Sold by My Parents, I Returned as Their Judge

The year I turned eighteen, both the adopted son in our family and I were accepted to college.

But my parents told methe one who'd gotten into a top universityto go work illegally overseas, so they could fund my brother's enrollment at a $200,000-a-year diploma mill.

You're a girl. No amount of education is going to change that.

"Barret's a boy. Your mother and I are counting on him to take care of us when we're old!"

I refused. I would rather have died than obeyed.

So they crushed sleeping pills into my food, and while I was unconscious, they bound me and loaded me onto a smuggling vessel headed overseas.

With the $300,000 they got for selling me, my adopted brother seized his opportunity. He started a small company that grew into a fortune.

The day before his company was set to go public, I returned to the hometown I hadn't seen in ten years.

When they saw me again, their faces showed surprise and contempt. They assumed I was just a poor relative crawling back for scraps.

What they didn't know was that I never made it overseas. I'd fought my way off that ship, half-dead, and swum back to shore.

After that, I put myself through school, aced every exam, graduated, and landed a position at a top-tier investment firm. I became the youngest team leader on the State Commerce Investment Review Board.

This time, I was here to investigate my adopted brother's company for tax evasion and fraud.

The InterContinental Hotel, the finest in Riverside City.

The Fox family had booked the grand ballroom for their pre-IPO celebration gala. Every seat was filled with the city's elite.

I sat in an inconspicuous spot near the entrance, watching Barret Fox on the stage.

"...Everything I have today, I owe to my parents!"

His voice rang out, impassioned and grand.

"Ten years ago, my family had nothing. And my ungrateful sister stole every cent of our savings and ran off overseas to live it up, leaving us buried in debt."

"It was my parents who scraped together everything they had. They sold what little they owned, even took out loans from loan sharks, just to give me my first round of capital!"

His voice cracked with emotion on stage, and applause rippled through the audience.

My parents sat at the head table in expensive clothes, dabbing at the corners of their eyes.

People swarmed around them with compliments.

"Mr. Fox is so accomplished for his age! Old Mr. Fox, you and your wife are truly blessed to have raised such an outstanding son!"

"Absolutely! Unlike that ungrateful daughter of yours, stealing the family's money and disappearing. What a disgrace!"

I stood in the corner, listening to every word of their lies, and a cold smile crept across my face.

Ten years ago.

For $230,000 in blood money, they had crushed sleeping pills into my birthday cake with their own hands.

When I woke up, I was locked in the bottom hold of a smuggling vessel. Around me were dozens of other girls, all just like me.

If that ship hadn't hit a reef during a storm.

If I hadn't clung to a piece of driftwood with the last breath in my body, floating on the open ocean for a day and a night, I wouldn't have survived.

So what right did they have to live like this?

I drew a deep breath and stepped into the light.

No one noticed me.

Not until I walked up to the head table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

"Waiter. A glass of water, please."

I rapped my knuckles on the table.

The laughter and conversation at the head table died instantly.

My mother recognized me first.

Red wine sloshed from her glass and splattered across the tablecloth. She stared at me like she was looking at a ghost.

"You... you..."

Her lips trembled.

My father froze too, the smile on his face locking into a rigid mask.

"Dad. Mom. It's been a while."

"Barret's company going public is such a big occasion. Why didn't anyone think to invite his big sister?"

I leaned back in the chair, a half-smile on my face, watching them.

Ten years of hardship had changed me. I was no longer the helpless girl they could do with as they pleased.

"Sharon Fox?!"

My father lurched to his feet, knocking his chair over with the force of it.

Only then did Barret Fox, still standing on the stage, realize what was happening.

He stepped down from the stage with a frown, his flashy fiance trailing close behind.

"Mom, Dad, what's going on?"

He didn't even glance at me, just kept muttering under his breath. "What are we paying security for? How did they let some beggar waltz in here?"

But then, in the very next second, his eyes found my face.

The irritation on his features froze solid.

"Sharon? You're not dead?!"

The words flew out before he could stop them.

Barret realized his mistake immediately and scrambled to rearrange his expression.

"Sis, you've finally decided to come back?"

His eyes darted, and he put on a look of deep anguish.

"Ten years without a single word from overseas. Do you have any idea how worried Mom and Dad have been? You stole the family's money and disappeared without so much as a goodbye. They nearly threw themselves off a building!"

Right there, in front of everyone, he dumped the blame squarely on me again.

The guests around us turned, their gazes dripping with contempt and judgment.

"So that's the ungrateful daughter who ran off with their money?"

"Look at how shabby she's dressed. Probably couldn't make it overseas. Heard young Mr. Fox's company is about to go public, so she came sniffing around for a handout!"

My mother had finally collected herself by now.

She clenched her jaw, and the performance kicked in. She shot to her feet and jabbed a finger in my face.

"You wretched girl! You have the nerve to show your face here?"

"Do you know how much your brother suffered to build his business? Oh, now that he's made something of himself, you want to come crawling back for a piece of it?"

"I'm telling you, not a chance in hell! The Fox family has no daughter as shameless as you!"

My father let out a cold snort.

He slammed his palm on the table. "Throw this lunatic out! Today is a proud day for the Fox family. Don't let her dirty the place!"

That was when Barret's fiance, Sara Whitney, looked me up and down with undisguised disdain.

"Barret, so this is your clueless hick of a sister?"

"She doesn't have an ounce of manners. There are important people coming tonight. If she offends the wrong guest, she couldn't pay for it with ten lives!"

She rolled her eyes.

Barret patted the back of Sara's hand, soothing her. "Relax. I won't let her cause a scene."

Then he turned to me and pulled a wad of cash from his pocket.

"Sharon, here's ten thousand dollars."

"Consider it a gift for the fact that Mom and Dad gave you life. Take it and get lost."

"Don't ever show your face in front of me again. This family has nothing to do with you. Don't even dream of taking a single cent from here."

He flung the bills at me. They scattered across the floor.

I looked at this family, united in their righteous fury, and almost laughed.

Did they actually believe their own garbage?

"Ten years ago, when you sold me to the traffickers, you got three hundred thousand dollars for it."

"And now you think ten grand is going to make me go away?"

A cold smile cut across my lips.

The room erupted.

"Sold her to traffickers? Didn't they say she stole the money and ran?"

"But, come to think of it, the seed money for Mr. Fox's startup always did seem to come out of nowhere..."

Barret's face went white as paper, sweat beading along his hairline.

But he recovered fast.

"Bullshit!" He slammed the table, voice shaking with manufactured rage. "You ran off with some man because you thought this family was beneath you! Things didn't work out, so now you come crawling back to slander me? Have you lost every shred of conscience you ever had?"

He sold the outrage well. Almost convincingly.

My mother lost it, shrieking as she charged toward me.

"Shut your filthy mouth, you little tramp!"

"Security! Where the hell is security? Gag her and throw her out! Now!"

Security came rushing over and immediately closed in around me, bristling with aggression.

Sara let out a cold laugh, arms folded across her chest. "Sharon Fox, is it? I'd suggest you behave yourself."

"The State Commerce Bureau just set up a new Investment Review Board, and they sent a team down to Riverside City today. My father pulled some strings to personally invite the team leader to this banquet."

"We're talking about someone with real power. Cross them, and you won't walk out of here in one piece."

Barret's eyes lit up at that. His spine straightened instantly.

"You hear that? The team leader of the Review Board."

He looked at me, dripping with smugness.

"Fox Technologies is a key enterprise backed by the city government. You want to cause a scene here? I'll make sure you spend the rest of your life behind bars."

I looked at the guards circling me, then at Barret and Sara standing there like they'd already won. I couldn't help it. I laughed.

"Oh? The team leader of the Review Board?"

I glanced at him, unhurried.

"Well, since you're both so eager for this team leader to arrive, I think I'll stay after all."

"Let's see who ends up not walking out of here in one piece."

My composure clearly rattled Sara. She scoffed, the contempt in her eyes deepening.

"Keep pretending! Go ahead!"

"Looking the way you do, I bet you don't even know what the Review Board is. And you're putting on airs?"

Her eyes rolled so far back they nearly disappeared.

Barret sneered again and again. He waved the security guards off, his gaze turning venomous.

"You really want to make a scene? Fine."

His stare grew colder. "I'll show you, with my own hands, exactly where I stand now. I'll make you understand that you couldn't measure up to my little toe if you had a hundred lifetimes."

My father nodded immediately.

"Once the team leader gets here," he said with a sneer, "we'll ask them to serve as a witness. Then we can have this deranged liar locked up on the spot."

My mother glared at me with the same clenched-jaw hatred.

"That's right. We'll make her see just how stupid she was to run away all those years ago."

"A worthless girl thinking she can turn the world upside down? Barret is worth hundreds of millions now. What gives you the right to say a word against him?"

She looked at me like I was her mortal enemy. And yet I was her own flesh and blood.

I narrowed my eyes.

They really hadn't disappointed me. They were exactly as I'd imagined, down to the last detail.

"Then let's wait and see."

I poured myself a cup of tea, unbothered.

The truth was, I'd uncovered everything within my first year back in the country.

The one who drugged my food was my biological mother.

The one who contacted the human traffickers and used forged documents to sell me onto a labor ship was my biological father.

And Barret, the parasite who'd hidden behind them the whole time, reaping every benefit while they did the dirty work, was the mastermind behind all of it.

They used that two million three hundred thousand dollars to buy out my entire life. And they used it to pave a golden road for Barret Fox.

So after I clawed my way back from the sea, half-dead and barely breathing, I buried my identity. I survived on recycling scraps to pay for school.

I studied like a woman possessed. I passed the civil service exams. I climbed, rung by rung, all the way up.

Countless nights I lay awake, rehearsing this exact day in my mind.

What I wanted wasn't just an apology.

What I wanted was to destroy the lives they'd built on the ashes of mine.

"Sharon, it's too late for regret."

Barret walked toward me, his voice low.

"Surviving the ocean was sheer luck. But since you made it out alive, you should've stayed hidden in the gutter like a rat. Instead, you have the nerve to show your face in front of me?"

His gaze grew more vicious by the second.

"Let me make one thing clear: no one here will believe a word you say!"

"And that case from ten years ago? I destroyed every last shred of evidence a long time ago."

"You're nothing but a broke, powerless nobody from the bottom of the barrel. Me? I'm a celebrated entrepreneur. Crushing you would be easier than stepping on an ant."

I laughed.

I lifted my gaze to meet his. "Destroyed? You sure about that?"

Barret faltered for a second.

"Of course I'm sure!"

His face darkened, as if my questioning was an insult to his intelligence.

I clicked my tongue.

"You can't even handle your current affairs properly. What makes you think you handled things from ten years ago any better?" I said, a half-smile playing on my lips.

Barret's expression froze. His eyes locked onto mine, urgent and searching. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"What was the name of that CFO who launders money for your family again?" I raised an eyebrow. "Something like... Edwin Lambert?"

Barret's pupils contracted sharply.

"What are you talking about? Laundering money? Watch your mouth!"

He took an instinctive step backward, his voice cracking mid-sentence.

Edwin Lambert wasn't just Fox Technologies' CFO. He was Barret's personal bagman.

Every shady ledger Fox Technologies kept hidden, every tax evasion scheme, every set of fraudulent dual contractsEdwin handled all of it.

"Not only have you evaded over eighty million dollars in taxes, but to push your IPO through, you also colluded with outside firms to cook the books and inflate your profits by a full three hundred million."

"Barret, that snowball just keeps getting bigger. Tell medo you sleep at night?"

I shrugged, keeping my tone light, almost casual.

But Barret's face drained of color, shade by shade, until it was chalk-white.

"Youhow could you possibly know all this? Who the hell are you?!"

His voice trembled. His whole body was shaking.

I let the corner of my mouth curl upward.

A penniless drifter who'd spent ten years abroad, yet knew every illegal detail of his company's operations. He had every reason to panic.

Just then, a commotion erupted outside the banquet hall doors.

Moments later, the hotel's general manager came rushing in.

He grabbed the microphone, barely containing his excitement. "Distinguished guests, please, your attention! Let us welcome, with the warmest applause, the leader of the State Commerce Investment Review Board's inspection team!"

Sara's eyes lit up. She immediately nudged Barret, who was still standing there in a daze.

"Barret! Forget about this crazy woman! The team leader is here! Come on, let's go greet him!"

That snapped Barret out of it. He shot me one last venomous glare.

"I'll deal with you later."

He let out a cold snort, then quickly straightened his suit jacket.

The two of them scurried toward the entrance like a pair of eager golden retrievers greeting their master.

Every guest in the banquet hall rose to their feet as well, craning their necks for a glimpse of the person rumored to be the youngest inspection team leader in the board's history.

I stood up too. Slowly.

I'd watched the show long enough. It was time for me to take the stage.