Chapter 1

The day before the Fourth of July holiday.

My biological parents suddenly showed up at my door.

They got straight to the point: "Your brother is sick. He needs your kidney. If you agree, we'll give you ten million dollars as compensation."

I tugged the corner of my mouth into a smile and agreed without a second's hesitation.

Because I knew that even if I refused, they would just drag me away by force.

After all, the Sinclair Group was a giant ship, and a nobody from a broken-down family like me had no business picking a fight with it.

But what they didn't know was that I had been reborn, and I had come back to collect what I was owed.

In this life, I had built up a fortune.

Crushing the Sinclair Group would be easier than crushing an ant.

I had held off for so long only because I wanted them to know what it felt like to be the mouse while the cat played with it.

Soon enough, the day of the surgery came.

The moment I got the transfer notification, I gave a faint smile.

"Dad, thanks for the compensation. I'll be going now!"

1

The words had barely left my mouth when Gregory Sinclair froze.

He pointed at me. "Scarlett, you... you're playing me?"

"What else?" I smiled and yanked the IV needle out of the back of my hand, and blood welled up at once.

It dripped onto the blinding white hospital bed and bloomed into a strange red flower.

Then, before he could react, I threw open the window and jumped out of the second-floor hospital room.

Gregory's freshly polished Bentley happened to be parked right below.

I landed square on the hood, and the parking lot security guard let out a yelp and jumped about a foot in the air.

I rolled off the front of the car, wiped away the blood from my scraped arm, and took off running for the hospital's back exit.

Only then did Gregory snap out of it. He roared at the bodyguards by the door, "Hurry! Get her back here, now!"

As I ran, I pulled out my phone and sent a message to the journalist I'd arranged to meet ahead of time.

When Gregory first came to me, we never signed any agreement.

And the ten million he'd transferred to me was marked as a voluntary gift.

As long as I could get out of the hospital and reach the journalist,

he could be furious enough to drop dead and he'd still have to swallow it.

Besides, the money my scumbag dad had built his fortune on wasn't exactly clean.

I wasn't afraid of him making a big scene.

If it really blew up, that would suit me just fine.

By then, the bodyguards had already burst out of the hospital.

They were hollering at me to stop.

I looked back and rolled my eyes at them. "You guys make, what, a couple of quarters a month? Is that worth running yourselves to death over?"

That seemed to set them off, because they ran even faster.

Seeing that, I gave my own mouth a hard smack.

"That's what you get for running your mouth!" Then I ran even harder for my life.

But before long, the burly bodyguards still had me cornered in an alley.

The lead bodyguard was gasping for breath.

His face was dark with anger as he pointed at me. "Run... go on, keep running..."

I leaned against the cold wall, trembling all over. "Mr. Bodyguard... you're a working stiff too. Working stiffs shouldn't make life hard for other working stiffs... Can't you just let me go?"

The lead bodyguard sneered. "Working stiffs gotta eat too. Mr. Sinclair's paying, so we do the job." With that, he reached out a big, rough hand toward me.

I sighed helplessly. "Fine. You're forcing my hand... Don't blame me for not holding back."

The bodyguard in front of me reacted like he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world.

He clutched his stomach and burst out laughing, then pointed at his own head. "Come on... hit me right here, don't be shy! If you can knock me out, I'll let you go today. My call!"

My eyes lit up. "You... you mean it?"

He laughed and nodded over and over. "I'm a man of my word!"

"All right then. Happy to oblige!"

I loosened up my wrist, raised my hand, and slapped him.

The next second,

the bodyguard went flying backward.

In that instant,

the air itself seemed to freeze.

The remaining bodyguards looked at each other,

then stared at me like I was some kind of monster.

I grinned and pointed at them. "Well? Still want to chase me?"