“Raising a daughter isn't easy.”

Caroline acknowledged that much; few investments cost more than raising a child.

“But you didn’t raise me. You raised Celine. The Dotts raised me. And before I returned to the Fisher family, I privately gave them a sum of money as repayment for all they spent on me.

“If I were truly ruthless, I wouldn’t have given them a cent. If it weren’t for their schemes, I wouldn’t have been separated from my real parents or endured over a decade of abuse or nearly sold off at one point.”

After she reached her teens, her adoptive family could no longer control her.

The real suffering had been in those early years.

Caroline remembered every grievance with clinical precision, without exaggeration.

Later on, the Dotts had secretly asked her for money, but they retreated after her stern warnings.

They had also approached Celine, who mostly avoided them. On rare encounters, she would give them maybe ten thousand dollars at most, and even told her birth mother C