All Chapters of $500 KPI: Surviving College Under Mom's Rules: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

On the day the SATs ended, I thought I'd be greeted with flowers and hugs. What I didn't expect was a "Family Member Employment Contract".Mom sat on the couch, twirling a pen in her hand. Her gaze was like that of an interviewer sizing up a fresh graduate."Sit," she said, pointing to the wooden stool across from her.On the coffee table lay two documents. One was my acceptance letter from a top-tier college in a competitive major, and the other was that contract."Sabrina, congratulations on completing all of your K-12 academic requirements. According to our previous verbal agreement, since you've been admitted to a top-tier college, your performance rating is S+."My eyes lit up, and my heart raced. "Then what about the ten thousand dollars bonus?"For that money, I barely got a full night's sleep throughout my entire senior year of high school. The practice papers I wore out could fill up the whole room, and my hair fell out in clumps.Mom smiled and said, "After careful con

After that desperate act of selling my blood to survive, I changed completely.I stopped sending Mom those pitiful, pleading messages. I still wrote the weekly reports, but the content was all copy-pasted word salad.Other than that, I started working like crazy—picking up deliveries for people, waiting tables in the cafeteria, tutoring on weekends, and even posing as a paid model for art students.As long as it paid and wasn't illegal, I did it.But one afternoon, just as I got back from a tutoring session, I saw Mom standing at the entrance of my dorm building.The moment she spotted me, she started shouting, "Sabrina!"My heart skipped a beat."I heard you've been keeping quite busy with your extracurricular work?" She walked up to me. "Carrying out side businesses unrelated to your main responsibilities without authorization—do you think the contract is just a piece of scrap paper?"If your Aunt Beatrice hadn't told me, I would never have known you had it in you to secretly

"You're resigning?" Mom's voice shot up an octave. "Sabrina, get this straight—you need me, and I don't need you. Didn't I already confiscate your slush fund? Do you even have a single cent to your name right now?"You want to quit? Fine. Pay me back for 18 years of raising you. With interest, that's two million dollars. If you can come up with it, you can get the hell out right now. But if you can't, then you just sit here and take it."Two million dollars? The number crushed the air out of my lungs in an instant. Mom was basically handing me a death sentence."Sabrina, like I said—you win some, and you lose some." Rodney stood up and stepped in front of me. "If you don't have the money, don't act all high and mighty. Just apologize to Mom and this whole thing blows over."I clenched my fists angrily.Mom gave me a cold look. "You're not allowed to have dinner tonight. Use the time for self-reflection. Come to me when you've come to your senses."Then, she waved her hand grandly

I got my new phone right away, and Mr. Donnelly also relayed the message to Mom, as I wished.With his help, I used an advance on my dividends to rent a small, fully-furnished apartment in the city center.Predictably, Mom went ballistic.My old phone was powered off, while I only received calls from Mr. Donnelly and a few trusted friends on my new phone.Even so, I was still bombarded with calls and texts from relatives left and right.The first call came from Mom."Sabrina, what is the meaning of this? I can't believe you hired a lawyer. You think you're so tough now, do you?" she shrieked hysterically.The second call came from Aunt Beatrice, laying on the moral guilt trip."Sabrina, your mother is about to make herself sick from anger! How could you take your own mother to court? Have some outsider led you astray? No matter what, she's still your mother. She fed you and clothed you for 18 years—you can't be this ungrateful!"Mr. Donnelly recorded all of these calls and cal

The news that Rodney had been given a serious disciplinary citation and was facing possible expulsion crushed Mom, so much so that she didn't contact me for an entire day.I thought she'd finally come to terms with reality. But the next day, a video went viral on the local TikTok feed.The footage showed Mom in tears, leveling a series of accusations. She claimed her daughter, a prestigious college student, had severed all ties after coming into a massive inheritance. Worse still, she accused me of suing her own kin and orchestrating a brutal assault that left Rodney hospitalized. However, she never once mentioned that absurd KPI contract, or how she'd cut off my living expenses and coldly refused to lend me money for medicine when I was burning with fever.At the end of the video, she covered her face and choked out, "I don't know what I did wrong. I just wanted my children to be okay. Now our family is destroyed, and my son is about to be kicked out of school. What's the point o