At first, the thought was just a faint idea, but with each slap, it became stronger and clearer.

I blamed everything on Scarlett.

I blamed her, even though she screamed and tried to stop my dad when he burst into my room, dragged me out of bed, and threw me on the floor.

In a panic, she grabbed his arm and tried to stop him. She even stepped in front of me a few times, only for him to shove her aside.

Her white nightgown smelled nice, and it made her face look even paler.

She shook as she raised her arm to stop my dad and repeatedly tried to defend me and plead for me. She was so nervous that she almost bit her tongue.

“No, no… don’t hit her, maybe I made a mistake…”

She tried to say nice things about me, even though we had barely spent any time together.

“Pearl is a good girl. She’s very polite. She even helped me with the dishes. She’s been doing her homework. She probably just wanted a break. Maybe she wasn’t playing on her phone.”

I watched her, and her fake concern made me sick.

My stomach twisted, and I started to gag.

I still blamed everything on her.

So, one night, I took the 20,000 dollars my dad had locked in the drawer and put it in her coat pocket.

My dad was a downright working-class person.

He liked to smoke, drink, gamble, and take his anger out on me.

Since he could not hit anyone else, he hit me.

Even at his age, he did not have a stable job. He just took whatever work he could find.

Sometimes, he fixed pipes; other times, he worked at construction sites.

He earned money only when he worked.

After divorcing my mom, he had been looking for a decent woman to settle down with for the rest of his life.

The first time I met Scarlett was when my dad forced me to go to a dinner with him.

He forced me there because she liked kids, especially girls.

He treated me like a gift to her.

However, I was quiet and boring, so Scarlett did not spare my dad a glance because of me.

She sat next to my godfather and often served him food, but he ignored her. She kept trying, though.

Not long after, my godfather died in an accident. He got drunk, fell off a ladder, and badly injured his head.

It happened in a corner of an alley. He lay there from 2 a.m. until 7 a.m. when a janitor found him and called an ambulance.

The doctors said he was brain-dead and that even if he survived, he would have been in a coma.

His wife quickly decided to turn off the life support.

At his funeral, there were no tears. People just sighed and looked numb.

I only looked at him from a distance. I saw someone put a coin in his mouth.

My dad said it was to stop him from talking after death.

My dad did not show much emotion about his friend’s death, even though they were as close as siblings. He just said, “He would be a burden to his family if he were alive.”

Scarlett did not go to the funeral. She just sent a condolence gift through my dad.

Looking back, I guessed she knew she was not welcome, or maybe she felt that after my godfather died, he no longer had any value to her.

I never hid my dislike for this awful woman.

I often thought that she was the one who caused my godfather’s death.

There was no real reason for thinking that. Malicious thoughts did not need a reason.

After my godfather died, she immediately turned to my dad.

I knew she wanted to kill him this time.

A week passed since she complained to my dad about me, and my cheek was still swollen.

The bruise on my forehead from when my dad hit me with the dictionary had not healed, and my hatred had not faded either.

My dad was unusually busy that week. He was working hard to make money to keep her happy.

Sometimes, he even stayed out all night.

After that day, she was more careful toward me, even when asking me to eat. If she heard even the smallest sound, like a pen dropping in my room, she would ask if everything was okay.

While my dad was trying to please her, she was trying to win me over.

She asked my dad about what I liked and bought a lot of small cakes. She would quietly bring them to my room, but I would put them in the living room without eating them.

After a few failed attempts, she could not take it anymore. One day at dinner, she awkwardly said, “I didn’t know your dad would get so angry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Her spoon hit the plate, and she added, “Please don’t think badly of me. I’m not that kind of person.”

She picked up some meat and carefully put it in my bowl.

She watched me closely but pretended to act calm as she ate.

What kind of person?

She was evil, had a bad character, used dirty tricks, and had no dignity.

That was exactly the kind of person she was.

I did not want to talk about what she brought up.

So, I slammed my spoon down, went back to my room, and left her awkwardly alone at the table.

I tossed and turned in bed. Every time I turned to one side, my cheek hurt badly. It was like tiny needles were poking at it.

I could not help but start hurting myself by slapping my own face. In my mind, I angrily cursed and hoped the pain would stop. I kept thinking about Scarlett and could not fall asleep until late at night.

So, I got up. In the dim moonlight, I quickly found the key in the corner of the bathroom and unlocked the drawer in my dad’s wardrobe.

In that drawer were all of my dad’s important things: his divorce papers, our health insurance cards, our IDs, and my elementary school diploma.

Most importantly, it held the 20,000 dollars my grandfather left me for college.

I quietly put the money into Scarlett’s coat pocket.

I did not think anyone would see through such a clumsy, childish act of revenge. After all, sneaky actions like this were exactly what you would expect from a scheming woman who enjoyed being a mistress.

She was sound asleep. She lay in the same bed where my dad and mom once slept and was completely at ease.

Three days later, I told my dad, “When school starts, students need health insurance. If they don’t get it through the school, they need to show proof.”

My dad looked at me. He got up, went to the bathroom in his slippers, and then started searching through the wardrobe.

Scarlett was sitting on the couch. She had my dad watch her favorite soap opera with her. When she saw him go to find my health insurance card, she smiled at me.

She stopped peeling the orange, handed it to me, and said, “If the school doesn’t accept the proof, you can just get it done there. I’ll pay for it.”

I looked at the orange she handed me and, surprisingly, smiled at her.

I said, “It’s okay, Stepmom.”

She froze for a moment, but when she saw me take the orange and start eating it, she quickly snapped out of it, smiled, and began peeling another one for me.

She peeled it so fast and nervously that her nails dug into the orange peel and squeezed out the juice.

“Do you like it? I can buy more tomorrow. It’s sweet, right?”

I felt like laughing as I watched her. A strange, secret satisfaction bubbled up inside me and almost made me grin from ear to ear.

Before she could finish speaking, my dad came out of the bedroom with a dark expression.

He was holding my health insurance card in one hand, and his other hand was clenched into a fist.

His eyes darted between me and Scarlett. Then, through gritted teeth, he asked, “Who touched the drawer in the wardrobe?”

The veins on his arms were bulging, and his expression was terrifying.

As I had lived with him for over ten years, I knew this was the warning sign before he lost his temper.

From the moment my dad started questioning me to glaring at me with cold, sharp eyes and rolling up his sleeves to hit me, it all happened in under two minutes.

When I was little, during the New Year, while everyone else was celebrating and enjoying fireworks, he kicked me out of the house. He pinned me down in the snow and beat me until I was crying and begging for mercy.

It was all because I had dared to tell him at the dinner table to drink less.

When my dad questioned us, Scarlett looked up, confused, and asked, “What drawer?”

She was completely innocent, of course, but I had to act even more innocent than her.

I stayed silent and stared blankly at my dad.

When he did not get an answer, he lost his patience and said directly, “The 20,000 dollars in the drawer is gone.”

Scarlett looked even more confused. “Money? Could it be that you put it somewhere else when you were drunk last time?”

I glanced at my dad, then at Scarlett.

He stared at her face for a long time and tried to find any trace of guilt.

But then he turned to me, grabbed my shoulder, and shouted, “Did you take it?!”

I did not dare look up, and my body started shaking again.

I tried hard to stop my arms from trembling.

A moment later, I decided to look my dad straight in the eye. I calmly said, “I didn’t take it.”

I was lying, just like he had lied countless times to cheat money from my grandparents or make excuses to borrow money from my godfather.

I was his daughter, after all. I had his blood and looked so much like him that anyone could tell we were related with just one glance.

So, naturally, I inherited his ability to lie effortlessly.

He did not push me further. On the surface, he seemed to believe Scarlett’s idea that he must have misplaced the money while drunk, but I knew he was suspicious of everyone in the house.

He started searching everywhere, and Scarlett helped him.

Finally, after all their searching, I watched as my dad pulled a thick wad of cash from Scarlett’s coat pocket.

Dad was not the only one who froze in shock. Scarlett was also rooted to the spot.

Scarlett was not stupid. She knew what it meant for the money to be found in her pocket.

Her face turned pale as a sheet. She grabbed my dad’s sleeve and desperately said, “No, it wasn’t me! How could the money end up in my coat?”