Chapter 3

The chaos at the venue continued, with Chad clumsily directing the medical staff to carry Olivia away.

Meanwhile, my eyes were covered in gauze, and I sat quietly inside the iron cage, appearing exactly like a true victim.

Three years ago, Olivia and I got divorced.

To this day, I still remember the determination and contempt on her face when she threw the divorce certificate in my face outside the courthouse.

"Connor, I’ve had enough of living this poor life with you! From this day on, we are over!"

In order to provide my daughter with a stable living environment, I chose to walk away with absolutely nothing.

I gave her the only house we had worked together to buy, along with all my savings, which totaled over three hundred thousand dollars.

I had only one request—to let me visit my daughter whenever I wanted.

At the time, she had agreed readily, saying that for Maisie's sake, she wouldn't stop us from seeing each other.

However, I never expected it was merely a lie she told to squeeze the last bit of value out of me.

After the divorce, I moved into a basement apartment that cost three hundred dollars a month to rent. The place was dark and damp, never seeing a single ray of sunlight all year round.

To earn enough allowance and tuition money for Maisie, I was always too busy to go home.

Between construction sites, food delivery, rideshare driving, loading and unloading cargo, at my busiest, I was working up to five jobs a day.

I couldn't even bear to spend more than ten dollars on a single meal. The clothes on my back were still the ones bought before the divorce, washed so many times they had turned completely faded.

Yet, every single penny of my hard-earned money was sent over to Olivia without a single hesitation.

I naively thought that as long as I worked harder, Maisie could live a better life.

I was wrong, though.

The moment Olivia got my money and the house, she immediately turned around and moved in with Chad.

Taking my blood-and-sweat money, she bought designer bags and got high-end beauty treatments. She went on luxury vacations with Chad, living an extravagant life beyond my imagination.

Furthermore, she completely ignored our daughter, even treating her like a total burden.

One time, I went to visit Maisie and found her lying at home all by herself with a burning high fever, while Olivia and Chad were busy vacationing in Meyruelle.

My heart ached unbearably, and I immediately rushed my daughter to the hospital.

From that day onward, I started working even more desperately to make money, terrified that the cash I provided wasn't enough or that my daughter was suffering.

However, what I didn't know was that under Olivia’s day-in and day-out brainwashing with toxic advice, Maisie’s heart had already changed long ago.

Consequently, she began to despise me.

"Dad, can you stop coming to school to find me? When my classmates see you, they make fun of me."

"Dad, Chad bought me a pair of Jordans. I threw that pair of Converse you gave me a long time ago."

At first, I thought it was just teenage rebellion. I believed that as long as I did better, she would eventually understand my painstaking efforts.

That was until her graduation party.

She had been accepted into a university, and I was so happy that I didn't sleep a wink for several days and nights.

Using up my remaining savings and even borrowing some extra money from my coworkers, I bought her the laptop she had wanted for a very long time.

I wanted her to be able to hold her head up high in college.

But at the party, the exact moment Chad pulled out a laptop that was identical to mine, Maisie’s face instantly darkened.

Right in front of all our friends and relatives, she slammed the laptop I gave her violently onto the ground.

"Connor! Did you do this on purpose? You obviously knew Chad was going to give me this, yet you bought the same one. You just want to make Chad look bad! You just want to disgust me!"

She screamed hysterically at me, while Olivia and Chad just stood to the side, sneering and watching me become a total laughingstock.

At that exact moment, I finally woke up.

All of my sacrifices, in her eyes, were nothing more than cheap things, an embarrassing burden that made her feel ashamed.

I thought that was already the peak of betrayal, but I never could have imagined that it was merely the beginning.

To completely rid themselves of me, this "stain", and to use my body to fund their even more luxurious lifestyle, they actually engineered this brutal, inhumane auction.

Now, feeling my completely intact eyes beneath the gauze and sensing that string of numbers representing one billion dollars of wealth in my mind, the last trace of confusion in my heart vanished.

This is only the beginning.

Every single bit of pain and humiliation they have forced upon me, I will return to them a thousand times, a ten-thousand times over!

Not a single one of them was getting away!