Chapter 1

The day I confessed my feelings to Ethan Shaw.

I saw a few more shades of cruelty in his eyes.

He made it public and humiliated me.

He pinched my face and said to me, “You and that mother of yours really are the same kind of disgusting.”

When I finally made up my mind to stop liking him, he begged me like a madman to like him again.

“Say it. Why did you call me here?” Ethan Shaw blew out a smoke ring and glanced at me impatiently.

I kept my head down and hesitated for a while before looking up at him and saying, “Ethan, I... I like you.”

“I don’t have time to listen to your jokes.” Ethan narrowed his eyes, as if he realized I was not joking.

He threw the cigarette butt at me, and the burning tip grazed my wrist.

The burned spot turned red, and tears circled uncontrollably in my eyes.

Ethan sneered and grabbed my wrist. “You and that mother of yours really are the same kind of disgusting.”

He shook off my hand as if he found me repulsive.

How could this be...

Seeing that, I immediately grabbed the corner of his shirt. “Ethan, I really... I really like you...”

Ethan curled his lips. “Is that so? You like me?”

I was taken by Ethan to the karaoke lounge he often went to.

The Shaw family had money and power, and Ethan could be considered the prince of New York’s elite circle.

He held the microphone and looked at me with contempt and disgust in his eyes.

“That one is the son my dad had with some mistress outside, and he says he likes me.”

As soon as he said that, the whole room burst into laughter.

I stood there awkwardly, and there were beautiful women all around Ethan as he put his arm around one of them and looked at me. “Even someone selling themselves on the street would be easier on the eyes than you.”

My mom and Mr. Shaw had been childhood sweethearts, and originally, my mom and Mr. Shaw were the ones who should have ended up together.

Later, because the Shaw family opposed it, my mom married my dad.

But my dad beat her to death in a domestic violence incident, and Mr. Shaw took me in.

Mrs. Shaw knew Mr. Shaw still could not forget my mom, so she spread rumors everywhere that I was Mr. Shaw’s illegitimate son and that my mom was a mistress.

Ethan hated me.

I knew that.

But the moment I first saw him, I fell for him.

He lifted my chin. “Don’t think that just because you entered the Shaw family, you can treat yourself like the owner.”

I did not speak, and my useless tears just kept falling.

It was as if a slap had landed on my face, leaving it instantly red.

“Stop acting like your home-wrecking mother, thinking you can win people’s sympathy by crying. It’s disgusting.”

He kicked me, and my back slammed into the wall, sending a sharp wave of pain through me.

It hurt so much that I cried out.

He lit a cigarette and took a few drags, then seemed to find it tasteless and tossed the rest of it onto me.

The burning half-cigarette brushed across my calf, and I watched his retreating figure before slowly crouching down.

A small blister had risen on my calf.

I wiped away my tears and began to hate where I came from.

Why couldn’t my mom just live her own life, and why did she have to do something like that?

If none of that had happened, maybe Ethan and I would not have ended up like this.