All Chapters of My Mom, the Real Bloodsucker: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

My phone screen lit up. It was a text from the bank."You received a transfer of 200 dollars from Diane Sutherland, account ending 4092."The number stung, landing right on a nerve that was already raw. I set the phone down and felt a hollow, twisting pain in my stomach.I'd only eaten one meal yesterday to save money. This 200 dollars had to last me the entire month, all 30 days of it.My roommate, Wes Forks, leaned over, saw the message, and immediately got worked up on my behalf."Sawyer, is your dad made of stone? What can 200 dollars even do in Bellmont?"I spent over ten dollars on a bubble tea yesterday without even thinking twice. This isn't an allowance; it's charity for beggars."As he talked, Wes picked up the imported watch he'd just bought and strapped it onto his wrist. The thing looked like it cost a few hundred thousand dollars.I managed a smile that probably looked worse than crying.He didn't get it. My father, a man so far above us that he might as well hav

At 2:00 am, I opened the encrypted file.Every month on the 15th, a payment of 50,000 dollars came in like clockwork from Dad's company account. And every month on the 16th, a payment of 49,800 dollars went right back out, just as reliably, to a single account.The name on it was Keith Sutherland, the uncle Mom had always described as frail and bedridden, too sick to work.My monthly allowance of 200 dollars was nothing more than the loose change Mom and her brother could barely be bothered to peel off before pocketing the rest.It explained why my cousin, Brandon Sutherland, was already driving a sports car and dressed head to toe in designer brands despite being younger than me. It explained why every time I went back to visit my grandparents, they looked at me with something between pity and contempt.They must have thought I was worthless, some kid who only deserved 200 dollars a month.And my mother, Diane Sutherland, was their hero—the brave soldier who endured a supposedly

I hired a private investigator to look into Uncle Keith's company. Three days later, an encrypted email landed in my inbox.I went through it page by page. The so-called company was nothing but a shell. Its only business was picking up outsourced projects from Dad's company, the kind of low-priority work nobody paid close attention to.Mom was the sole point of contact, and she'd been using her position to quietly inflate the billing on those projects by ten times their actual value, sometimes even more. The difference went straight into Uncle Keith's pocket.This wasn't skimming off a living allowance. This was corporate fraud. They'd been hollowing out Dad's business from the inside to fatten up their own family.I gathered the most outrageous inflated invoices and sent them from a newly created anonymous email to the CFO at Dad's company. The message was simple—a side-by-side comparison of the actual costs and the billed amounts, followed by a single line of advice."It may be

It wasn't over.The screen began cycling through photos and screenshots of text conversations, showing Uncle Keith's new Porsche, his wife, Aunt Linda, loading up bags at a luxury boutique, and a message from Brandon in a group chat with his friends, bragging for all of them to see."My aunt is unreal. The money she scams out of that guy sure spends well!"The entire ballroom went dead silent. Every pair of eyes in the room turned on the Sutherlands like blades.Grandpa clutched his chest, gasping for air, and pointed a shaking finger at Mom. His lips trembled but nothing came out.Mom stared at the screen, frozen, then whipped her head around and locked eyes with me. Meanwhile, Dad stood on the stage, looking down at the whole family from above, and tapped the microphone lightly."I hope everyone's enjoying the gift. Now then, shall we talk about that additional investment?"Mom lunged at the screen like she'd lost her mind. "Turn it off! Turn it off!"She didn't even get clos