Chapter 3

The color drained from my mom’s face in an instant, and this time it wasn’t fake.

She violently shook off my hand, as if she had touched something filthy.

“You... what nonsense are you talking about!”

Harris panicked too, pointing at me as he shouted sharply, “Alice! How can you talk to your mom like that! She’s seriously ill, and you’re saying things like this to upset her. Do you even have a conscience!”

I couldn’t be bothered to waste words on them, so I turned and walked toward the storage room at the end of the hallway.

That was my room.

There was no window inside, only a hard bed and a few pieces of my ragged clothing.

Right next door was Thompson’s room. It was the biggest room in the house, and the closet was stuffed full of all kinds of designer brands.

Even the old clothes he didn’t want were cleaner than what I was wearing.

That was the difference between Thompson and the “bone marrow bank.”

I took out the biggest woven sack I had and threw all my things into it.

Harris blocked the doorway, his face dark.

“Alice, what do you mean by this? Your mom is still sick, and you want to leave?”

When I ignored him, Harris started trying to appeal to my feelings.

“Alice, we know you’ve had it hard, but we didn’t have any choice either.”

“You can’t bear to see Thompson get hurt, can you? Your mom did all this for the family, so...”

I cut him off. “She did it for the family, so she can treat me like trash she can throw away whenever she wants?”

“For the family, she could lie to me for three years, use me as a free bone marrow bank and an ATM?”

Harris’s face went white, then red, and he couldn’t say a word.

In the living room, my mom began screaming and crying like a madwoman.

“Alice! Why is my life so bitter! Why did I give birth to you!”

“Your poor dad didn’t want you after the divorce, and I was the one who raised you!”

“Now that I’m sick and need you to save my life, you want to abandon me. Your conscience has been eaten by a dog!”

If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I almost would have believed her again.

Because of her so-called “raising me,” I had hated my biological father for more than ten years and was willing to be invisible in this family.

But her “raising me” was nothing more than making me sleep in a storage room, eat leftovers, and endure my stepfather’s cold stares.