I Hired Elite Tycoons as My Parents for Five Cents Chapter 08
I hadn’t even processed her words before Brooke jabbed a finger at me-still cradled in my dad’s arms-and
screamed
“Hazel’ You stole my life!”
“If we hadn’t been switched at birth, do you think I’d have wasted my life with the Strattons? I’m the one who belongs with the Rossis! I should’ve been the one everyone was fighting over
The Strattons had been drowning. Brooke’s words were a life raft. Every pair of eyes in the room went wide
If Hazel was the real Stratton daughter, then Brooke-Brooke had to be Rossi blood
Richard scrambled to his feet, words tumbling over each other.
“We raised your daughter like a princess for twenty-one years. Twenty-one years of love, of protection. That has to count for something.”
Evelyn nodded frantically, tears still streaming, but there was something sharp and calculating underneath.
“Brooke is your flesh and blood. She’s the real Rossi princess! You should be cherishing her, not protecting
some outsider like Hazel!”
With every word they grew bolder, already picturing it-Brooke accepted into the Rossi family, opening doors
for the Strattons, and all of Oakhaven bowing at their feet.
Vincenzo watched the greed light up their faces and laughed, the kind of laugh that made the temperature in
the room drop.
“Who said I had a biological daughter?”
The Strattons froze.
Brooke’s composure cracked. She lurched forward.
“Dad, you can’t just pick her over me because she’s the one you raised! I’m your blood”
Arthur couldn’t hold it in anymore. He let out a sharp laugh
“Is this girl out of her mind? Mr. Rossi isn’t even thirty-five. You think he fathered a twenty-one-year-old?”
“Did you even think for two seconds before opening your mouth?”
Brooke refused to accept it.
Sure, Vincenzo and Stella looked young, impossibly young But rich people aged differently. That was what
money did.
She locked onto Vincenzo, wild-eyed, and her voice cracked somewhere between a scream and a sob
Tad it ever ordet to you that that they w
I was three years rid when the rating the the fund me an
garbage and took me home
The words landed like a grenade No one moved
Brooke’s eyes went huge When she spoke again, her yok was taking
“You what are you saying? they found you when you were threat! Then that macare im
Stella looked at her the way you’d look at something stuck to the boom of youn
“Don’t flatter yourself You’re nothing to us, not one drop of blood between us
Her eyes moved past the devastated look on Brooke’s face and seed, cold and sharp, on Exelyen
“The first time I saw Hazel, she was three. Tiny, filthy, so then you could see every ne But her eyes her eyes
were alive
Stella’s voice went soft, drifting somewhere far away.
“She was digging through a trash can for food. She found half a stale roll, and a stray cat snatched it righ out of her hands. She didn’t cry. But when some kids walked by and threw rocks at her, called her a throwaway kid that nobody wanted, that’s when she cried.”
“That day, she walked up to me and Vincenzo with fifty cents squeezed in her fist. She was so small she had
to tilt her whole head back to look at us.”
“Can you two be my mom and dad? Just this once? I won’t make you do it for free I have fifty cents
“She didn’t even have a name. We gave her one
“Because we’re the mom and dad she bought for fifty cents.”
