Chapter Two

Sloane’s POV

It was so ridiculous that I laughed.

I was a top creator making eight figures a year. Why would I steal one of her cheap tumblers that cost less than three dollars wholesale?

“Stop playing dumb!” Chloe smacked the shelf. “You’re jealous because my store is finally doing well, so you’ve been looking for ways to take advantage of me! I checked the numbers. About twenty thousand dollars’ worth of inventory is missing. You’re paying me back today, or I’m calling the cops!”

The warehouse door opened again, and our parents, Dale and Martha, hurried inside.

“What happened, sweetheart? Who did this to you?” Martha pulled Chloe into her arms, then shot me a vicious glare.

“Mom! Sloane stole from my inventory! I caught her red-handed, and she still won’t admit it!” Chloe pointed at me, acting like a helpless child.

Dale’s expression immediately hardened. “Sloane, how could you do something like this? Do you have any idea how hard it has been for your sister to start this business? It’s bad enough that you won’t help her. Now you’re stealing from her too?”

“I haven’t helped her?” I pointed at my bloodshot eyes, the result of hours of nonstop streaming. “Who do you think has spent six hours a day streaming from this dump without air-conditioning for the past three months? Who put her own reputation on the line to sell all this junk? Chloe screwed up another shipment today. Who do you think paid ten thousand dollars to clean up her mess?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do!” Martha shouted as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re her older sister. Of course you should help her! You have plenty of money now. What’s ten thousand dollars to you? But stealing from Chloe is different. That shows what kind of person you really are!”

“Exactly!” Chloe hid behind Martha with a smug look on her face. “Stop trying to change the subject. You owe me twenty thousand dollars, and I want every penny.”

I looked at them.

The people who were supposed to be my family.

They didn’t even try to hide the greed on their faces. They didn’t care whether I had stolen anything. They just wanted another twenty thousand dollars from me.

I didn’t yell.

I didn’t shed a single tear.

I simply realized that whatever attachment I had left to this family was gone.

I took a deep breath and pulled my checkbook out of my purse.

“Twenty thousand dollars, right? Fine. I’ll pay you.”

The second I said it, Chloe’s eyes lit up. Martha and Dale exchanged an excited glance. They clearly hadn’t expected such a cheap trick to work.

Behind me, Mia lost it.

“Sloane! Have you lost your mind?” Her eyes were red with anger as she grabbed my wrist before I could write the check. Then she stepped in front of me and pointed at Chloe.

“Have you completely lost your sense of shame, Chloe? Everything in this dump of a warehouse put together isn’t worth twenty thousand dollars! You know that stuff is cheap garbage. If Sloane hadn’t put her reputation on the line and paid for all those prepaid return labels herself, TikTok would’ve shut your store down a hundred times over!”

She spoke so fast that no one had a chance to interrupt her.

“Three months! Our eight-person team has worked for you for free every single day! Sloane’s standard flat fee is fifty thousand dollars per livestream, plus twenty percent commission. Do you have any idea how much money she’s made for you over the past three months?”

“And now you’re accusing her of stealing one of your three-dollar tumblers? Do any of you have a conscience?”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Martha snapped, her face flushing with anger. “This is a family matter. You’re an outsider, so stay out of it! Sloane is my daughter. I gave birth to her and raised her. So what if she spends some money on her family? She owes us!”

Dale straightened up, putting on his usual head-of-the-family act, and scoffed.

“Mia, know your place. And Sloane, look at the kind of employee you hired. She has no manners at all. Have you forgotten who paid for you to go to college? Who gave you money when you were first trying to make it on your own? Your sister needs help. Of course you should step up. We’ll call the twenty thousand dollars rent for using our warehouse.”

“Rent?” Mia gave a humorless laugh. “The internet in this dump barely worked. We paid to have the fiber installed ourselves! You people are parasites!”

“Mia, that’s enough.”

I didn’t raise my voice, but there was no mistaking the command.

Mia froze, her eyes red. “Sloane, you can’t keep enabling them! They treat you like this because they know you’ll let them walk all over you!”

“I know.” I patted her shoulder and pulled her behind me.

I looked at the three people standing in front of me, the people I had once called family, and felt absolutely nothing.

Pull the security footage? Go through the inventory records? Argue with them over whether I had taken a few cheap tumblers?

It would be a waste of time.

And it was beneath me.

I opened my checkbook, wrote out the check, and signed my name.

Then I tore out the check and held it out to Chloe.

“Twenty thousand dollars. You can cash it whenever you want.”

Chloe snatched it from my hand and stared at the amount, checking it twice before a smile spread across her face.

“Good. At least you know what’s good for you. I knew you were guilty...”