Chapter 3
The day the SAT ended, my scumbag dad kicked me out for Joy.
Dylan got kicked out of the Moore family by his dad, too.
Homeless, we crashed at McDonald's for the night.
Between us, we didn't even have 3 thousand bucks. College tuition, living expenses, a place to stay: all nowhere in sight.
The next day, we spent the whole day hanging out at the cemetery. Then we held hands, hitched a ride back to the city, and ended up snuggling together at McDonald's for another night.
Dylan, just eighteen, was crying as he said to me, "Natalie, one day I'm gonna make tons of money and give you a home nobody can ever break apart."
His words were raw and full of fire, and right then, I promised myself I'd love him for the rest of my life.
On the third day, with our IDs in hand, we hopped on the subway and headed out to the college town.
We made sure to keep some cash for emergencies, then spent 200 bucks to rent a room in a shared apartment.
By day, we worked summer jobs together. At night, we'd rent gear and busk in the underpass or set up a stall.
The day our Beacon College acceptance letters arrived, we broke down in happy tears right there in our tiny room.
The Moore family and the Jennings family weren't what they used to be. Our old friends weren't scared of our dads anymore, and sometimes they'd help us out on the down-low.
Life was finally looking up. Dylan and I planned that once we turned twenty, we'd inherit our shares in the family businesses, start our own company, and make our scumbag dads pay.
But our dads were colder than we thought.
Our shares got frozen thanks to a group asset restructuring, and it would take years to untangle everything.
That was more than enough time for them to cut us loose and move on without us.
After waiting all summer and seeing we weren't about to beg, both our scumbag dads teamed up to put the squeeze on us.
We couldn't land any part-time gigs in real life, and student loans were out of the question, so we had no choice but to hustle online.
During our junior year, I sold a small game I'd made for 200 thousand and invested every cent into Dylan's startup.
As a tribute to my contribution, Dylan named the company DyNat Studios.
Originally, I held 40% of the shares, Dylan had 27%, and the other investors owned the remaining 23%.
Our company specialized in game development.
We whipped up a bunch of quirky, adorable games based on what players on all the big platforms were into.
Once they dropped, our user count exploded, and pretty soon, the big game studios were lining up to buy them.
We ended up selling four of those games for 7 million.
Dylan had a solid gold medallion custom-engraved and placed it in my hands, looking at me with all seriousness. He told me that from now on, every dollar he earned would be for me.
I kept the medallion in my bedroom and used the rest of the money to grow our company and invest in new fields.
By our second year after college, DyNat Studios was already worth over 200 million.
When our scumbag dads realized their illegitimate kids were total dead weight, they finally unfroze the shares we were supposed to inherit.
I used my shares and proof of my dad's latest affair to squeeze 20 million out of him.
The moment the money hit my account, I called the cops and reported my dad for teaming up with his mistress to embezzle assets and for murdering my mom.
My dad and his mistress got arrested, and my uncles from the Jennings family pulled out all the stops to seize power.
My dad's assistant secretly sent off my dad's two illegitimate kids overseas to keep them out of trouble.
I tracked them down and personally introduced them to the dark side of that so-called "free country." Out of kindness, I even covered their funeral expenses.
Dylan wasn't messing around either. He managed to get 30 million from his dad and even got him to sign a will handing over all his assets.
His dad's two illegitimate kids never made it back from overseas, and his dad ended up having a stroke and was left paralyzed.
But before Dylan's dad had his stroke, he pulled one last dirty trick on us.
The new energy vehicle battery project DyNat Studios invested in got tangled up in endless paperwork, and the funding chain snapped.
The 30 million Dylan's dad gave him got frozen, and Dylan's shares were seized.
Seeing the chaos, the other shareholders at DyNat Studios pulled their money and ran.
I gritted my teeth and bought up all their shares. Thanks to my college professor's connections, I went around the Moore family and cut through all the red tape holding up the project.
I poured every last dollar of the 20 million I'd wrung out of my dad straight into the lab.
Dylan transferred another 7% of the shares to me.
The company made a comeback and shot up as a rising star in the industry. Capital from all over started sniffing around, eager to get in on the action.
But I turned down all third-party investors. Instead, I led the R&D team to tackle the technical hurdles head-on and level up our tech once again.
As soon as Dylan's dad saw there was money to be made, he returned the 30 million and let Dylan take over the Moore family business.
Dylan didn't feel a thing.
Three days after inheriting the Moore Group, Dylan got down on one knee and proposed to me in the place we'd called home for seven years.
His engagement gift was all the shares he owned in DyNat Studios.
The next year, we held a grand wedding.