Dumped For Pennies, Returning With Billions

Cari Butler shot up from the narrow mattress.

Her lungs pulled in air violently, making her chest ache.

Cold sweat coated her forehead, dripping down her temples and stinging her eyes.

She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her temples. Her skull felt like it was splitting open.

Massive waves of unfamiliar memories forced their way into her brain, causing her stomach to churn with nausea.

She opened her eyes and blinked against the dim light.

Her vision scanned the peeling paint on the walls, the leaking water pipe in the corner, and the cheap luggage scattered across the sticky linoleum floor.

The air smelled like stale sweat and cheap bleach.

Her breathing slowed as the memories settled. She realized exactly what had happened.

She had transmigrated. She was now the fake daughter of the wealthy Zamora family, sharing the same name, and she had just been kicked out of her luxurious life.

A massive crash shattered the silence.

The flimsy wooden door of the dorm room flew open, hitting the wall with a loud bang.

Rory Corrigan stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. A malicious smirk stretched across her face.

Rory stepped into the room, the sharp click of her heels echoing. She waved a hand in front of her nose, her face twisting in disgust at the damp smell of the room.

She held a thick textbook in her other hand and slammed it down hard on Cari's only intact desk.

A cloud of dust rose into the air.

"Look at the little plucked bird," Rory said loudly, looking down at Cari. "Finally rolled back to the slums where you belong."

Cari slowly raised her head.

The fear and weakness that usually clouded the original owner's eyes were gone. Instead, Cari's gaze was sharp, cold, and entirely adult.

Her eyes immediately locked onto the thick, sparkling diamond necklace resting against Rory's collarbone.

It was a custom Tiffany piece.

Cari's mind automatically calculated the value based on her past life. That necklace had to be worth at least eight thousand dollars.

Rory noticed the direction of Cari's stare. She puffed out her chest and reached up, her fingers playing with the largest diamond.

"Like it?" Rory bragged, her voice echoing in the hallway. "Harper gave it to me. It cost a whole eighty cents."

Cari's eyebrows pulled together instantly.

Eighty cents.

She thought her ears were malfunctioning.

"Eighty cents?" Cari repeated, her voice dripping with pure, unhidden disbelief.

Rory took the tone as jealousy. Her smirk grew wider.

"That's right," Rory sneered. "A broke loser like you will never see eighty cents in your entire pathetic life."

Cari's brain spun. Eighty cents for a custom Tiffany necklace?

She wondered if Rory was using some obscure American slang to insult her.

Cari decided she was done listening to this nonsense.

"Did you buy your brain at a discount store for a penny, or were you just born this stupid?" Cari asked, her tone flat and brutal.

Rory froze. It took her a full second to process the insult.

The smugness vanished, and her cheeks turned a dark, angry red.

"You bitch!" Rory yelled, pointing a shaking finger at Cari's nose. "I will make sure you are dead in this school! You hear me?"

Outside the door, a few students had gathered. They sucked in their breath, whispering to each other in shock that Cari actually talked back.

Cari did not hesitate. She stood up from the bed.

She stepped directly into Rory's personal space, using her taller frame to look down at the girl.

The air around Cari felt like ice.

Rory felt the physical pressure of Cari's stare. Her breath hitched, and she instinctively took a step backward.

Her high heel caught on the uneven floor, and her ankle twisted slightly.

Rory scrambled to catch her balance. Her face burned with humiliation.

"You'll regret this," Rory spat out, her voice trembling slightly. She turned around and practically ran out of the room.

The students in the hallway scattered immediately, terrified of catching the fake daughter's bad luck.

Cari watched them go, then sat back down on the edge of the bed.

She picked up the original owner's phone. The screen was covered in a web of cracks.

Her thumb rubbed against the sharp edge of the broken glass as she tapped the news app.

The headline at the top of the screen made her heart stop.

"Top Manhattan Mansion Sells for Record-Breaking Three Thousand Five Hundred Dollars, Shocking Wall Street."

Cari's thumb froze on the screen.

Her pupils shrank. Her chest tightened until she could barely pull in oxygen.

She stared at the numbers, the cracked glass distorting the text.

A crazy, impossible theory began to form in her mind.

The next morning, the reality of that three-thousand-five-hundred-dollar mansion still sat heavy in Cari's chest as she walked into the lecture hall.

She adjusted the straps of her worn-out backpack and stepped through the doors.

The loud chatter in the room died for a single, heavy second.

Students quickly looked away, shifting in their seats like she carried a disease. No one wanted to be near the disgraced fake daughter.

Cari kept her face blank. She walked up the steps to the very back row and sat in an empty corner seat.

She pulled out a notebook and a pen, resting her hands on the desk.

Professor Theron Wallace walked up to the podium. He tapped his knuckles against the chalkboard.

"Listen up," Professor Wallace announced. "The core film project for this semester starts today."

He explained that the class would divide into groups. They had until next week to secure a filming location that fit the theme of a high-end, luxury lifestyle.

The heavy wooden doors of the classroom swung open.

Harper Zamora walked in, surrounded by three of her followers.

Harper wore a custom-tailored suit that looked simple but screamed money. She smiled softly and waved at the class.

She walked straight to the center seat in the front row, soaking in the jealous and admiring stares from the room.

Rory Corrigan immediately leaned over from the next seat.

"Harper," Rory asked loudly, making sure the whole room could hear. "Where did you go for the weekend?"

Harper lowered her voice, but kept it just loud enough to carry.

"My parents rented a beach house for me in the Hamptons," Harper said casually.

Rory gasped, her voice echoing up the tiered seating. "The Hamptons? The prime lots? The monthly rent must be astronomical!"

Harper covered her mouth with her hand and let out a soft, fake laugh.

"It wasn't too bad, really," Harper said, looking down modestly. "Only about eight dollars a month."

The entire classroom erupted into a collective gasp.

Students in the front rows turned their heads, staring at Harper with pure worship in their eyes.

In the back corner, Cari's hand jerked.

The tip of her pen dug into the notebook paper, tearing a deep line across the page.

Her mind did the math again. A Hampton beach house for eight dollars. This world was completely insane.

Professor Wallace clapped his hands loudly, cutting through the noise.

"Alright, settle down," he said. "Which group wants to share their location plan first?"

Rory suddenly stood up. She turned around and pointed her finger straight at Cari in the back corner.

A nasty smile stretched across Rory's face.

"Professor, Cari should handle the location," Rory announced loudly. "She spent years living in the Zamora mansion. She knows all about luxury."

Every head in the room snapped toward Cari.

Their eyes were filled with mockery and cruel amusement.

Harper turned around in her seat. Her face shifted into a mask of pure pity.

"Rory, don't be mean," Harper said, her voice dripping with fake sweetness. "Cari can barely afford to eat right now."

Harper paused, letting the silence hang before delivering the final blow.

"Cari, if you really can't find a place, I can ask my parents to let you use the maid's quarters at our house for your shoot."

The words "maid's quarters" triggered a roar of laughter from the entire class.

Cari felt the malice hitting her from all sides. Her stomach tightened, but her eyes grew colder.

She slowly stood up from her chair.

Her movements were steady. There was no panic in her body.

She looked straight into Harper's fake, pitying eyes. Her voice rang out, clear and sharp.

"Keep your maid's room, Harper," Cari said flatly. "I will provide a location far more high-end than your cheap little Hampton rental."

Rory clutched her stomach and laughed loudly.

"Are you going to take us to a homeless shelter?" Rory mocked.

Professor Wallace pushed his glasses up his nose. He looked at Cari with a strict frown.

"Miss Butler, if you fail to secure a location, you will fail this course," he warned.

Cari grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.

She walked down the steps and out the door without looking back.

Cari pushed through the heavy glass doors of the university cafeteria.

Her stomach cramped with sharp hunger pains. The smell of grilled cheese burgers filled the air, making her mouth water.

She walked over to a self-service reloading machine against the wall.

She dug into her pocket and pulled out the original owner's campus card. The edges of the plastic were worn and peeling.

Cari slid the card into the slot. The screen prompted her to enter a reload amount.

Out of pure habit from her past life, she typed in the number one hundred.

The moment her finger hit the green confirm button, the machine let out a piercing, high-pitched red alarm.

The screen flashed violently.

The cashier, who had been dozing on a stool nearby, jerked awake. His eyes went wide with panic as he looked at Cari.

Two large campus security guards sprinted across the cafeteria.

Their hands rested heavily on the batons at their belts. They looked at Cari like she was holding a bomb.

The students waiting in line backed away quickly, staring at her in fear.

"Step away from the machine!" one of the guards yelled. "Are you trying to hack the financial grid?"

Cari raised both her hands in the air, her heart pounding against her ribs.

"I just wanted to put a hundred dollars on my card to buy lunch," she said, her voice tight.

The cashier sucked in a sharp breath.

"A hundred dollars?" the cashier screamed. "A hundred dollars could buy a massive luxury estate in Beverly Hills!"

Cari felt like she had been hit by a truck.

She stood frozen. The blood drained from her face. A wild, impossible thought struck her, but she immediately pushed it away. "Ten thousand times? That's completely absurd... But if it's true... then my savings?" She backed away from the machine, her hands shaking as she pulled out her phone. She needed proof. She had to verify this insane theory before she lost her mind. As she stared at the screen, all the absurd pieces of information finally snapped together in her brain. The prices and the value of money in this world had been compressed by exactly ten thousand times.

While the guards checked the machine for a system error, Cari grabbed her card from the slot.

She turned and ran out of the cafeteria as fast as her legs could carry her.

She did not stop until she reached a secluded wooden bench by the campus lake.

Her chest heaved. She gasped for air, her fingers shaking as she pulled her cracked phone from her pocket.

She took a deep breath to steady her racing heart and tapped the familiar Bank of America app icon.

The facial recognition scanned her features.

The screen loaded, displaying the original owner's account balance in bold black numbers.

$854,000.00.

Cari stared at the number. Her eyes burned.

In this world, that balance gave her the purchasing power of eight and a half billion dollars.

Her hands trembled with excitement. She immediately tapped the transfer button, trying to move one single cent to buy a burger.

A bright red pop-up blocked the screen.

[FUNDS STATUS: ESCROWED]

Cari's smile vanished. Her stomach dropped like a stone.

She slammed her hand against the wooden bench in frustration.

Suddenly, the phone screen went completely black.

A golden, high-tech interface slowly faded into view.

Large letters in the center read: WEALTH UNLOCK PROTOCOL.

Below the title was a detailed escrow agreement.

Cari read the terms quickly. Her eyes darted back and forth across the screen.

The only way to unlock her frozen funds was to complete specific gig economy tasks.

The protocol stated that the wages earned from these gigs would unlock her escrowed money at a one-to-one ratio based on her original world's currency value.

If she earned a daily wage of twenty dollars in gig pay, it would unlock two hundred thousand dollars of her available balance.

Cari let out a breath.

This golden finger gave her billions, but forced her to work at the bottom of society to access it.

She immediately opened the app store and downloaded a local gig app called GigMatch.

She registered an account.

The first urgent, high-paying job on the home page caught her eye.

It was a banquet server position at the Cloud Crest luxury hotel.

The job required her to start immediately. The daily pay was twenty cents.

In her current reality, twenty cents meant unlocking two thousand dollars of cold, hard cash.

Cari did not hesitate. She hit the accept button.

Her eyes locked onto the screen, burning with a desperate hunger for wealth.