Cost Of His Cruel Billionaire Game

When the wealthy Whitfield family finally found their biological daughter, my eighteen years as their adopted child instantly meant nothing.

My adoptive parents and my fiancé handed me an invoice for $12.4 million in back child-rearing costs, demanding I repay it by selling my memories to the Memory Bank.

"You need to learn some humility and sacrifice something real if you want to earn your place back in this family."

At the welcome gala, they stripped me of my inheritance, banished me to a table by the kitchen doors, and my fiancé publicly called off our engagement.

No one remembered that it was also my birthday.

They assumed I would sell a few trivial childhood memories, feel the sting of their discipline, and come crawling back to beg for their mercy.

They genuinely believed my love for them was an infinite resource to be squeezed, that every hug, every lullaby, every promise could be given a cold, precise price tag.

So I gave them exactly what they asked for.

To clear the debt in full, I had every core emotional memory of them permanently extracted. The family and the man I once loved became strangers to me, completely and forever.

Chapter 1

Aimee POV:

"This invoice totals twelve million four hundred thousand dollars. That is what you have owed the Whitfield family for eighteen years of support."

Hank threw the forty-page itemization onto the mahogany desk. The thick edge of the paper scraped the back of my hand open.

Across the desk, the man I had called father for eighteen years did not look at the blood seeping from my skin. He pushed a second document toward me instead.

"As the creditor's representative, I have already signed the asset transfer agreement. Before the gala tonight, go to the Memory Bank and sign your extraction consent."

A bright red bead slid down my knuckle and dropped beside the figure on the first page.

I looked down at it.

The custom child's violin from when I was adopted at six. The private school endowment fees. The cleaning and insurance premium on the couture gown from my eighteenth birthday coming-of-age ceremony. Every line itemized, every interest calculation accurate to two decimal places.

"Breann spent eighteen years suffering in a foster home," said my fiancé, Clint, from the armchair by the floor-to-ceiling window. He held a bone china coffee cup and looked at me the way a man looks at an overpriced piece of old furniture that needs to be liquidated. "We cannot have her come home and feel that an outsider is taking advantage of this family."

"Hank and I have already spoken to the Memory Bank," Clint said, setting down the cup. His tone was calm to the point of cruelty. "You have no real assets in your name, but the Memory Bank pays very well for premium memories. Selling some childhood memories would clear the debt and rid you of attachments you were never entitled to."

"This is the settlement agreement." Hank tapped the desk with his fountain pen. "Tonight is Breann's official welcome gala. I do not want a single whisper about property disputes at that party. Sign it, and walk out of this study."

I did not scream at them. I did not burst into tears the way they had expected.

I simply bent down, pulled the handkerchief from my suit pocket, wiped the blood off my hand, and picked up the settlement agreement.

On the assignee line, Hank Whitfield had already signed. The beneficiary account was registered directly under Breann's name. The consideration was stated with perfect clarity: "equivalent memory assets." All that was missing was my signature as the debtor.

To them, I was a canary with its feathers plucked. Apart from obediently selling off a few inconsequential memories and lingering at the edge of the family as a decorative companion, I had no options.

"I understand," I said, folding the document away. My voice was so calm it surprised even me.

Hank frowned, briefly unsettled by how easily I had complied, then recovered his lofty indifference. "The appraiser is waiting downstairs. He will have a car take you to the Memory Bank. Initial appraisal completed by five o'clock, and be backstage at the hotel by six."

Half an hour later, Midtown Manhattan. The Memory Bank's Midtown branch.

Hank and Clint believed they had already bought the intake appraiser with money and influence. They believed he would mechanically skim off a few painless scraps of memory, value them at the lowest possible discount, and lock me into the debt pit forever.

They did not know that when I walked through the doors of the Memory Bank, I went straight to the chief appraiser's office on the top floor.

Behind the desk, Dr. Vance, the chief memory appraiser, pushed his rimless glasses up and examined the classified file and the settlement credit document I handed him.

"Miss Whitfield, you are certain you want to bypass standard review and initiate the highest-classification Full Settlement Procedure?" His voice was low and grave. "Under the Federal Memory Asset Settlement Act, data resold to research institutions is permanently anonymized. But to guarantee the legal validity of the debt settlement, the transfer audit report issued to the creditor will retain the complete reconciliation index and notarized certification of every source event."

He paused, studying me sharply. "That means once the procedure begins, those locked memories will be stripped from your mind and permanently, irreversibly erased. But in legal terms, every specific memory will be printed in full on the settlement invoice served to the Whitfield family."

"I understand that perfectly," I said, sitting straight, my expression utterly still.

"Then what do you intend to use to offset a debt of this size? Twelve million four hundred thousand dollars."

I took a black pen from my bag and signed my name on the final line of the authorization form.

"Every core memory of the eighteen years I spent loving them."

Vance looked at the signature, and something trembled behind his eyes. He pressed the intercom on his desk and gave the order in a low voice.

"Implant the remote memory resonance anchor. At eight thirty tonight, at the climax of the welcome gala, execute the final settlement."

Aimee POV:

At seven thirty that evening, the Hilton's top-floor ballroom.

The whole hall glittered under crystal chandeliers, champagne towers throwing back cold, brilliant light. Manhattan's elite filed in dressed to the teeth, glasses clinking.

I wore a dark wool suit washed stiff, and sat alone in the furthest corner of the ballroom. Table twenty-four.

It was wedged against the service corridor to the kitchen. Every time the curtain swung open, a gust of greasy noise and cold air came with it. Hank had put me here deliberately: it let the family display its "generosity" in not having thrown the adopted daughter out, while physical distance kept me pressed firmly into the mud.

"Is my sister cold sitting all the way over here?"

The voice was sweet and soft above my head. Breann drifted over to the table holding a glass of pink champagne.

She wore a custom tulle gown worth six figures and the South Sea pearl necklace Hank had personally bid on at auction, like a peacock fed on expensive jewelry.

"It's all my fault." Breann's eyes went pink, and though her words were apologetic, something gloating and pleased ran underneath them. "If I hadn't come back to this family, my sister wouldn't have sunk to sitting in a corner meant for the servants... If it upsets you, I can ask Father to find you a cleaner chair before the program starts."

I did not even lift my eyelids. I just ran my fingers slowly around the cold rim of the glass.

"Save your fake sympathy, Breann. Nobody needs to pity an ingrate like that."

Easton came over holding a glass, immaculate in a tailored suit, his face full of contempt. He looked down at me the way you look at a stray dog that has taken up residence on a wealthy family's doorstep.

Then he pulled something from his pocket: a battered silver harmonica case, paint chipped off the corners.

When I was seven, Easton was hospitalized with an asthma attack. I saved my allowance for six months and combed the secondhand markets of Manhattan to buy it for his birthday. For the next decade he carried it everywhere, showing it off to anyone who would listen, boasting that his little sister had given him this treasure.

Now his long fingers flicked at the tin box with distaste, and the corner of his mouth curled into something cruel.

"Aimee, you always loved bribing me with cheap junk like this, didn't you?"

Easton sneered, and turned his wrist over.

Crack.

The case hit the tile by my foot. The body split with a jagged, discordant note.

Then Easton lifted his polished custom shoe and, in front of several waiters and guests, ground it down into the case.

The squeal of twisting metal echoed absurdly along the edge of the noisy ballroom.

"Breann gave me a Patek Philippe today." Easton looked down at me from his full height, his heel flattening the harmonica - and with it every clumsy piece of childhood affection I had ever poured into it - into scrap. "As for the garbage you give me, it makes me sick to look at. And drop that dead victim's face, Aimee. In this house, you were always worthless except for wagging your tail and begging."

Fragments of broken metal spattered across my shoes.

A faint numbness spread through my chest, like a nerve soaked in cold water. Not the sharp pain I had expected. Just an empty kind of detachment.

"The program starts in ten minutes. What are you staring at?"

Clint had appeared at the table without my noticing. He did not even glance at the crushed harmonica on the floor. He only frowned and slapped a thick stack of printed pages onto my table.

"These are your remarks for tonight," Clint said, his voice low and heavy with pressure. "When the emcee calls your name, you walk up to the main stage and read every word of that, in front of every camera in this room."

I glanced down at the page.

It was packed with self-abasement.

[I, Aimee, acknowledge my own worthlessness and thank the Whitfield family for eighteen years of charity... I hereby voluntarily renounce my engagement and my inheritance, and kneel to the true pearl, Breann, in apology...]

"When you finish, bow to Breann and apologize on your own initiative." Clint adjusted his diamond cufflinks, his eyes freezing cold. "Put away that pathetic self-respect of yours. If anything goes wrong tonight, I will make sure you spend the rest of your life paying back the twelve million four hundred thousand you owe this family."

The three of them stood together: one draped in jewelry worth a fortune, one standing over eighteen years of my belongings ground into the floor, one personally handing me the rope to hang my own dignity with.

I looked at them, folded the humiliating script away, and said one word.

"Fine."

Aimee POV:

At eight fifteen, the welcome gala officially began.

The lights dropped, and a few searing follow spots cut precisely into the center of the main stage.

Hank and Felicia walked Breann out between them, one on each arm, dressed to the nines. Easton and Clint flanked them like loyal guards, and the true bloodline stood at the center of it all, the way a constellation surrounds its brightest star.

Below the stage, the flashes of dozens of New York's top news outlets merged into a single white daylight, shutters crashing like a downpour.

"Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen." Felicia took the microphone with effortless grace, her face arranged in the flawless smile of a great lady, tears glinting at exactly the right corner of her eyes. "Eighteen years ago, an accident left the Whitfield family's true flesh and blood lost to the world. Today, God has finally returned our pearl to our arms."

Applause and murmurs of admiration rolled through the room.

Felicia turned, stroked the top of Breann's head with deep affection, then straightened, and her gaze swept over the packed tables and came to rest, faintly, on table twenty-four.

She took a red legal document from her assistant and held it high for every long lens in the room.

"As a responsible mother, and to set right what was wronged, I hereby declare, in my capacity as sole trustee, a major resolution of this family!"

The room held its breath.

"I have executed the final binding instrument. Effective immediately, the adopted daughter Aimee's distribution rights under her nineteenth-year trust are fully revoked!"

Felicia's voice rang out, sharp with the pleasure of passing sentence. "From this moment, every trust dividend and every property income formerly held in her name is transferred, in full and without compensation, to the true heir: Breann Whitfield!"

"As for Aimee-" Felicia's mouth curved coldly. "This family raised her for eighteen years and has done more than enough. From now on, she enjoys not one shred of Whitfield protection."

A gasp went through the room. The elite leaned into each other, eyes turning toward the dim back rows.

Breann nestled against Felicia, covering her face and weeping, while the corner of her mouth lifted in triumph inside the shadow.

But stripping me of my property was clearly not enough to satisfy their need to break the last bone in my spine.

Hank took the microphone from Felicia and stepped forward.

"So that all of New York may witness the magnanimity and decency of the Whitfield family," Hank's voice boomed through the hall, generous as a god granting alms to insects, "tonight we give Aimee one final chance to correct her mistakes."

Hank raised his arm and pointed a thick finger straight at table twenty-four beside the kitchen corridor.

"Now, let the adopted daughter Aimee come to the stage. In front of every camera here, she will read her welcome address and offer her sister sincere repentance and blessing."

The white follow spot overhead swung around instantly, like a cold scalpel, slicing through the darkness of the hall and pinning me, hard and merciless, to table twenty-four.

Guests around me drew back, afraid of catching whatever bad luck clung to me.

Every long lens, every contemptuous stare, every whispered remark turned in that instant into a tide of malice that closed over my head.

On stage, Hank looked down at me with the menace of a man who has never been contradicted. Clint stood at the edge of the platform, cold pressure in his eyes. Easton had his hands in his pockets, wearing the smirk of a man settling in to enjoy a show.

I sat in that blinding glare and rose slowly to my feet.

The hands of the watch on my wrist slid, without a sound, to eight twenty-eight.

Deep in my skull, the remote memory resonance anchor emitted a very faint hum, as though something cold were spreading quietly through the core of my soul.

I smoothed the hem of my dark suit, and beneath the slow dissection of a thousand eyes, I walked step by step toward the execution platform.