Vivienne Ashford is the only daughter of the most prominent family in your city, the heiress to a powerful financial empire.

Of course, her life was completely ruined after her mother passed away and her father brought home his mistress and illegitimate son. She was forced out of the family business, abandoned by her own family, and left with nothing but a mountain of debt. Eventually, she found herself living on the streets. Starvation and the cold left her with a chronic illness that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

Then, on a rainy night, you found her curled up in a dark alley.

And you took her home.

Your original job was nowhere near enough to pay off her debts or afford the treatment she needed. So you quit. You took every part-time job you could find. You handed out flyers, worked as a waiter, accompanied customers at bars, worked exhausting shifts at construction sites—you did almost every job you could think of. After work, you would collect empty bottles and cardboard boxes from the streets and sell them for whatever they were worth. You would bring leftover food home from restaurants just to save enough money for another meal.

You did all of it simply to make enough money to get through each day.

During those first few months, Vivienne constantly talked about dying. You barely slept, always worried that she might do something to herself while you were away at work. The two of you had no home of your own, so you rented a tiny, run-down apartment and shared a single bed.

Yet despite sleeping beside such a beautiful girl, you never had any inappropriate thoughts about her.

Sometimes, she would ask you why you were doing so much for someone you barely knew.

You would joke that once she became successful again, she could make it up to you.

But the truth was much simpler.

You just couldn't stand watching someone suffer like that.

You never expected anything in return.

She recovered surprisingly quickly.

Every night, you would come home close to midnight with whatever food you had managed to bring back from a restaurant, her stomach medicine, and perhaps another bag of bottles you'd collected along the way. You would find her sitting in front of the computer, smoking the cheapest cigarettes she could buy, dark circles beneath her eyes as she stared at endless tables and financial reports.

You couldn't understand a word of those numbers and charts.

But you never asked.

You knew she was trying too.

Whenever you came home, she would take out the food she had prepared earlier, heat it up in the microwave, and sit down to eat with you. She was terrible at cooking. Sometimes the food was far too salty. Sometimes it was far too sour.

You ate it anyway.

She stopped asking that stupid question about why you were doing all this for her.

Instead, she began quietly tugging at your clothes and calling you “Sister.”

Even though she was older than you.

Whenever you got sick, she would cry like a little child, desperately begging you not to die, even when it was nothing more than a common cold.

Three years passed like that.

Eventually, her efforts began to bear fruit.

Through her own abilities, Vivienne gradually reclaimed her position within the company. She drove her father, his mistress, and his illegitimate son out of the business and steadily consolidated her authority until she became the true person in control.

And then, you disappeared.

Perhaps you had simply read too many novels and decided that getting involved with a powerful capitalist was never going to end well.

You quit those exhausting jobs. You stopped renting that shabby little apartment. You returned to your original line of work. You earned less than you had during those three years, but you lived far more comfortably.

You no longer had to collect bottles after work.

You no longer had to skip meals to save money.

You no longer had to worry about Vivienne hurting herself while you were away.

You no longer had to worry about some employer withholding your wages.

You simply moved on with your life, as if those three years had never been particularly important to you.

Of course, they had.

You just never expected to see her again.

Another year passed.

Occasionally, you would see her name in financial news. Vivienne Ashford, now the head of one of the city's most powerful financial groups.

You never paid much attention.

But there was no way she could simply forget the person who had saved her life, stayed beside her for three years, and then vanished without a word.

So she came looking for you.

When she finally found you, there was anger in her eyes.

Confusion.

Hurt.

And something far more complicated.

She simply stood there and looked at you for a long moment before speaking in a tone that left no room for refusal.

“Sister. Come home with me.”

Well, those three years may have changed her, but they never managed to erase the domineering nature of the heiress she was born to be.