Chapter 4

My case had a huge impact on public opinion, so after I reported it, the police immediately set up a task force.

Dean Simmons was detained soon after.

My company, MC Corporation, provided me with a lawyer.

After Dean was arrested, my mother called me nonstop, so I put her on my blacklist.

Before long she was making a scene at my company.

"Teresa Simmons, aren't you something! You actually put your own brother in prison!"

My mother screamed at me, her face twisted with rage, not a trace of a loving mother left in her.

"He broke the law, and going to jail is the price he should pay!"

"Broke the law? What law did he break? His parents are getting old, and he's worried about them. What's wrong with putting a camera in his parents' house?" She dropped the act, and her sharp, spiteful face finally came out.

"The lease is signed in my name, and I pay the rent. Without my permission, it's against the law for him to touch anything inside."

"Hmph, if you ask me, you did it on purpose. You were born cheap, you just love stripping naked for people to see! And now you're slandering my son!"

My own birth mother was hurling insults at me in front of everyone,

and it instantly drew a crowd of gawkers.

Seeing more and more people gather, my mother just plopped down on the ground and threw a fit.

"What a wretched life I have, giving birth to a lowly thing like you, a jinx, who only knows how to ruin her own brother!"

She was the picture of a rural shrew, slapping her thigh as she chanted her curses.

It was truly pathetic.

Pathetic that I had a mother like this,

and pathetic that at an age when she should be enjoying life, she had to make a public spectacle of herself over a good-for-nothing gambler of a son.

"Ma'am, you're standing on property leased by my company. I'm asking you to leave immediately."

Just then, a cool, clear male voice cut off my mother's cursing.

It was Rufus Whitney, the CEO of MC.

"Who do you think you are? You say leave and I just leave? Speaking up for that cheap little bitch, are you? Got your eye on this slut? Pay a bride-price of two hundred thousand and she's yours."

"Security, throw her out!"

At Rufus's command, two guards took my mother by the arms and hauled her out.

"Teresa Simmons, you slut, ganging up with some strange man to bully your own mother—you'll die a horrible death."

Her curses kept ringing in my ears.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Whitney. My personal affairs have affected the company."

"Come with me to the service department."

He called in the head of the chief legal department, who had been on vacation.

I told the legal counsel everything—how my parents had tricked me into putting their names on the house when I bought it, and about the monthly loan payments I'd been transferring.

"Not a problem. What's yours is yours—you won't be shorted a single cent."