Sir, You Must Be My Father

“You better return that money right now, or I’m going to reconsider our relationship.”

Stanley threw the harshest insults at me in front of our colleagues. With a red face, I returned the 100 thousand dollars and promised to never have anything to do with the president again.

But no secret could be kept hidden forever.

The executives soon learned about this and thought that both Stanley and I insulted the president, so they immediately fired us.

Stanley blamed me for this and refused to look for a job. Instead, he stayed at my place and just mooched off of me and my mother.

My mother tolerated his presence and gave him all of her savings.

I became the sole breadwinner of the house, but I only earned four thousand dollars as an intern, and soon, that money was not enough.

One day, Stanley brought a middleman from the organ-selling business back home and told him that I was in good health.

I refused to do it, but Stanley hid at the entrance of our residential area, and when my guard was down, he knocked me out with chloroform and sent me to a clinic.

I ended up dying in pain on a dirty operating table.

…

When I remembered my fate in the previous cycle, I could not help it and laughed coldly.

“Must you think of things in the worst way possible? What if Mr. Steward is my real father? Don’t you want me to find my real parents?”

Stanley stared at me in disbelief. “Stop daydreaming, Nina. You don’t look like you could be from a rich family. Are you saying that you’ll sleep with anyone who is dressed in a nice suit? Just go and make him happy in bed, then, you gold digger! You disgust me!”

His voice became louder, and many of our colleagues stopped working to watch the drama.

“We’ve been together since sophomore year! That’s six years! I bought you a necklace when I got my first part-time job, and I treated you to Starbucks and Olive Garden! That was the best a university student could afford! I studied with you and even helped you prepare for your master’s program! I treated you like a princess and gave you everything! What did Nathan Steward give you?!”

Our colleagues started whispering to each other.

“Nathan Steward is sixty years old. He must smell like an old man.”

“Young women nowadays only care about money. As long as one offers enough, even eighty-year-old men will smell like flowers to them.”

“That guy is so pitiful. Before he could earn a lot of money by working honestly, his girlfriend decided to cheat on him. He must have spent a lot on her over the past six years. She clearly took advantage of him.”

I rolled my eyes.

If these people were carted off by their boyfriends to unlicensed clinics to have their organs harvested and sold, they would not be saying such horrible things about me.

I turned on the video recording function on my phone, pointed the camera at Stanley, and said loudly, “Everyone, please be my witness! Stanley York insulted our company president in public and said that he paid off an intern to sleep with her! He’s lying and spreading rumors!

“Not only did he make the other employees unable to continue working, but also damaged the company’s image! This goes against work discipline!”

Stanley’s expression changed.

All of his conceit disappeared, and I struck while the iron was hot.

“You hate capitalists, don’t you? Go on, continue insulting Mr. Steward! You’re a postgraduate student too, and you’re telling me that you’re not worried about having your salary reduced or being fired?

“Yeah. You did give me a necklace, but you got it on discount on Etsy. I didn’t even need an expert to appraise it to know that its ‘gemstone’ was just colored glass!

“And a meal at Olive Garden? You only brought me there after 9 p.m. so you could use the student discount! One meal was less than ten dollars, and you called me a gold digger for two years! Also, I got into the master’s program all on my own. It had nothing to do with you. And you’re saying you treated me like a princess? If I had waited for you to provide for me, I would’ve died!”

Stanley’s face turned red. He braced himself and opened his mouth to speak but found himself unable to say anything.

The fence-sitting colleagues had been insulting the president with Stanley a moment ago, but they immediately switched sides, as if they had lost their memories of what had happened a minute ago.

“You spent less than ten dollars when you went out on a meal with your girlfriend, and you called her a gold digger? Dude, are you crazy?”

“Our company provides the best benefits to its employees, compared to other companies in the same industry. Mr. Steward is not as bad of a person as you said he is. What if Nina is really his long-lost daughter? Don’t you want your girlfriend to find her real parents, you piece of trash?”

Stanley’s face turned as red as a tomato.