Chapter 3
Father: [Violet, are you stressed out? Why are you counting money with your own family?]
Emilia: [Violet, what's up with you? You're really going to make a fuss over this amount?]
Lincoln: [Violet, are you not going to give it?]
Violet: [I'm done giving.]
She kept typing: [From now on, I'm only responsible for my own life. Your lives are your own responsibility now.]
She hit send.
Almost instantly, her mom's call came through.
Violet answered, but didn't say a word.
"Violet. Are you even listening to yourself?" Her mom's voice was shrill. "I raised you all these years, and this is how you pay me back? 77,000 dollars is nothing for you. Your brother's buying a house. Aren't you supposed to help him?"
Violet waited for her to finish, then replied, "Mom, I'm 28. Over the past two years, I've given the family 157,000 dollars. That's about 7,000 dollars a month. And me? I've never had more than five digits in my account."
"That's your own fault for not managing your money. Who else can you blame?"
"I literally dropped dead once," Violet said. "Three in the morning, at the office. When I died, I had just 11 dollars left in my account."
The other end went silent.
"When I came back to today, the first thing I did was check where that 157,000 dollars went," Violet said, her voice so calm it sounded like she was talking about someone else's story.
Violet added, "Mom, did you know Emilia spent 40,000 dollars getting cosmetic surgery? Did you know Lincoln dropped 27,000 dollars on games? And did you know that in the past two years, I haven't bought myself a single thing over 500 dollars?"
"And? What's your point?" Her mom's voice started to falter. "They're your brother and sister."
Violet asked, "So I'm just supposed to let them leech off me until I die?"
"Leech off you? Why are you making it sound so bad? Isn't it normal for families to help each other?"
"Mom," Violet cut her off. "Help goes both ways. In the past two years, what have you ever done for me? When I was working overtime until three in the morning, did any of you ask if I was tired?
"When I got sick, did anyone care? When I was so stressed I couldn't sleep, did any of you ever comfort me?"
"I... we..."
"You only think of me when you need cash," Violet said. "I'm not your daughter, not your sister anymore. I'm just your ATM. Well, guess what? This ATM is closed for good."
She hung up and blocked her mom's number.
One by one, she blocked her dad, Emilia, Lincoln, and every single relative.
After all that, she switched off her phone, leaned back in her chair, and gazed out the café window at the city night.
Tears finally rolled down her cheeks.
It wasn't sorrow, and it wasn't feeling wronged.
It was a heavy exhaustion, like a weight finally lifted off her shoulders.
At last, she let go of the mountain she'd carried for twenty-eight years.
Even if that mountain was named "family."
The next day, Violet handed in her resignation.
HR was surprised. "Violet, you just got Employee of the Quarter, and you have your promotion interview next month. Why the sudden decision to leave?"
Violet smiled. "I want to do something for myself."
"Going to start your own thing?" HR looked both understanding and a little regretful. "It's a tough market right now. Maybe you should think it over? We can bump your salary up by 20%."
Violet shook her head. "Thanks, but I've made up my mind."
The resignation process was quick. She'd been at the company for five years, picked up a ton of skills, and made plenty of friends in the industry.
On her last day, her team leader took her out for dinner. Over the meal, he said, "Honestly, I always thought you had the most potential in our group. Too bad you're leaving..."
"It's not a shame," Violet said, pouring him some coffee. "Do you know what I love most about coding?"
"What?" Jaden replied.
"The certainty," Violet said. "You write some code, and it either works or blows up. The error message tells you what went wrong. You fix it, and boom, it's good as new. But life?
"No error logs, no stack traces. Half the time, you don't even know what's broken, or if anything's broken at all."
Her team leader was quiet for a moment. "So, did you figure things out?"
"I did," Violet said. "The real issue was, I've been living by someone else's spec all this time."
She used her savings to set up a studio: Violet Tech Studio. The name was simple. Her name plus "Tech." She put in 30,000 dollars as startup capital, but only 15,000 dollars actually landed in the account.
It was everything she had left after covering her living expenses.
She rented a shared desk in a startup hub for 300 dollars a month, utilities and internet included. She bought herself a new monitor and an ergonomic chair. Her first time treating herself in two years.
Then she started setting up her site.
Domain: violettech.dev
Framework: Vue 3 + TypeScript