Chapter 1
“A little girl gets up early in the morning, takes her pants with her to the toilet. There’s a big cockroach in the toilet. In her panic, she poops on her pants…”
Gil Roger sat up abruptly on the bed, raising his hands above his head while singing a tune of an unknown nursery rhyme!
The door to the utility room was kicked open repeatedly: “Good-for-nothing! Why are you making such a racket at dawn? The second young lady is calling for you!”
It was the voice of the maid, Amy Salome. Yes, Gil Roger, Roger Group’s son-in-law, lived in the family’s utility room.
“Jill Rogers, are you dead or what? Get down from there right now!” Jill’s sister, Lily Rogers, shouted loudly.
“Right away, I’m coming!” I rushed downstairs in my flip-flops.
“Right now! I can’t control you, you fool! Die already!” Lily Rogers kept urging him, amidst the laughter of everyone around.
The slippers didn’t fit well on his feet. Just as he stepped off the last step of the stairs, the slippers flew off his feet. Jill Roger stumbled, lost his balance, and fell down the stairs. He rolled across the ground, but surprisingly, he wasn’t hurt at all.
“What the hell is the point of you being here? You can’t even walk down the stairs without tripping. I’ve never met such a useless idiot!” Lily Rogers tossed a stack of hundred-dollar bills at him. “Go to the convenience store and buy two cases of beer, peanuts, and pickled chicken legs. Decide what else to get on your own. Hurry up—you have five minutes to get back.”
“We don’t need that much money!” Jill Roger knelt on the ground, picking up the coins one by one.
Lily Rogers glared at him irritably. “The rest is your tip!”
Lily Rogers spent the entire night playing cards with a group of young men in the villa’s living room. There’s no sign of them stopping anytime soon.
Gil Roger rushed out quickly. His oversized vest and shorts were billowing in the night wind. It was said that the vest and shorts he was wearing had belonged to his father-in-law when he was younger, and his father-in-law hadn’t wanted to throw them away.
In the garden downstairs, a group of old men and women were enjoying the cool weather.
“Look, that good-for-nothing son-in-law of the Rogers family has been made to do the wife’s sister’s bidding again!”
A child sitting in a stroller was crying softly.
“Crying now? If you keep crying like this when you grow up, you’ll end up just like that good-for-nothing son-in-law!”
All those scornful voices rushed into Jill Roger’s ears like the wind, but she could only listen without paying any attention to them.
Stepping into the convenience store at the entrance of the residential complex, the owner was well-accustomed to Lily Rogers’ habits. Before Jill Rogers could say anything, the owner had already brought out two cases of beer and a bag of snacks to go with it, extending his hand toward Jill Rogers.
“In total, it’s two hundred and eighty-seven cents!” Jill Roger muttered to herself as she handed over three hundred dollars.
“What are you still standing around for? If you can’t get back in five minutes, you’ll suffer the consequences again!” the boss said jokingly to Gil Roger.
“You haven’t given me the change yet!” Jill Roger stretched out her hand.
Ugh, the boss was completely clueless. I had no choice but to give him the change. I shoved the money into the pocket behind my pants, then rushed off again, carrying the beer and the snack bag.
“Lily Rogers, after all, he’s your brother-in-law. How can you not be more polite to him?” The gambling game continued in the luxurious villa’s living room.
A little girl with pigtails chewed gum and asked.
“Just him, my brother-in-law? He’s not even good enough to be a servant in my own house. What a worthless good-for-nothing. I have no idea what my sister is thinking. She must be blind to even consider him!”
The moment she pushed the door open, she heard Lily Rogers say those words. Jill Rogers, with a red face, gently placed the beer and snacks at Lily Rogers’ feet, then prepared to go upstairs.
“Idiot, go upstairs and clean the floor right now!” Lily Rogers suddenly reached out and twisted Jill Rogers’ ear.
He forced a smile and said, “Right away, right away!”
“Hey, take a break for a sec. Do you know how to play ‘Big Dick’?” The guy with pigtails, who had just spoken to Leo Roger, asked Gil Roger, blowing bubbles from his gum.
“No, I can’t play cards or chess at all!” Jill Roger said with a submissive tone.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gil Roger glanced at the group of middle school students—both boys and girls. They were dressed in a manner that suggested they were much more mature than their age. Gil Roger knew these kids must be from wealthy or influential families. How else could they be hanging out with the second daughter of the Roger family in Ireland? They certainly weren’t ordinary kids!
“Everyone draws a card and compares them. You know how to do that, right?” a kid with yellow hair grabbed him by the collar and asked.
“I still need to mop the floor…” Jill Roger stammered, not daring to lift her head.
Lily Rogers sneered, “Stop making things difficult for him. Other than the few hundred bucks I gave him, he has nothing left. Expecting that miser to give up any money he’s already put in his pocket is practically impossible!”
Gil Roger’s face was already completely burned red, like a monkey’s bottom. But what Lily Roger said was the truth. And… he didn’t dare to argue with her.
“I won’t gamble with him!” The blond man was aggressive. He grabbed the pendant around Jill Roger’s neck and said, “Let’s bet on this instead!”
Gil Roger tried to snatch the pendant from him, but the blond man held on tightly. With a snap, the string holding the pendant broke, and the pendant ended up in the blond man’s hands.
“Sorry, give it back to me. It’s the only thing my family left me!” Jill Roger’s eyes immediately filled with tears.
He thought of his parents who had passed away from illness. His mother, lying on her sickbed, took his hand and solemnly placed the dragon-shaped pendant in his hands, with two tears welling up in her eyes.
“It’s not anything special anyway. I’ll draw first. The Ace of Spades is the highest, and the Three of Diamonds is the lowest!” The blond man placed the pendant on the table, then casually drew a card from the deck and flipped it face up for everyone to see.
“Plum Blossom K, you worthless guy, you still have a chance. As long as you draw an A, you’ll win. If you beat him, we’ll all be witnesses to it. All the money he wins tonight will be yours!”
Gil Roger looked at the stack of cash in front of the blond man. Although he was tempted, he still refused to risk his pendant in the gamble.
The crowd immediately started making noise. The blond guy became even more aggressive. He gently tapped on Jill Roger’s pendant and said, “If you don’t smoke it, you automatically give it up. Then it becomes mine!”
With no way back, Jill Roger reached out tremblingly, pulled out a card, and her hands shook violently as she flipped it over.
“I told you! How could such a good-for-nothing possibly win? He even managed to draw the Three of Diamonds from the deck. Clearly, he’s nothing but a jinx!” Lily Rogers laughed heartily.
Gil Roger looked at the three he had just revealed, and tears immediately streamed down his face.
“Please, I’ll give you all my money. Just return the pendant to me!” Jill Roger frantically took out all the money from her pocket and placed it in front of the blond man, begging with tears in her eyes.
“Hey, you agreed to the terms of the bet. You know that principle, right?” The blond man picked up the pendant and examined it closely under the light.
“The quality isn’t very good. It’s not sheep-fat jade, nor is it Hetian jade. It certainly isn’t jadeite either. It’s just an ordinary stone, really. As for the carving, it’s passable.” He clicked his tongue as he took back the pendant.
“Please, as long as you give me back the pendant, I’ll do whatever you want!” Jill Roger suddenly knelt down and hugged the blond man’s legs.
The blond guy was stunned. He never expected that, for the sake of a stone, this good-for-nothing would actually kneel before him!
“Damn, it’s not even anything valuable. I certainly don’t want it!” The blond-haired boy found it boring and casually threw the pendant away.
“Ah!” Gil Roger let out a cry of agony and rushed toward the direction where the pendant had fallen.
Unfortunately, it was too late. The pendant fell to the ground with a snap and broke into two pieces!
Like crazy, she picked up the pendant, rushed into the bathroom without looking back, turned the faucet on full blast, and submerged her face in the water while holding the pendant in her hands. Her sobs gradually turned into soft whimpering, with tears streaming down between her fingers.
