Chapter 1

The day I walked out of prison, my own daughter took me to court to legally sever all ties with me.

After I signed the papers in silence, she threw a check for eighty thousand dollars right in my face.

"Take this money and never show your face in front of me again!"

I quietly picked up the check and watched her luxury sports car speed off into the distance.

On the bus back, the overhead screen was broadcasting the morning news, featuring her as the brilliant co-founder of a booming tech startup.

Hunched in my seat, I let out a bitter, silent chuckle. She had made it after all.

Frank, my oldest friend, called me on the phone, furious, screaming that I was an absolute fool. He demanded to know why I refused to tell her the truth.

He knew that my criminal record had been an act of taking the fall for her five years ago.

He knew that I was now dying of late-stage lung cancer, with only a few days left to live.

But I couldn't say a single word.

She was now a high-profile entrepreneur. She couldn't afford the stain of having an ex-convict for a father.

All my life, I only knew how to teach through harsh discipline. I never learned how to love with tenderness.

As long as she lived a good, proud life, throwing away whatever was left of mine was worth it.

When I finally arrived home and pushed open the rusted iron gate, the weeds in the yard were already knee-high.

The ivy in the corner of the wall had grown wild, swallowing up half the window frame.

I set down my beat-up duffel bag. In the silence, I could almost hear the ringing of high school bells echoing from years ago.

"Good morning, Dean Vance!"

"Look out, the Tyrant is coming! Hide your phones!"

Those young voices, dripping with equal parts fear and awe, cut through the river of time straight into my ears.

Back then, I was the Dean of Discipline at our small-town high school.

I was the walking nightmare of every kid who walked those halls.

I believed in iron-clad rules and military-style discipline.

The town was poor and isolated. The only way out for those kids was to earn top test scores and claw their way into elite universities.

I wanted to drag every single one of them out of that godforsaken dust bowl.

To do that, I cut the dorm internet cables, confiscated boxes of phones and comic books, and walked the school perimeter with a flashlight all night long.

I didn't care if they despised me. I only cared that they made something of themselves.

That included my own daughter, Chloe.

Back then, Chloe loved to draw. She would sit by the window for hours, staring out at the clouds.

She was undeniably talented. Her sketches were bursting with colors and worlds far beyond my imagination.

But could painting put food on the table?

In a town like ours, chasing art was a luxury that led straight to starvation.

In front of her entire class, I tore her sketchbook into shreds.

As the scraps of paper drifted to the floor like dead leaves, I watched the light in her eyes flicker and die.

"You're not my dad! You're a monster, Arthur Vance!" she screamed at me through her tears.

I stared back at her without a flicker of emotion. "Stop crying! Tears are the most useless thing in this world! Get back in your seat and finish your vocabulary drills!"

That night, she locked herself in her bedroom and went on a hunger strike.

I sat in the living room the whole night, smoking through an entire pack of cigarettes.

The next morning, holding a bowl of pasta, I kicked her bedroom door wide open.

"Not eating? Fine. Forget school then. Come with me to the construction yard!"

"Let's see the kind of life you'll live without an education!"

I dragged her down to the nearby brick factory yard by sheer force.

It was midsummer, a sweltering ninety-eight degrees out.

I made her watch kids barely older than her, their faces caked in dirt, hauling hundreds of pounds of bricks under the blistering sun.

Sweat washed through the grime, burning their eyes so badly they could hardly keep them open.

"Look at them! That is where people who don't study end up!"

"You want to paint? Can your fancy brushes capture the smell of that sweat?"

"Listen to me, Chloe. In this world, only your grades won't betray you!"

Terrified, Chloe clutched my shirt hem, sobbing until she couldn't breathe.

"Dad, I was wrong! I'll study! I swear I'll study!"

From that day on, she never picked up a paintbrush again.

She became my most flawless creation.

Ranked first in the entire district, she dominated the top of the honor roll exam after exam.

She chopped off her long hair, keeping a severe buzz cut just like mine, and wore oversized, shapeless clothes like a boy.

No boys ever passed her love notes again. No one gossiped about her being pretty anymore.

She became an emotionless machine that existed solely to solve practice tests.

I knew she hated me.

She hated me for stealing her youth. She hated me for killing her dream.

Yet, I had no regrets.

If I hadn't done that, how could she have gotten into an Ivy League university on a full ride? How could she have climbed to the top of the world like she had now?