The Hot-Tempered Sister: Fists for Thugs, Feet for the Rich Chapter 1

The day my mom chased me down the street with a broom, making me duck and weave like a stray dog, my billionaire biological parents showed up.

They told me I’d suffered all these years.

As I watched the translucent comments float past my eyes:

【Suffered? She beat a gang of thugs into calling her ‘Big Sis’ just yesterday!】

I felt nothing. In fact, I was tempted to ask if they needed a resident enforcer.

That is, until the comments flooded my vision: 【The fake heiress is being cornered and bullied in the school bathroom by the campus kingpin! She’s crying so hard she can barely breathe!】

I yanked the car door open. “Let’s go. We’re going home now.”

It wasn’t that I wanted a family reunion.

It was that my fists were starting to itch.

* * *

The broom whistled past the back of my head as my mom's roar shook the cheap plaster of the surrounding buildings. "You little brat! If I don't skin you alive today, I'll take your last name!"

I dodged with practiced ease.

The air was filled with the jeers of our neighbors and the crunch of cheap snacks.

Just then, a sleek black car, its sharp lines screaming a price tag that could buy our entire block, glided to a silent stop at the end of the alley. It was like a panther stalking into the heart of the slums.

The doors opened, and a man and a woman stepped out. He was in a tailored suit, radiating a quiet authority. She was draped in jewels, her eyes red-rimmed.

Their gazes locked onto me with an unnerving precision, filled with a strange mix of excitement and… guilt?

My mom froze, broom still in hand. She looked at the car, then at the couple, her own formidable presence shrinking by half. "You damn girl," she muttered under her breath, "what kind of trouble did you get into now? Who are these people?"

I ignored her, squinting at the couple. I didn't recognize them, but there was a strange… familiarity?

The wealthy woman rushed forward, grabbing my dirt-stained hand as tears welled up instantly. "My child… my poor, long-lost child…"

I yanked my hand back, my face a blank mask. Nice acting, I thought.

And in that exact moment, a few lines of semi-transparent text drifted past my eyes like ghosts:

【Poor?? She single-handedly took down three guys trying to collect protection money last week!】

【Old Man Hemlock's psycho goose now flattens itself against the wall when it sees her coming!】

【The only ones suffering on this block are the local delinquents!】

Me: "..."

Right. So I had an invisible live commentary crew.

The man in the suit, my biological father, Richard Hawthorne, stepped forward, his voice heavy with sorrow.

"Zoe, we're your real parents. There was a mix-up at the hospital seventeen years ago. We've come to take you home."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over our crumbling tenement and the broom in my mom's hand, before adding, "There's… another daughter at home. Your sister. She's frail and timid, and we thought it best she stay with us. Don't worry, we'll treat you both equally."

The comments exploded:

【Whoa! Here comes the classic trope! The real heiress has arrived, clear the way!】

【Catfight with the fake heiress! Hair-pulling! Let's go, I live for this!】

【What catfight? You guys don't know? The fake heiress has a stutter. She's too scared to even talk back when she's bullied.】

A stutter? A timid crybaby?

I wasn't afraid of anything, and my fists were solid as rocks, but I couldn't stand two things:

One, people who stuttered and couldn't get a damn word out.

Two, people who burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

Both scenarios made me antsy, irritable, and my knuckles ache.

"No thanks." I turned on my heel and headed for our crooked front door. "It's fine here. I'm free. You can go back to wherever you came from."

【Aww, too bad. If the MC goes back, she'll end up at the same school as the fake heiress, Blackwood Prep.】

【I heard the fake heiress gets bullied all the time because of her stutter. The rich kids there love to make fun of her.】

【Didn't they lock her in a bathroom last time? Cried her eyes out, and no one helped.】

【Someone even made her kneel and bark like a dog…】

A stutter? Cornered in a bathroom? Kneel and bark like a dog?

My eyelid twitched violently.

My capacity for empathy was basically zero, but I had two fatal flaws: I couldn't stand watching people who couldn't fight, and I couldn't stand watching people who did fight—the wrong way. The first made me impatient, the second made my hands itch.

Especially since every thug on my block already called me "Big Sis." There was no challenge left.

"Let's go." I spun around, yanked open the door of the luxury car, and slid inside. "Now. Immediately."

Richard and Eleanor Hawthorne were clearly not expecting such a rapid change of heart. They stared for a second, then their faces lit up with joy.

Richard quickly retrieved a briefcase from the trunk and tried to shove it into my adoptive parents' hands. There was no polite back-and-forth. I just rolled down the window. "Any more delays and I'm getting out."

My adoptive parents instantly let go of the case.

As the car pulled away from the slums, Richard and Eleanor tried to make awkward small talk.

"Zoe, what do you like to do? Movies? Shopping?" Eleanor asked tentatively.

"Fighting," I said, closing my eyes.

The car fell silent. The comments were a stream of【HAHAHAHA】.