Chapter 3

My eighteenth birthday arrived soon enough.

Martha and Sophia threw a lavish coming-of-age celebration and birthday party at Grant Estate. The guest list, however, consisted only of me and my grandparents.

The housekeeper and her granddaughter sat in the master seats at the dining table, indulging in expensive wine and a gourmet feast as if they owned the place.

Meanwhile, my grandparents were relegated to the cold floor, left to wait for whatever bones or scraps might be tossed their way whenever the mood struck their captors.

All I did was linger a little too long, staring at the feast laid out on the table. Martha caught me and gave a cold, mocking smile. "Hungry, are you?"

I swallowed a mouthful of saliva quietly. It was enough. Seizing the heavy crystal wine glass from the table, she hurled it straight at my head.

A sharp, splitting pain erupted across my scalp. Shards of glass and splashes of my own blood flew through the air.

Just then, the doorbell rang. A lawyer had arrived.

With both grandparents now paralyzed and robbed of speech by poison, Sophia didn't see the three of us "mutes" as any threat at all.

Right in front of us, she launched into a tearful, twisted account for the attorney. "I'm only eighteen myself, still practically a child. But with Grandpa and Grandma falling so ill so suddenly, if I don't step up, the Grant Group will collapse completely," she whimpered, dabbing at dry eyes.

The lawyer studied her intently, his expression a mix of sympathy and something akin to envy. "Ms. Grant, as of today, you are a legal adult. Once you sign the share transfer agreement, the Grant Group will belong to you."

As Sophia was about to sign her name, Martha was so excited she was practically shaking. "We finally struck gold—our family's luck has turned! I've been the one keeping this whole thing together—running point, making things happen. Nobody gets to erase that."

The lawyer immediately sensed something was off and quickly reached out to block Sophia's pen. "Wait, aren't you just the housekeeper here? What's that supposed to mean?"

Martha realized she'd let her excitement get the better of her and blurted something she shouldn't have. She froze, her face drained of color, stiff as a board.

Sophia quickly jumped in, stammering to cover for her, "S-She's raised me since I was little, so she's proud I'm taking over Grant Group, that's all."

"Is that so?" The lawyer gave Logan and Miranda a skeptical look, but all they could do was blink, over and over.

Left with no choice, the lawyer looked to me. "Is that right, girl?"

Meeting Logan and Miranda's desperate eyes, I gave the lawyer a slow, silent nod.

Seeing that, Sophia and Martha both breathed a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, Logan and Miranda shut their eyes in utter despair, tears streaming from the corners.

The very first thing Sophia did after inheriting Grant Estate was to throw me and my grandparents out onto the street.

"Now everything in the Grant family belongs to me. The three of you won't get a single thing," she declared, her voice icy.

With that, she tossed the two elderly, naked and shivering, out into the freezing cold right in front of me—their skin yellowed and wrinkled like tree bark, covered in frostbite and bedsores.

"Hey, isn't that the chairman and his wife from Grant Group?" someone in the crowd called out.

Neighbors quickly recognized them. Humiliation burned through the elderly couple, laid bare before the gathering crowd.

Sophia smirked, covering her mouth like she was enjoying a private joke. "Guess what? After all these years, you still had no clue, did you? Turns out the three of you are the real family—actual blood relatives.

"But you two old fossils just watched your own granddaughter get raised like a dog, and you, you pathetic mute, sided with my grandma and helped ruin your own flesh and blood!"

Logan and Miranda stared at me in shock, their lips trembling, but they couldn't get a single word out.

Sophia twirled her hair around her finger, smirking as she mocked me, "Hey, dumb mute, don't say I'm cruel for snatching everything that was yours. Grant Group is mine now, so I'm dumping these two old geezers back on you."

For the first time in twelve years, I finally spoke, smiling and taking it all in stride, "Fine. You keep the fortune. I'll take care of my family."

My years of planning had finally come to fruition.