I Hired Elite Tycoons as My Parents for Five Cents Chapter 09
My mind drifted back with hers, eighteen years, all the way back to the beginning
For as long as I could remember, the people who were supposed to love me gave me nothing but cold stares
and bruises.
They never put my name on any birth certificate. They never gave me a name at all. They just called me the
brat.
At mealtimes, they ate first. I got whatever was left.
My clothes were always someone else’s hand-me-downs, never the right size.
If anything soured their mood, I was the one who paid for it.
When my little brother was born, I became the problem they couldn’t wait to get rid of.
One night, I crouched outside their bedroom door and heard everything.
“We’ve got our boy now. Let’s just get rid of the little brat, out of sight, out of our lives.”
“It’s been three years and nobody’s come asking. Fine, we’ll do it your way.”
“Leave her somewhere far enough away that she can’t find her way back.”
The next day, for the first time in my life, my mother took me outside. She even pressed fifty cents into my
hand.
“Go get yourself some candy, sweetheart. Buy whatever you want. Mommy’ll be right here waiting.”
I shook my head and grabbed her hand. I kept calling her Mom.
The sweetness dropped from her face. She wrenched my fingers off, shoved me to the ground, and walked
away without looking back.
I wandered alone for three days. When the hunger got bad enough, I started going through trash cans.
But the stray cats always got there first. Every time I found something, they’d snatch it before I could eat.
And there were kids, mean ones, who’d circle me and throw rocks, laughing, calling me a stray kid nobody
wanted.
I cried until I couldn’t breathe.
Because they were right. Nobody wanted me.
That was the day I found them. My street-punk mom and dad.
They took my crumpled fifty cents and planted themselves in front of me like a wall.
They chased off every kid who’d thrown a stone at me. Then they tracked down the stray cat that stole my bread, grinned at each other like two troublemakers, and stole my stale roll right back out of its mouth
Years later, I found out that the couple who dumped me had run into one disaster after the next They’d fled
Oakhaven a long time ago.
Mom and Dad never said a word about it. They didn’t have to. I knew.
They’d made sure those people paid for what they did to me.
And here they were, eighteen years later, still standing between me and everything that wanted to hurt me
The moment Stella finished speaking, the crowd erupted.
Every person who’d been pointing at us a minute ago turned on the Strattons. Just like that, the tide turned
“Oh my God, they dumped a three-year-old? Their own kid? That’s sick.”
“Are the Strattons insane? They threw away their real daughter and spoiled another family’s kid instead.”
“Two sons right there and they made the daughter give up a kidney? Unbelievable.”
“And that adopted daughter, spent the whole time trashing them for being street-punk nobodies, then the second she finds out they’re loaded, she’s throwing herself at them? That’s karma right there.”
“An adopted kid acting like she’s royalty, when she’s nothing but a fraud. Pathetic.”
