Chapter 1I Paid Her Debt She Paid Me in Lies

After I paid off the ten-million-dollar debt for my sister, she decided to sue me.

It started after I refused her latest demand for an exorbitant allowance. A few hours later, I found her post going viral:

【My sister is a monster. She’s living a life of luxury on the inheritance my parents left ME, but she won’t even give me a thousand dollars for living expenses!】

【She conveniently forgets she was the stray they picked up off the street. My family gave her a home, food, an education!】

【Now that she’s successful, she thinks she can bully a poor orphan like me and keep everything for herself!】

【I wish my parents had never taken her in. They should have let her starve!】

My knuckles were white, my fingers squeezing the phone.

A few days later, she showed up at my door with a letter from her lawyer, demanding I sign over all my assets. That’s when I saw the GoFundMe she’d launched:

【Help an orphan reclaim her inheritance! Let’s crowdfund the legal fees to make sure this ungrateful adopted daughter pays for what she’s done and rots in jail!】

A chill washed over me as I read that line.

But she didn’t know the truth. My parents had adopted her. She was the one who wasn’t their own.

* * *

“Just sign the asset transfer agreement, Olivia.”

Avery slapped a thick document onto my coffee table, her posture radiating arrogance.

“I spoke with a lawyer. As the adopted child, you have no legal right to my parents’ inheritance. I’m just taking back what’s rightfully mine.”

I looked down at the agreement. It listed every asset to my name: the house, my investment portfolio, my savings, even the marketing firm I had built from the ground up over the last decade.

My fingers, gripping the edge of the paper, were bone-white. I took a deep, shaky breath before I could speak.

“Avery, it’s not what you think…”

“Then tell me what it is,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “You’re living in a mansion, driving a Mercedes, blowing through my parents’ money, but you can’t spare me a dime for basic living expenses?”

“Don’t you forget, if my mom and dad hadn’t taken you in, you’d be a nobody. An orphan who would have starved on the street. How dare you hold onto what belongs to me?!”

An orphan.

A sharp pain lanced through my chest. I slowly lifted my gaze to her face, a face that bore no resemblance to my own.

She didn't know. She was the orphan.

Years ago, Avery’s parents’ real estate venture collapsed, leaving them with over ten million dollars in debt. They couldn’t bear the weight of it. Together, they jumped from the roof of their unfinished luxury condo development.

Before they died, they called my parents, their closest friends, begging them to take in their one-year-old daughter, Avery. For the next nine years, my parents raised her as their own, loving her with every fiber of their being.

But then disaster struck again. When I was ten, my parents were killed in a car accident.

From that day on, it was just me and Avery against the world. I shielded her from everything, including the truth. The first crack appeared at a family gathering a few years later when I overheard a distant aunt whisper, “With the Millers gone, I wonder how much of the estate will have to go to the adopted girl.”

Avery heard it too. And she made the only assumption that made sense to her.

“What, nothing to say? Feeling guilty?” Avery’s voice dripped with venom, pulling me from the memory. “Do you know why your real parents died? It’s because you’re a curse, Olivia. Anyone who gets close to you ends up ruined.”

“You deserved to be an orphan.”

“Shut up,” I finally managed to say, my voice a low warning.

She paused, a flicker of surprise in her eyes, before her lips twisted into a cruel, triumphant smirk. “Oh, did I hit a nerve? Good. I’ll say it again. If my parents hadn’t adopted you, they wouldn’t have died so young. You’re a walking disaster.”

I stared at her contorted expression, a profound sense of helplessness washing over me.

After her biological parents died, their creditors eventually tracked Avery to our home. They showed up every week, demanding payment. I didn’t want her to carry that burden, so I quietly started paying it off myself.

All these years, I worked myself to the bone to provide for her, to settle that crushing debt. I wore my clothes until they frayed at the cuffs, all so she could have a stable, comfortable life.

But my protection hadn’t made her grateful. It had made her greedy. Insatiable.

She lived a life of careless extravagance—designer bags, luxury vacations, curating a perfect “heiress” lifestyle on Instagram. When the money ran out, she’d come to me. If I ever said no, she would unleash hell.

“Olivia, I’m giving you one last chance,” she said, her smile cold. “Either you sign this paper and give me back what’s mine, or I will destroy your reputation and see you in prison.”

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. I looked her dead in the eye and said, enunciating every word, “The inheritance was left to me.”

“To you?” she scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would they leave everything to their adopted daughter?”

“Because I am their biological daughter.”

She looked at me as if I’d just told her the moon was made of cheese, then threw her head back and laughed. “Olivia, you’ll even stoop to a lie like that to keep the money? That’s pathetic.”