Chapter 2

Three days after graduation, Emily came back.

I was sitting on the living room couch, slowly sipping my coffee while the TV played financial news on mute in front of me.

She let herself in with her key and didn't bother calling out to me. She just dragged a huge empty suitcase straight upstairs.

The sounds of drawers being yanked open and things being thrown around drifted down from above, loud and deliberate, and you could hear the anger in every bang and crash.

Half an hour later, she came back down with the suitcase, now fully packed.

When she saw me, she froze for a second, but then her lips twisted into a mocking smile. "What, waiting here for me to apologize?"

I set down my coffee cup and looked up at her like she was a complete stranger. "All packed?"

My calm only made her angrier. She slammed the suitcase down hard, and the sound echoed through the room.

"Elizabeth, stop pretending! You're disappointed right now, aren't you? You're furious, aren't you?" She stepped closer and looked down at me with pure defiance in her eyes.

"You thought you'd ruin me, but instead I got into StellarTech Group, and I'm about to go even higher. That must really kill you, doesn't it?"

I leaned back against the couch and let her vent, staying quiet until she was done. Then I said calmly, "You finished?"

She let out a cold laugh and pulled a thick stack of papers from her bag, throwing them hard at my feet.

The pages scattered across the floor—all the study plans, education roadmaps, and life strategies I'd carefully made for her over the past decade and more.

Every single one of them had taken so much of my time and effort.

"This garbage makes me sick just looking at it." She pointed at the papers on the floor and attacked me. "Look at all this crap you made—it's all wrong. You don't understand education at all. You have no idea what I actually want!"

She continued, "You're just some small-time boss at a nobody company, and squeezing your employees all day isn't enough for you, so you come home and train me like I'm a dog. Are you a control freak or what?"

My body went rigid. I never imagined the child I'd carefully raised for eighteen years could say something like this to me.

She saw the shock on my face and started laughing, a cruel and triumphant sound.

"What, did I hit a nerve? You think throwing some money at me makes you my savior? Let me tell you something, Elizabeth—what I hate most is how you love using cheap garbage to insult my entire life!"

I slowly stood up from the couch.

I didn't look at the so-called "garbage" scattered on the floor. Instead, I stared straight into her eyes, and my gaze was ice cold.

I said, "From the moment you stood on that stage and humiliated me with those words, you and I stopped being anything to each other.

"How high you want to fly, where you want to go—none of that has anything to do with me anymore. Whether you live or die, I don't care."

Emily's smile froze on her face.

She probably never expected that after launching her most vicious attack, what she'd get back wasn't my breakdown, but a complete severance.

"What did you say?" She stared at me in disbelief. "You're cutting ties with me?"

"Yes. Starting now, there's nothing between us anymore." I pulled out a file from the coffee table drawer and pushed it toward her.

"This is an itemized list of every expense from the day you turned eighteen until you graduated college. I didn't include the cost of raising you before that—I'll chalk that up to my own stupidity for feeding a dog."

I took out my phone and opened my banking app. "Also, I've already canceled your supplementary card."

I walked to the entryway and pointed at the keypad lock on the door. "The password here will be changed in thirty minutes. Leave your key when you go."

Emily completely froze. She stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time. "You're seriously talking to me about money right now? You're kicking me out?"

"I'm not kicking you out," I corrected her. "You're the one who wanted to escape my so-called clutches, remember? I'm just helping you do that."

I continued, "You said your success had nothing to do with me, right? So starting today, you can use your own abilities to live whatever life you want."

"Elizabeth!" She pointed at me and let out a hysterical scream. "You're nothing but a cold-blooded psycho. You think you can control me forever just because you have money? Well, newsflash—you can't."

Her eyes were bloodshot as she whipped around and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. "Just you wait. I'm going to prove to you that I'll be so much better off without you! You're going to regret this."

She threw the door shut with so much force that the entire villa seemed to vibrate from the impact.

The living room fell into a deathly silence.

I slowly walked back to the sofa and sat down, then picked up my coffee that had gone completely cold. I downed it in one go.

The bitterness spread from my tongue all the way down to my heart.

Regret? I looked toward the door and felt my lips curve into a sneer.