Chapter 1

At the company's annual awards party, my dad took the stage and handed Katie Warren a fifteen-hundred-thousand-dollar year-end bonus check.

Katie held the check and gloated in front of me. "Thanks to you volunteering to step out of the project team, I wouldn't still be an employee making six hundred dollars a month."

That was when I realized my dad had, without even telling me, given the multimillion-dollar project I'd worked on for five months to Katie.

When I confronted him, my dad avoided my gaze and explained quietly, "Katie's almost thirty. She urgently needs this project to prove herself.

"You're my daughter, and to keep employees from saying I'm mixing business and family, I have to avoid any appearance of favoritism."

I held my three-hundred-dollar bonus, feeling how hollow it was, and my voice shook. "So, just because I'm your daughter, you gave away the project I worked so hard on for five months?"

"Then I won't be your daughter. Can you give my project back to me?"

*****

I grabbed my bag, ready to leave, when Dad suddenly caught my wrist.

"Katie is an outstanding employee I personally vouched for," he said. "How could you say that on stage? You're totally embarrassing her. How's she supposed to show her face at work after that?"

I nearly burst out laughing.

It turned out that what I said meant nothing to him.

All he cared about was people gossiping about Katie and keeping the team stable.

Dad kept venting his frustration at me. "Acting immature in front of all these people? You just had to embarrass me in front of all my business partners.

"All those years of learning, and you still can't even handle basic social skills."

My colleagues immediately came over, everyone talking over each other, trying to persuade me.

All the resentment and anger I'd been bottling up finally burst out.

I snapped, "She needs a chance to prove herself? What about me? Don't I get a shot too?

"Just because she's almost thirty and still can't hold down a steady job, you bent the rules and let her in with barely a middle school diploma. She walked right in as HR director.

"I graduated with a PhD, went up against over a thousand people, came out on top in both the written test and the interview, and I still had to start at the bottom as an intern.

"My numbers were always the best, but it still took me three years to finally get a shot at leading a project.

"I worked myself to the bone for this project. Five months, fifty-three drafts, three months of nonstop overtime, barely four hours of sleep a day. I was running on empty, all just to prove I was good enough.

"And in the end, you kicked me off the team to avoid gossip, and handed the whole project over to Katie without a second thought.

"Just because I'm your daughter, does that mean I always have to be at the bottom of the list? Is there really no such thing as fairness?"

My words left the whole room dead silent.

Suddenly, Dad's hand came down hard, sending me sprawling across the floor.

"Have you lost your mind?" he yelled. "If people hear what you said, how is Katie ever going to manage anyone again?"

Just then, Katie walked over, clutching the bonus my dad had handed her, and bowed deeply to me, looking apologetic.

"I'm sorry, Rachel. You earned this bonus fair and square," she said. "I shouldn't have accepted it. I'll give it back to you right now."

She shoved the check into my arms, as if she was tossing me a handout.

I felt like the most unreasonable, embarrassing beggar in the room.

But this bonus was mine to begin with.

Dad rushed over, not even trying to hide the blame in his eyes.

"Katie, you're the HR director. This bonus belongs to you," he said. "Why are you handing it over to her? She already gets paid enough every month."

Then he turned to me. "Look at how sensible Katie is. Why did I end up with a daughter like you?"

The tears I'd been holding back finally spilled over. "Why do you treat me like this? What did I ever do wrong?

"You've been sitting on my promotion application, never approving it. For three years, I've been doing the work of five people, just scraping by on the bare minimum.

"You keep saying it's all about avoiding favoritism, but really, you're just using my hard work to keep everyone else happy and make things easier for them."

I remembered how I literally passed out at my desk from exhaustion working on this project. All Dad said was I was being dramatic. He said I was young, so I should suck it up and learn how tough starting a business really is.

But for someone else, he'd break all his own rules easily and hand over my shot at proving myself.

I shoved the three-hundred-dollar bonus at Dad. "Fine, I see how proper she is now. Guess I'm not good enough to be your daughter.

"I'm out. I quit this job, and I'm done being your daughter for good.

"Just let Katie run the show for you."