Chapter 8
“What? She’s acting so arrogantly!”
“What does she mean by ‘her own‘? How shameless! The lottery ticket was clearly bought by the family!”
My mom rushed over and slapped me across the face.
I dodged to the side, but she had been crying and putting on a show for days, so her strength gave out, and with a cry of pain, she fell on her backside.
th
Holding her waist, she screamed, “Unfilial! Unfilial! How dare you turn the truth upside down! This lottery ticket was clearly bought by Dylan!”
I slowly spoke, “Dylan bought it? What proof do you have that he bought it?”
Dylan’s eyes flickered, and he sneered.
“What are you pretending for? The lottery tickets are anonymous! When you snatched the ticket from me, you said the same thing! You even said that once you won, you’d keep all the money for yourself and not give us a cent. You’d go off living your own life while leaving our family poor and regretful forever! What did we ever do wrong to you?”
My dad chimed in, “Look at how well we’ve treated you! We’ve
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Chapter 8
bought you new clothes, food, everything! If it weren’t for our education, would you have been able to get into such a good university?”
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The bystanders nodded in agreement. “Yeah, if it weren’t for such a good family and upbringing, how could she have gotten into such a good school? Great family values! Great education!”
“Isn’t she just an ungrateful wretch? Look at how shameless she is now! I feel so sorry for her parents!”
“That’s 100 million! How many families have fallen apart because of money? It’s not surprising they turned on each other over that much!”
More and more people gathered around, pointing fingers at me. Some even started shouting insults.
I laughed softly, “Is that really the truth?”
With that, I walked to the podium and plugged the USB stick I’d prepared into the projector.
On it were the recordings of my parents and Dylan planning to steal my lottery ticket, the video of them locking me in a room during my SATs, and the news footage of them rushing into the lottery shop and attacking someone.
My parents and Dylan’s faces turned pale immediately.
“This is all fabricated!”
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But the students present could easily tell what was real and what
wasn’t.
Their looks of contempt and harsh words shot toward the three of them like daggers.
“How shameless! We all saw how they snatched the lottery
ticket from their daughter’s hands! Now they come here causing trouble, thinking we’re blind?”
“You think you can control public opinion just by lying?”
Dylan suddenly stood up, shouting angrily, spit flying from his mouth, “Even if all of this is true, shouldn’t the money she won be shared with us? We’re family, after all!”
But no one bought his words.
Soon, security arrived and escorted them off campus. But that wasn’t the end of it.
A few days later, my parents took me to court again. This time, they weren’t accusing me of stealing their lottery ticket but claiming I was unfilial and not fulfilling my duty to support
them.
“Fine, let’s go by the standard for supporting elderly parents,” I said.
I gave them two thousand dollars every month, which was the minimum amount required.
The two thousand dollars was just a tiny fraction of the interest from my earnings, but it wasn’t enough for them. They wanted much
more.
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They filed repeated appeals and called the police. In the end, all they received was cold indifference.
Instead of backing down, my parents got hooked on buying lottery tickets, spending all their savings on it.
They even sold their car, lost their jobs, and racked up high–interest debt.
My dad, unable to pay off his debts, was beaten up by the loan sharks, his leg broken. He dragged himself around the streets, begging for money.
Passersby, seeing his misery, would give him a few dollars, but all that money went straight into lottery tickets.
Eventually, they even wanted my mom to work at a nightclub to make money for more tickets. The two of them fought daily.
My mom had been a business expert in her previous life, and in this one, she set her sights on my younger brother.
She sold him to a family who had lost their son.
But that family was a group of sick, twisted people. Dylan was abused every day, his body covered in bruises, in a state so brutal it was unbearable to look at.
Chapter 8
In the end, Dylan couldn’t take it anymore. He tricked my parents into selling a kidney, earning 200 thousand dollars, and then he smuggled himself into another country.
I worked hard during the day to complete my studies, and at night, I lived with my grandmother.
Years later, I went abroad for further studies, building connections while preparing to start my own company.
But I never expected that, while on a foreign campus, I would run into Dylan again.
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