I Hired Elite Tycoons as My Parents for Five Cents Chapter 02
I held my hand out to Brooke, my voice ice-cold.
“Give it back.”
Brooke ducked behind Trenton, flashed me a wicked smirk, and her thumbs flew across the screen. She left the family group chat. Deleted every contact. By the time I lunged for it, she was already done.
She flashed the empty screen at me, her smile dripping with triumph.
“Fine. Keep the damn phone. Just give me back the charm.”
There was a little stuffed bear hanging from my phone case, so old the color had faded from years of wear.
My adoptive parents had gotten it for me from a street vendor the day we met. I was three, crying in a pile of garbage because some kids had knocked me around. They bought it to make me stop crying.
It was the first thing anyone had ever given me.
In eighteen years, I’d never let it out of my sight.
Brooke’s gaze slid to the beat-up little bear, and something cruel flickered across her face.
She dropped the phone onto the driveway and brought her stiletto heel down hard on the bear.
“Ugh, you actually keep this nasty thing? It’s a biohazard. It should’ve been in the trash years ago.”
“A Stratton doesn’t carry around garbage. You’re welcome, by the way. I’m cleaning up for you.”
She ground her heel into it again and again. The bear was squashed flat, its stuffing spilling through a torn seam.
The blood drained from my face. I dropped to my knees and reached for it.
My fingers had barely closed around it when Brooke’s heel slammed down on my hand. White-hot pain shot up my arm.
I yanked my hand free, teeth clenched. My knuckles were already swelling, bruised a sick shade of purple.
Then, without me even touching her, Brooke let out a dramatic gasp and crumpled to the ground.
Her eyes welled up with crocodile tears, and she turned to the Stratton parents, her voice cracking perfectly on cue.
“Mom, Dad, I was just trying to help her, and she shoved me… is this how she treats me just because I’m adopted? She can just push me around and nobody cares…?”
Caleb pulled Brooke behind him, shielding her, and turned on me with pure venom in his eyes.
“Brooke is the only sister I recognize. Someone as vicious as you doesn’t deserve to even breathe the same air as her.”
“I’m warning you. Pull something like this again and you’ll never set foot in this house.”
Trenton’s jaw ticked. He didn’t bother asking for my side of the story. He just stepped forward and shoved me hard in the chest.
The force of it sent me stumbling backward. My lower back cracked against the stone edge of the flower bed, and for a second I couldn’t straighten up.
He towered over me, his voice dripping with contempt.
“Get on your knees and apologize. Now. We raised Brooke like a princess. No one in this family has ever let her get hurt. And you think you can waltz in off the street and lay a hand on her?”
Richard had been standing off to the side the whole time, watching without a word. When he finally spoke, he’d already made up his mind.
“Hazel, you assaulted your sister. Apologize immediately.”
Evelyn’s voice cut in, sharp and shrill.
“You are going to get down on your knees and beg her forgiveness. It’s the only way you’ll learn.”
Not one of them even glanced at my hand.
Or they just didn’t care.
My hand wouldn’t stop shaking. But something in my chest had gone very, very still. I could feel a cold smile pulling at my lips.
There was no need to rush.
The second Vincenzo and Stella Rossi pulled up to this estate, the Strattons would be the ones crawling on their knees.
