Chapter 4

When I was thirteen,

Dad brought a girl who seemed to shine all over to Mom.

“Yimeng, this is my good friend’s daughter, Zhizhi.”

“Both her parents are gone. I felt sorry for the child, so I brought her home to adopt her.”

“I’ll leave her in your care from now on.”

Having read the script, I knew this girl wasn’t the daughter of any good friend of his.

She was the daughter of his unforgettable first love.

All Dad’s other women knew about that first love. Only Mom didn’t.

And so Mom became her new mother.

Then Dad brought Zhizhi over to me.

“Qingqing, Zhizhi is a few months younger than you.”

“She’ll be your little sister from now on.”

“You’re the big sister. Make sure you protect her!”

He’d got my name wrong again.

But I didn’t even have time to correct him.

Because I was already walking over to Zhizhi against my will, taking her hand, and exclaiming:

“Wow! You’re so pretty.”

“I’m your big sister now.”

“I finally have a little sister! Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. I’m so happy!”

I recited every word in a flat monotone, my face expressionless.

It was a compulsory plot event.

As a supporting character, I had no control over myself.

Nobody needed to tell me. This new sister was definitely the heroine of some novel too!

Sigh…

When would it be my turn to star in something?

My parents were discussing how to furnish my new sister’s room. Neither noticed my despondency.

Zhizhi did. She timidly took my hand.

“I’ll protect you from now on, big sister.”

In the tenth of a second our eyes met, I knew I was done for.

Nobody could resist a cute little girl promising so earnestly to protect them.

And if anybody could, it certainly wasn’t Long Ah Ning!

The night I became a hopelessly devoted big sister,

I stayed up reading the entire novel starring Chen Zhizhi.

…What I hadn’t expected

Was that hers wasn’t an ordinary script.

It was a sprawling contemporary melodrama of corporate warfare, revenge, and tangled family relationships.

At the beginning, she was an innocent little flower.

By the end, she’d turned into a thoroughly black-hearted schemer.

She’d stop at nothing to eliminate my thirteen siblings and become the sole heir to Dad’s entire fortune.

And what drove her to the dark side was that, when she was twenty-three, her beloved big sister—me—

Died.

I did the math.

Oh. So I had ten years left.