Post-Divorce Unwanted Kid: Receipts for Every Spend Chapter 04

Post-Divorce Unwanted Kid: Receipts for Every Spend Chapter 04 Rumors

Harrison handed me a microphone-no idea where he’d gotten it from.

With Harrison’s encouragement, I took it and stepped forward.

“Everyone shut up!”

The noise died down, and suddenly, all eyes were on me. Some people looked disgusted, others curious, a few sympathetic, and plenty skeptical.

I walked onto the stage and stared down at these two pathetic excuses for human beings.

“They’re lying,” I said.

My mom lunged at me like some kind of wild animal, but I dodged easily.

“What proof do you have? You’re the liar here! You’ll say anything to get out of trouble!”

“Oh, I’ve got proof. All of it’s right here.” I held up my backpack.

“But before we get to that, I’d like everyone here-students and teachers-to watch a,little 36-slide presentation first.”

I calmly pulled a USB drive from my bag and plugged it into the projector.

The massive screen lit up with screenshots from the “Feeding the Baggage” group chat.

Fraud. Receipts. Rejected. Playing victim…

The whole room erupted.

Harrison caught my signal and pulled out a stack of papers from my bag-my medical records and surgery payment receipts. He walked straight up to my dad and shoved the documents in his face.

“Look closely. This is the surgical record for a ruptured appendix. This so-called fraud of hers? This is what you’re talking about?”

Students around us crowded closer to look, and the mood shifted instantly.

“Holy shit, that’s actually a surgery bill!”

“This is so messed up. Her appendix ruptured, and they’re calling it fraud?”

“What kind of parents ARE these?”

Mom’s face went pale, and she lunged forward to grab the paper and rip it up.

“It’s fake! She forged it!”

Harrison stared at her coldly.

“Hospitals keep digital records. Anyone can verify this. But you two? You’re her parents, and you weren’t

even there for her surgery. Instead, you spent hours arguing in a group chat over a few thousand bucks That’s what you call love?”

I stood behind Harrison and watched my parents get torn apart by the crowd like they were in some kind of circus act. That weight I’d been carrying for years-it felt like it finally cracked open just a little.

The whole scene ended when security kicked everyone out. My parents slunk away, but not before shooting me one last look and mouthing “you’re gonna pay for this.”

I thought they’d back off for a while.

Three days later, I got served with a lawsuit.

They were suing me for financial support, claiming they’d worked their fingers to the bone raising me, and now that I was making money, I’d turned my back on them and refused to take care of them.

I actually laughed when I read it.

I was 18 years old and still in school, they were both in their prime working years, and they had the audacity to demand support payments?

“What are you worried about?” Harrison folded the lawsuit into a paper airplane and tossed it in the trash. “They’ll lose. No question.”

“Yeah, but it’s still disgusting.” I gritted my teeth.

“Then let’s make it even more disgusting for them.”

Harrison handed me an invitation.

“National Collegiate Programming Competition. First place gets 500 thousand dollars. You want to take that bet?”

I stared at the gold card, and my heart started pounding.

Five hundred thousand dollars.

For someone like me, that was an impossible amount of money.

“What’s the bet?”

“I’m betting you can win first place. If you do, the money’s yours, and I’ll deal with your parents. If you lose, you work for me for ten years. For free.”

Harrison looked at me and gave this half-smile. “Gwen, you’re too talented to waste your time dealing with trash like them. Get high enough, and all they can do is look up at you.”

I took the invitation. “Deal.”

The next month was absolute hell. I had classes during the day, then I needed to pull all-nighters at the studio writing code. Harrison was a demon of a coach, and if my code had even one unnecessary line. he’d delete it without mercy and make me start over.

“Garbage… Rewrite it… You actually thought that logic was acceptable?”

His brutal criticism pushed my skills through the roof, but my parents weren’t sitting idle either.

Finished

They were spreading rumors in the family group chat about what an ungrateful daughter I was, saying I’d found some sugar daddy and made dirty money but wouldn’t even acknowledge my own parents.

They even tracked down my high school friends to dig for information about what I was up to now.

My cousin secretly messaged me. “Gwen, your parents are saying you struck it rich, and they’re plotting how to get your money for your brother’s down payment.”