The three cronies standing beside Tommy all looked at me with sneers of pure disdain.
“You know where you are, right? This is the Wilson Family estate—the richest family in the country. A broke hillbilly like you doesn’t belong here.”
“Look at that flashy outfit, like some male escort. Bet he came here to seduce Miss Wilson and ruin the engagement party on purpose.”
“Exactly! This piece of trash even had the nerve to call Miss Wilson his ‘sweet girl.’ She’s the most prized successor in the Wilson Family—who the hell do you think you are?!”
I clenched my jaw and snapped back. “Calling her ‘sweet girl’ was me doing her a favor. If she had any sense, she’d be grinning in her sleep from the honor.”
Truth was, back when she was desperate for my approval, Sandra tried everything to get on my good side. She played the perfect little angel, just to win my favor.
And when I was in a good mood, I treated her like a younger relative—affectionate, but distant. I kissed her on the forehead, like a proud older brother.
She was over the moon. She even posted it online to show off. But Tommy saw it... and decided I was trying to steal his girl. That’s when the nightmare began.
He started a two-year campaign of bullying. He planted thumbtacks in my basketball shoes, stuffed pornographic cards in my desk drawer and poured industrial glue on my chair. He even spread filthy rumors online—claiming I seduced middle-aged teachers for money, saying one of them scrubbed my back with a steel wool brush.
Thanks to him, my name at school was garbage. I reported it over and over again. But every time, the school brushed it off with a forced apology from him, like that would fix everything.
Then, he crossed the line—he brought the fight to my home.
“I’m Sandra’s great–grandf..”
I didn’t even get to finish the sentence.
Tommy grabbed the soup pot in front of me and poured it over my head.
“Ahhh!”
Boiling broth drenched my scalp with a sickening hiss. It felt like my skin was shriveling under the heat. Before I could even process the pain, Tommy yanked my hair and smashed my head into the table. BANG. BANG. BANG. My face slammed against the wood again and again, blood spilling from my nose and mouth, the taste of metal and bile flooding my throat.
Tommy laughed maniacally. “Hahaha! Look at this bastard scream. Bet you moan just like this when you’re serving that old hag too.”
His rage only grew. He barked orders to his cronies, who pinned me down hard. “You want to steal food? Fine. Then I’ll break your hands.”
I screamed in horror, “Tommy, don’t you dare!”
But it was too late. He raised the heavy soup pot and brought it crashing down on my hands. Pain shot through all ten fingers like bolts of lightning. I could only watch, helpless, as my fingers twisted and bent at grotesque angles. And then—like a flash of fury—Oliver leapt into the air.
Fur puffed, claws out, my cat launched itself at Tommy’s face and slashed at him.
“Agh! You little beast!” Tommy roared and kicked Oliver hard, sending the cat flying across the room.
“Oliver!” Through the blinding pain, I forced myself free and scrambled to protect my cat, shielding its tiny body with my own.
“Don’t touch my cat! If Sandra finds out, she’ll never let you off the hook!”
Oliver wasn’t just a pet. It was a living memory—something my grandmother left behind before she passed. It meant everything to me.
In fact, the last patriarch of the Wilson Family once stepped on Oliver by accident. I so much as frowned—and he was immediately stripped of his position by the elders for disrespecting the family senior. Now? He’s begging for scraps.
Sandra knew all this. That’s why she’d go out of her way to win Oliver over—walking the cat, cleaning up its litter, even catching its diarrhea with her bare hands just to earn my trust.
“Wait... I’ve seen that cat before,” someone muttered. “I swear I saw it on the news—belongs to the Wilson Family. Looks exactly the same.”
A flicker of doubt passed through the crowd. But Tommy’s face only twisted deeper in rage.
“Oh, so now this loser thinks he can scare me?”
“There are plenty of cats that look the same. Just like him—it’s a filthy stray. Even if it is the Wilson Family’s cat, so what?”
“You think Sandra would throw me under the bus for a damn cat?”
