PlotlumeMy adoptive parents were the infamous vampire philanthropists of Wall Street, and I was pampered from childhood like a little princess of the manor.
Then they found their real pair of twin vampire brothers.
While I was away, the twins drove a bulldozer over the private clinic I'd spent five years building, and smashed every precision instrument into scrap metal.
I got there shaking with rage. Tens of billions in investment, gone overnight, and a huge breach-of-contract penalty on top of it.
My adoptive mother's eyes were red from crying. She stroked the boy's head. "Hurry up and apologize to your sister. Don't be so naughty next time."
The boy grinned. "Sorry, Sis! We were just trying to build an open-air dance floor up there for you."
Then my credit cards and assets were all frozen, and I could only move into the most remote servants' room in the manor.
My brothers said they'd help me clean out my old things. While I was out, they fed the one priceless heirloom my real mother had left me, along with all my ID papers, into the shredder and flushed the pieces down the sewer.
I stared at the pile of scraps and broke down crying. In this city, I had become a woman with no papers and no past.
The boy spread his hands innocently. "On TV they say this is called minimalism. We wanted Sis to let go of the past and start fresh."
Adoptive father Gregory hugged me in front of the media, sobbing his heart out, and even announced on the spot a charity fundraiser for me. The whole internet cried with him and called him the greatest father alive.
Back at the manor, he shut the door. His punishment for the boy was: no use of the limited-edition sports car for one week.
I never went back to the company headquarters, and I never attended another family dinner.
This time, the brother slapped a buyout agreement on the table in front of me. It gave up my family's multi-billion-dollar inheritance and sent me out with nothing.
I didn't tell my adoptive parents, and I didn't tear up the contract. I calmly signed my name.
I thought, finally, nobody would wreck my work again, and the Gregorys wouldn't have to keep acting like loving parents for the cameras.
1
Dylan kicked the cheap wooden desk in the servants' room.
A table leg snapped with a sharp crack.
"Are you deaf?"
"Sign it already!"
"A nobody with no ID papers, and you still want to freeload off us?"
Connor stood beside him and slapped a five-hundred-dollar bill down on the buyout agreement.
He let out a whistle.
"Sis, sign this disownment contract and this five hundred bucks in severance is yours."
"Take the money, rent a basement in the slums, and go live your quiet life."
"You're buried under a ten-billion-dollar penalty now. If you stay here, you'll only drag down the Gregory family's reputation."
I looked at the asset buyout and severance agreement on the table.
The last line read: I voluntarily relinquish all trust funds and real estate under my name and sever all ties with the Gregory family.
Dylan and Connor had no idea that the manor's deed and the group's core ten-billion-dollar capital were all tied to the private trust my real mother had left me.
Once I signed and cut ties, all the Gregory family's assets would automatically be liquidated and reclaimed within twenty-four hours.
"Why so quiet? Think it's too little?"
Dylan grabbed a pen off the table and shoved it straight into my hand.
"Don't be ungrateful!"
"If Mom and Dad weren't so kind, you'd have been dragged off to sell your blood on the black market by now!"
I didn't argue. I pulled off the pen cap.
The nib scratched across the signature line, and I wrote my name.
"That's more like it."
Connor pulled the contract away, didn't even read the terms, and tossed it on the wooden desk.
The two of them laughed and slammed the door on their way out.
I picked up the fax machine's timer, slid the signed agreement into the automatic feeder, and set it to send to the top financial court on Wall Street.
Then I pulled out my only worn-out suitcase, the one stuffed with clean clothes.
I locked the connecting door from the inside, pushed open the back window, and climbed out through the rear gate of the manor.
From the living room came the sound of Elizabeth laughing as she talked on the phone.
Through the hallway's floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see my adoptive mother sitting on the leather sofa.
She was rubbing the antique sapphire crown I'd worn at my eighteenth birthday coming-of-age party.
"Yes, fifty dollars and it's yours. Send a runner to pick it up right away."
Elizabeth sighed into the phone.
"It can't be helped. Ever since the clinic failed, our Nicole hasn't been quite right in the head."
"Every time she sees this crown, she throws things. I'm selling it cheap so this child can finally let go of all this trouble."
Connor was swinging a golf club in the living room, knocking at an antique vase.
When he heard that, he tossed the club aside, ran to the servants' room door, and kicked it.
"Hey! You freeloading broke stray dog!"
"Still no sound after signing? Did you die in there?"
"Get out here and sweep up the vase shards, you paperless freak!"
Adoptive father Gregory came down the spiral staircase.
He straightened his cuffs and spoke up to stop them.
"Connor, that's no way to talk. She's still your sister."
Then he turned and nodded at Elizabeth.
"Selling the crown is for the best."