The Quiet Daughter

I couldn’t speak until I was eight years old.

Everyone in the Sterling family called me dumb. Even my mother would secretly wipe away tears, convinced she had given birth to an autistic daughter. Whenever my father looked at me, his eyes were filled with nothing but disappointment. However, for the sake of the family’s reputation, he could never bring himself to send me away to a special education school.

Then came the day someone from a prominent hedge fund company arrived to acquire our family company, Sterling Group.