Pity From My Rich Sister? Oops, Her New Family Came Begging Chapter 01

Pity From My Rich Sister? Oops, Her New Family Came Begging Chapter 01

My mother called just as another of my patents was granted, bringing with it a $10 million licensing fee.

Her voice was as distant as ever.

“Your sister’s getting married this weekend. You need to come home.”

She hung up before I could answer.

I opened the family group chat I had muted. Messages were pouring in.

My older brother, Merrick, had actually bothered to tag me.

[Buy something decent to wear. Don’t embarrass Elodie.]

Keaton Lyle, the boy I had grown up with, replied right after him.

[You haven’t been home once in the ten years since high school. If you’d studied harder and gotten into a good university like Elodie, you wouldn’t be struggling so badly now.]

I scrolled through the messages until I reached one from Ottilie Fane, the woman who had once been my best friend.

[Elodie is marrying into the Kincaid family, Carys. If you’re barely scraping by in Aldercrest, come home. The Kincaids can find you an easy local job.]

The Kincaids of Port Cresswell?

Ambrose Kincaid had been pulling strings for three months, trying to get half an hour on my calendar.

***

The messages kept coming.

I lost interest and typed a quick reply.

[Fine. I’ll be there on time.]

My younger sister, Elodie, immediately sent me money through Apple Cash.

[Carys! I can’t believe you’re finally coming home. I’ve missed you so much. Here’s a little something to help with the trip.]

I tapped the notification by mistake.

She had sent me one cent.

Merrick fired off a voice message almost instantly.

“Elodie has enough wedding expenses as it is. You seriously took money from her? Send it back.”

Keaton followed.

“Elodie may have a better job than you and make $95,000 a year, but that doesn’t give you the right to guilt her into paying your expenses.”

Before I could respond, Ottilie sent a sighing reaction GIF.

[Enough. Can everyone stop piling on Carys?]

[She went to the worst college out of all of us, makes the least money, and has been avoiding us for ten years. She finally agreed to come home. Don’t scare her off again.]

I lowered my eyes.

When I was eighteen, I had avoided them.

After Elodie transferred to our high school, she slipped effortlessly into the little circle Keaton, Ottilie, and I had shared.

Before long, just as she had at home, she pushed me into the background.

We would be walking together when the three of them suddenly slowed. Keaton would tilt his chin toward something, Ottilie would follow his gaze, and Elodie would look down with a smile.

I would stand beside them, completely lost.

At first, I asked what was so funny.

Every time, they said it was nothing.

Eventually, I stopped trying to fit into a circle that clearly had no room for me.

But once I earned early admission and a full merit scholarship to the Aldercrest Institute of Technology, I buried myself in coursework and research.

I stopped having time to avoid anyone.

Another message from Elodie pulled me out of the memory.

“You don’t have to send the money back,” she said in a soft voice message. “I know you don’t make much, and Aldercrest is so expensive. You probably have almost nothing left after rent every month. I only wanted to help with your travel costs.”

She added a sympathetic heart emoji.

As expected, the chat immediately filled with praise for how thoughtful she was.

I took a screenshot of the payment and sent one cent back.

[Accidental tap. Returning your penny.]

The chat went silent.

Merrick was the first to erupt.

[Carys Calder, what the hell was that? Was one cent not good enough for you? Elodie invited you to a wedding full of Port Cresswell’s most influential people without making an issue of your associate degree, and now you’re humiliating her over how much she sent?]

Keaton replied next.

[One cent is still the thought that counts.]

Then Ottilie.

[Elodie genuinely cares about you. Did you think about how humiliating that screenshot would be for her?]

I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of coffee as more messages appeared.

At eighteen, this kind of blatant favoritism would have kept me awake all night.

At twenty-eight, I felt nothing.

Elodie sent another voice message, sounding painfully careful.

“Carys, I got so excited when I heard you were coming home that I entered the wrong amount. Please don’t be mad.”

“I know Aldercrest isn’t cheap, so I asked Rhodes to see whether Kincaid Industries had anything open for you.”

“Most of their corporate jobs require a four-year degree, but there might be something at the front desk or in administrative support. It wouldn’t be glamorous, but at least it would be steady.”

Merrick let out a dry laugh.

“She should be grateful you’re willing to put in a word. It’s not your fault she never finished a four-year degree.”

Ten years ago, when the college decisions arrived, Elodie had been accepted by a highly ranked state university.

Based on the grades my family knew about, I had barely qualified for a four-year college.

My parents and Merrick booked Elodie a graduation trip through France and Italy. They left me thirty dollars for an entire week of groceries.

Their explanation had been perfectly righteous.

“If someone who did poorly gets the same reward, how is that fair to the one who worked hard?”

I had wanted to tell them that love was not something parents should award based on grades.

Then my mother hurled a ceramic bowl at my forehead.

So I swallowed the words.

I also swallowed the truth about the gold medal I had won at an international science competition and the full scholarship that had secured my place at AIT.

A knock sounded at my office door.

My research coordinator, Perrin Holt, stepped inside.

“Dr. Calder, the Kincaid family reached out again. This time, they went through Dr. Orin Bascombe. They’re asking whether you can spare half an hour for a meeting.”

Kincaid Industries had poured hundreds of millions into its neural-interface program.

For two years, the entire project had been stalled by a core neural-signal decoding algorithm.

One of my patents solved that exact problem.

Perrin hesitated.

“Would you like me to turn them down again?”

I smiled faintly.

“No. Tell Mr. Kincaid I’ll be in Port Cresswell this weekend.”