Chapter 2
The first bank card I ever got came loaded with six million dollars.
But for the Carter family, that was barely a drop in the bucket; they were so rich that they could probably buy a small country if they felt like it.
Even Charlotte Carter, the adopted daughter, would spend thousands just on a single pair of fake eyelashes.
With that money in hand, I headed straight to the psychiatric hospital and made sure the girl who helped me was released, no questions asked.
Then I told Richard in no uncertain terms to get her into the most luxurious, well-equipped nursing home and find her the top psychiatrist money could buy.
Once everything was sorted out, I dropped a message in our group chat, and soon enough, a bunch of friends my age rolled up on their motorcycles.
These were the friends I'd grown up with in the orphanage, my best buddies, my family by choice, even if we didn't share a drop of blood.
After leaving the orphanage, none of us ever got any miracle twists of fate. We were all grinding it out at the bottom, hustling from sunrise to sunset just to scrape together a few bucks.
I handed each of them 150 thousand dollars, the seed money for their new lives, and the blood money I paid to get revenge.
That night, more than thirty of us stormed the orphanage out in the suburbs. We hauled Wade, still dead asleep, out like he was nothing but a sack of trash and tossed him onto a deserted patch of land nearby.
The savage beating lasted for over half an hour.
When I pressed a burning cigarette onto Wade's eyelid, the agony snapped him back to consciousness, and he let out a blood-curdling scream that echoed through the night.
With Wade screaming his head off, I saw pure fear in my birth parents' eyes as they watched from just a few steps away.
We didn't get out of that orphanage until we were sixteen, but the nightmare stuck with us ever since. Now, finally, we had our shot at revenge.
I held my phone out in front of Wade and, keeping my voice ice-cold, ordered, "Call the police."
He was scared out of his mind; he knew exactly what dialing 911 would mean. Over thirty witnesses were crowding around, each one ready to speak up and spill everything.
Once it was all over, I watched my friends take off on their motorcycles, then slipped into the fancy car parked behind me.
My mom looked at the figure slowly crawling across the wasteland, her face showing obvious pity. "Are we really just going to leave him like that?"
"Save your sympathy for someone who actually deserves it," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Stop wasting your sympathy on useless stuff.
"He used to make me stand outside naked in the dead of winter and dump cold water on me.
"If my friends hadn't saved me with hot water and blankets that barely had any stuffing left, you'd be out here digging up my bones for a paternity test."
I looked at my parents, deadpan. "I'm done with what I needed to do. So, are we heading home or what?"
The car started up and rolled toward the city, its lights blazing against the night.
*****
An hour later, the car pulled up in front of a luxurious three-story villa.
I was back at the house that had taken everything from me. In my previous life, trying to fit in with them had made me lose who I was. But this time, I wasn't about to let any of them get away with it.
After witnessing my meltdown before, my parents started walking on eggshells around me, afraid I might lose it again at any moment.
"Well, Emily, this is your home now," my mom said.
Charlotte, the fake heiress, and my real brother Andrew Carter, who was so clueless he couldn't see the truth if it hit him in the face, were standing at the villa's entrance.
Andrew shot me an annoyed look. "Why are you back so late? There's a limit to how much you can act out, you know. This family isn't here just to cater to you."
Charlotte put on her best fake smile. "Welcome home, Emily."
The next second, I yanked Charlotte by the hair and smashed her face against the pillar.
I glared at my parents, rage boiling over. "Now I get why you spent twenty years not finding me. Turns out you were happy enough with a knockoff daughter all this time."