Chapter 1

The call left me stunned.

“Are you listening? I said your sister’s recovered.”

“I heard you.”

I hurriedly hung up and pressed a hand to my forehead, agitated.

My phone was still showing my chat with Jiang Cheng, my rich roommate.

He’d said, “Suddenly I’m missing your sister. You’re going home on business tomorrow. Bring her back with you.”

I’d replied, “Of course, Mr. Jiang.”

What was I supposed to do now?

I scrubbed at my hair.

She couldn’t have recovered sooner or later? Why now?

The marketing manager’s position had opened up at work.

I’d spent ages forcing the old manager out.

The promotion was practically mine.

All I had to do was please Jiang Cheng one more time, and the position would be mine for sure.

A million yuan a year.

I could do anything I wanted!

Why had Zhou Xiaoya recovered now? Why?

My sister was eight when a high fever damaged her brain.

But she’d always been a beautiful little thing.

And she worked hard. She helped our parents with everything, in the house and out.

So all through my childhood, that idiot suffered while I had it easy.

Before I knew it, I was at university.

One of my roommates came from a wealthy family. He gave me my first real taste of what it meant to throw money around.

He’d spend the equivalent of my entire monthly allowance on us roommates without blinking.

Hanging around him, I ate and drank like a king every day.

But eventually, he seemed to sour on me.

I knew it was probably because he’d never got anything out of me.

To keep living large as his little lapdog,

I bragged to Jiang Cheng about the beautiful scenery around my village and invited him to come over during summer break.

But once he arrived, he wasn’t happy.

“This is the beautiful scenery you were talking about?”

“The park in our apartment complex looks better than this!”

He was about to call a taxi and leave in a rage

when my sister happened to come and tell me dinner was ready.

Jiang Cheng was instantly captivated.

He leaned in close, greed plain in his voice.

“That’s your sister? Your actual sister, the one whose brain got damaged by a fever?”

I nodded. He licked his lips and added,

“I’ll stay in the village tonight. Can you bring her over? I’ll give you twenty thousand.”

“Don’t worry. She’s an idiot anyway. I’m just looking for a little novelty, a little fun. I won’t break her. What do you say?”

At first, I was furious.

Then the twenty thousand caught my attention.

Our parents couldn’t sell twenty thousand yuan’s worth of grain after a whole year of farming.

Maybe…

Maybe helping the family this way would give my sister more value.

That evening, with my heart pounding,

I told her I was taking her to buy snacks.

Instead, I delivered her straight to the house Jiang Cheng had rented.

Jiang Cheng acted as if I wasn’t there.

Maybe, since I could hand my own sister over to him,

he didn’t even see me as human.

He grabbed her arm, pulled her into his embrace, and began groping her.

Terrified, she fought to push him away.

He covered her mouth, gripped her throat, and forced her down onto the heated brick bed, his teeth clenched.

“What are you staring at? You want to get in line?”

He threw twenty thousand yuan onto the floor.

Shaking all over, I picked up the money and ran out.

The last thing I saw was my sister reaching for me in despair.

Through her tears, she said, “Nannan, I don’t want snacks anymore. Take me home. Nannan…”