The Hidden Daughter-From Abandoned Small-Town Girl to Wall Street Legend Chapter 03
Back home, the first thing I did was visit Grandma.
When I walked through the door, she was on the phone with Mom.
I stared at that old red telephone—the one that only ever rang on holidays—and felt something I couldn’t name.
The phone was ancient, the speaker so worn that sound leaked through the casing. I could hear every word.
“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? Stop letting Holly come find me!”
“I finally got rid of that dead weight, and you’re—what are you trying to do?”
“I told you to get rid of her back then! Why didn’t you listen? Now look at this mess!”
Grandma shot me a nervous glance, then whispered into the receiver, “Alright, that’s enough –”
“I don’t care! Since you insisted on raising that burden, then you keep her in line! If she ruins what I have now, I swear I’ll burn everything down and take everyone with me!”
Grandma hung up in a rush.
“Holly, sweetie, your mom didn’t mean it like that.”
I forced a smile and tossed my backpack onto the couch.
“Grandma, I’m sorry. I didn’t bring you a present.”
She opened her mouth like she wanted to say more, then closed it and shuffled into the kitchen instead. She came back with a bowl of brown sugar poached eggs—my favorite, ever since I was little.
“Eat up. Eat, and then get yourself to school.”
I nodded, then slipped into my small room and pulled out every single thing Mom had sent over the years, going through them one by one.
It turned out those “care packages” she’d casually mailed home weren’t what Grandma had told me they were—gifts my mother had scrimped and saved to buy. The LeapFrog pen had a name engraved on it, and it wasn’t a brand logo. It was “Sophia.” That floral dress I’d treasured for years, the one I’d never even dared to wear? The size tag wasn’t mine. Even those roller skates that all the kids in the neighborhood envied—they were two sizes too small for my feet.
When I was little, I’d had just enough vanity to force my feet into them anyway, gritting my teeth against the pinch.
Now I understood. Every piece of “motherly love” I’d ever received was something Sophia had discarded.
I’d been a scavenger, collecting another girl’s castoffs and treating them like treasures.
I threw all of it into the trash. Then I looked up at the moon.
It was the same moon they saw on the other side of the ocean, wasn’t it?
Starting today, I was done making wishes to Mom.
I was going to be my own genie.
…
Three years. Over a thousand days and nights without a single day off.
From that moment on, I buried myself in my studies. I finished all my credits a year early, graduated top of my class, and earned dual degrees in finance and law.
Junior year, I landed an internship at one of the top investment banks in the city.
After graduation, they hired me full-time. Twenty thousand a month.
My second year, I jumped to a top-tier fund and made investment manager.
A journalism student from my alma mater once interviewed me and asked why I pushed myself so hard.
I thought about it for a moment, then pulled out a LeapFrog pen—the same one I’d thrown in the trash that night and quietly fished back out.
“Honestly? When I started, all I wanted was a pen with my own name on it.”
“I wanted to prove I was worth a brand-new one.”
She didn’t really understand what I meant, but she wrote down every word I said in her article anyway.
In my third year at the firm, the company sent me abroad for an industry summit.
“Holly, as the youngest investment manager in our firm, every major player in the world will be listening to your speech up on that stage. Prepare well.”
The moment I saw the destination, my whole body started trembling.
I had waited for this day for five full years.
Maybe longer than five years.
I suddenly remembered the parent-teacher conference in fifth grade. Every seat in the classroom had a parent behind it—except mine. The other kids pointed and whispered about me all afternoon, and I cried for just as long.
When I got home, I begged Grandma to call Mom. I wanted to ask when she was coming back, whether she could make it in time for the sixth-grade conference.
Grandma hesitated for a long time before finally dialing the international number. It rang and rang on the other end until someone finally picked up, but before I could even say hello, the line went dead.
