 thousand dollars to Coral. Nina, I did it for you. All you need to do now is apologize sincerely to your colleagues and Stanley!”

I stared at my mother in disbelief and shouted, “Are you dumb?! Don’t you trust me at all?! I told you that I didn’t do anything wrong! That’s 200 thousand dollars, and you just gave it away?! When I was young, I had to beg for a piece of meat for a week! Did I commit some heinous crime that you’d give Coral 200 thousand dollars?! All I did was refuse to buy coffee!”

My mother stood up on staggering feet. Then, as if she had a screw loose in her head, she went straight to the window.

She stood on a chair and leaned outside.

“Why should I live?! In any case, I’m not smart and am just causing trouble for my daughter!”