Atonement Parents Guide 소설 & 이야기

I was separated from my family at a young age and was adopted by my adoptive parents, who treated me very well. The day I turned eighteen and became an adult, my biological parents called me and begged me to meet them. Even though I had not seen them for years, I decided to fly to the city where they lived for a meetup. On the day I arrived, I shopped for gifts to give them as a gesture of goodwill, all while waiting for my biological brother to come and pick me up. When I finally picked up the gifts, a young woman decided to take them for herself. “I want the smoking pipe, the tie, and the necklace she’s holding!” She signaled to the shop assistant with a quirk of her lips, and the latter snatched the gift boxes from me. “Hey, I saw them first!” I was furious, but she looked me up and down with a sneer. “All these items are from the most expensive brands in the store. They cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Can a penniless loser like you afford them? “I am the daughter of the Ferrero family. My older brother is the heir of the Roccia Gang, the city's most powerful gang. Over here, no one dares fight me over things I’ve set my eyes on.” ‘Ferrero? Isn’t that my biological family?’ I thought. As it turned out, she was the girl my parents had adopted after they lost me. I raised an eyebrow and called my older brother, who was coming to pick me up. “Hey, your adopted sister snatched the gifts I bought for you all. What’re you going to do about it?”

Ryder Bates is an incurable player. Ever since his childhood sweetheart broke his heart over and over again and left him for an Arab billionaire, he had sworn off committing to any woman. Holly Grace Michaels is forced to help her best friend Kim Evans after player Ryder humiliates and uses her. The girls decide it's time that he gets a taste of his own medicine and Holly Grace Michaels is their secret weapon.But falling for the player is not in the plan. Holly is torn between falling in love with the player and revenge for her best friend.

"I only married you to save your company, Lyssandra. You’re not even my type.” Those were the words my husband threw at me the night I caught him cheating with his male lover. Instead of apologizing, he conspired with his lover to poison, kill me, and take my company. He expected me to break down, and beg, but I only promised him revenge. Then Erden Kryne returned; the most feared man in the underworld, a man from my past, and my ex husband's worst nightmare. And when Cade finally comes begging, whispering, “I’m sorry, Lys. Please just give me my position back,” It’s already far too late.

Mom and Dad have given me all their love. They've decorated a princess bedroom for me, where unlimited Barbie dolls await me there. Since I love bathing a lot, they've also sunk in a huge amount of money just to custom-make a bathtub for me. They keep telling my younger sister, Olivia Grant, to protect me forever. But when Olivia and I are taking a bath together, she accidentally chokes on the bathwater. That's when Mom goes nuts. She strangles me violently while roaring at me, "We thought you'd learn to love your sister as long as we treated you well! Who would've thought that you're an ingrate who tried to drown her?" I can only shake my head in alarm. But Mom quickly shoves me into the washing machine. "You like bathing that much, don't you? Well, you can bathe to your heart's content!" After that, Mom and Dad take Olivia out to play. What they fail to notice is that they've accidentally turned on the washing machine. Water soon fills the chamber, and yet I can't climb out of the washing machine at all. As I feel myself tumbling around with the dirty laundry, I can only open my eyes with great difficulty as I look at my parents, who have returned home once again. I don't want to take a bath anymore. Can Mom and Dad please stop getting mad at me?

It was not easy for me to be home for the long holidays, but my father ordered me to do the dishes after dinner. I was taken aback. "Don't you have a caregiver at home?" My mother frowned. "It's been hard on Harry to be taking care of us every day. Since you're home, you should let him take a rest, and do all the housework." I could not understand this. "But I paid a lot of money to hire him to take care of you and the housework. Why am I doing the work I paid him to do?" My words caused Harry Lambert to tear up, and they angered my parents as well. My mother frowned. "What's the point of bringing you up when we hardly see you in a year. At least Harry is considerate enough to stay by our side and take care of us." As for my father, he pointed at my nose. "You don't need to waste your time coming back anymore. Harry will be our son from now on! You can just get out and do whatever you want!" I smiled in exasperation. Work had been extremely busy for me, but I still gave my parents a handsome monthly allowance. Even the caregiver cost a lot of money, but they ended up treating him like he was something precious. If that were the case, I would stop paying for everything. I wanted to see if the caregiver would still be willing to act as their son and work for free.

I was from a rich family. But after I finally returned home, my parents made me sleep in the store room and eat leftover food. Yet, they still felt like they had wronged their foster daughter. When the government introduced the Children’s Fairness System, my parents immediately bound the entire family to it. My father breathed a sigh of relief and said, “With this perfectly fair system in place, Annie won’t be treated unfairly anymore.” My mother gently held my hand and said in an unyielding tone. “Ever since you came back, you’ve taken everything that was meant for Annie. This is unfair to her.” My elder brother never showed a hint of kindness toward me either. “I only acknowledge Annie as my sister. You’ve gotten way more than you deserved already, so don’t push your luck,” he said. I looked down at the cheap clothes I had worn for five years. Then, I glanced at Annie’s lavish bedroom and countless luxury items. I found it all utterly ridiculous. However, when the system took effect, they all ended up breaking down.

When I was three years old, I was picked on while scavenging dumpsters for recyclables, so I spent fifty cents to “hire” a pair of punk bikers to back me up. Little did I know that I had stumbled into the city’s most untouchable family. My adoptive mother was a fearless street queen no one in the elite circle dared cross, and my adoptive father was the legendary prince of the underground street-racing world. She taught me how to stand my ground, while he taught me how to own the streets. That fifty-cent “protection fee” bought me eighteen years of absolute security. Later, my biological parents found me, and I learned I was the real daughter of the billionaire Sedgewick family. But on the day I returned home, the fake daughter refused to let me inside. She looked down at me with a sneer and told me to use the back door instead. I stayed where I was. My older brother glared at me. “It’s just the back door. Don’t push your luck. You should be grateful Jenna is even willing to acknowledge you.” Meanwhile, my younger brother scoffed, his face twisted with disdain. “How dare a lowlife like you give my sister attitude? Use the back door!” I turned to my biological parents, but they merely said, “Jenna has a temper. She’s upset you came back, so just let her have this. Nothing matters more than keeping the family together.” I looked at the confrontational faces before me without any expression, then took out my phone and typed a message. [Mom, Dad, the Sedgewick family crossed the line. Come and handle it now.]

After the fire, my younger brother, Ethan Harper, and I have become comatose. Our own parents choose to deliver us to the rebirth trial. If we pass the trial, we'll regain consciousness and be granted a brand new life. The sensory caps are attached to our heads and soon connected to our brainwaves. Ethan chokes out, "Since Mom and Dad loves you so much, you'll definitely receive their votes, Emma." I turn to look at the judge instead. "After I'm reborn, can I request a new pair of parents? It's fine if the answer is no. My parents will still die, anyway."

When I'm accompanying my daughter, Alina Stone, to the hospital for a chemotherapy session, an employee from the social security center calls me. "Ms. Lewis, an error has occurred with the bank card that's set to receive your parents' pension. Please make sure to change to a new card." I'm left feeling stunned. My parents have been dead for three years. Why would they even receive more pension in the first place? After asking the employee, I find out that my parents' pension has been wired into the bank card as normal throughout the years. My husband, Christian Stone, was the one who had previously updated the bank card details at the social security center. Once I get home, I demand answers from Christian after playing him the recording of the phone call. He falls silent for a very long time before telling me the truth. It turns out that he never registered my parents' death back then. Till now, their corpses have been stored in a freezer in my childhood home. That bank card had received a total of 90 thousand dollars' worth of pension over the past three years. Christian has given all of the money to his ex-wife, Lydia Swanson, in order to support her financially. But the thing is, he never gave me a single cent for Alina's treatment before.

I've booked a hot air balloon trip for my in-laws in commemoration of their wedding anniversary. Little do I know that as soon as the hot air balloon lifts off the ground, 1,000 drones appear out of nowhere and form a sentence in the sky. "Natalie, my ethereal beloved, you're the only one I ever want in this world." I feel as though my blood has turned into ice. It turns out that my husband, Theodore Shaw, is in the middle of launching a grand confession to his first love, Natalie Quinn. As soon as the line goes through, I exclaim in a quivering tone, "Theodore, hurry up and command the drones to avoid the hot air balloon's route! Mom and Dad are—" Before I can finish speaking, Theodore cuts me off with a sneer. "Back then, you exaggerated Natalie's parents' crimes at the court. When they died from despair in jail, you were busy celebrating your win streak as an ace lawyer. "Now, I want you to have a taste of what it feels like to lose your own parents too!" Then, Theodore commands his subordinates loudly, "Lock on the target! I want you to use the drones to crash the hot air balloon out of the way! I want to hear how loudly it'll explode when it plummets!" Natalie keeps egging him on at the side in a sickly sweet voice. "Precisely! I want it to explode as beautifully as the fireworks!" The hot air balloon keeps getting attacked by the drones that keep flying in their direction at high speed. I can hear my in-laws' cries of despair, sending shivers down my spine. That's when I roar at my phone hysterically. "Theodore Shaw, you absolute bastard! Open your damn eyes and look at the sky! Your own parents are the one riding the hot air balloon, dammit!"