Susan Miller, my father's caretaker, often complains that the supplements keep running out.

The wild kingroots that are worth 500 thousand dollars are completely used up even though Susan has only made soup with them twice in a row.

As I filter through the medicinal residue with a frown on my face, Susan sinks down to her knees and begins slapping herself.

"They must have melted in the soup because of my lack of attention! Please dock my pay, Ms. Lawson, but please don't fire me!"

But that night, I come across a post uploaded by Susan's son, Roman Cox, on Instagram.

"Hi everyone! Today, I'm challenging myself to eat two wild kingroots in one go!"

When I see Roman picking up a familiar-lookng giftbox, I feel my temper flaring instantly. Then, I order a packet of potent aphrodisiacs meant for animals on the spot.

It turns out that Roman intends to chug down my prized Romanee-Conti in the next episode of his stream.

Well then, I'll let him have his feel of drinking something else!

To take care of my aging father, I hired a top-tier live-in caregiver from the largest service agency in Yorkfall. She was paid 50 thousand dollars a month, with everything else covered.

Today was the 30th day she had been on the job. It was also the first time I had come to see Dad since finishing a stretch of nonstop work.

"Ms. Lawson, you're back," Susan Miller greeted me, holding an empty bowl. A slightly ingratiating smile immediately spread across her face.

I didn't respond and walked straight into Dad's bedroom. The moment I pushed the door open, a suffocating stench of medicine hit me in the face.

The curtains were drawn tight, letting in only a few dim streaks of light. They fell on Dad's face, sunken deep into the pillow.

He had wasted away badly. His cheekbones jutted out sharply, and his skin looked like parchment paper stretched tight over the bone.

I frowned and went straight to the bedside table, where a rosewood box sat. Inside were supposed to be the wild kingroot I had bought at great cost. It was 250 thousand dollars per piece, sliced thin to keep him alive.

I opened the box, and it was empty—not even a single strand of kingroot fiber remained.

My heart sank. I turned to Susan, the anger in my voice impossible to hold back. "Ms. Miller, how are the two kingroots I sent home last week already gone?"

Her eyes flickered. She instinctively wiped her hands on her apron.

"Ms. Lawson, your father is very frail. He hasn't been in great spirits these past couple of days, so I thought I should nourish him a bit more. That kingroot may look big, but once you boil it, it shrinks. It doesn't last long at all."

I laughed coldly and strode into the kitchen. With one sharp motion, I lifted the lid off the simmering medicine pot.

Dad's body was too weak for surgery, so the doctor had been clear that he needed traditional medicine first to regulate his body and rebuild his energy. Only then could treatment continue.

Hence, I had imported the best medicinal herbs money could buy. And yet, inside the steaming pot, only a few cheap, low-grade herbs rolled uselessly in the boiling water.

"Explain."

The air froze for a few seconds. The smile on Susan's face stiffened, and her cloudy eyes darted around in panic. Then, without warning, she dropped to her knees.

Her knees slammed into the marble floor with a heavy thud, and right after that came two sharp slaps. She struck her face on the left, then right.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Lawson! It's all my fault! I've never seen herbs this expensive before, so I must've turned the heat up too high and boiled the kingroot away! I'm sorry for not knowing better!"

Tears and snot streamed down her face as she reached to grab my leg.

"Dock my pay! Take as much as you want!" she sobbed. "Please, just don't fire me! My son just graduated from college and hasn't found a job. My family is counting on this money to survive!"

Her sudden kneeling drained the anger right out of me. I was a businesswoman, and I cared about appearances. I couldn't bring myself to be ruthless while a woman in her 50s knelt on the floor, sobbing like this.

Besides, in Dad's current condition, I couldn't afford to let him be without a caregiver.

I took a deep breath and forced the irritation down. Pulling my leg free, I stepped back in disgust. "That's enough. Get up."

I took two thousand dollars from my bag and tossed it onto the table. "If a basic mistake like this happens again, pack your bags and leave."

Susan got up at once, thanking me over and over. She grabbed the cash and stuffed it straight into her pocket. Her movement was quick and smooth, nothing like a woman who had just been crying her heart out a second ago.

Watching her put on a show of humility, with her smugness barely concealed, I felt something inexplicable stirring in my chest. It felt like a lump stuck in my throat, and I couldn't do anything about it.

I wasn't short on money, but I was short on Dad's time.

If that kingroot had truly gone into his system, I would've accepted it. Even if it had been overboiled into nothing, I would've let it go.

Looking at Dad's face, which appeared so thin and almost unrecognizable, I felt nothing but suspicion. Had the kingroot really been "boiled away"?

The weekend afternoon sun streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, warming the rug. However, it couldn't quite touch the chill that hung in the room.

William Johnson, our family doctor, had already packed away his stethoscope, but his brow remained furrowed. In his hands was the freshly printed blood report.

He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses again and again, as if weighing whether to speak.

"Well, Dr. Johnson? Has Dad's condition worsened again?" I asked, setting down my cup, despite my sinking heart.

William exhaled slowly and lowered his voice. "Ms. Lawson, some things I shouldn't say, but I watched you grow up, and your father has been an old friend. This data just… doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't? How?"

He pointed to the red arrows on the report. "Look at the albumin levels and the electrolytes. These are classic signs of severe malnutrition and chronic dehydration.

"With all the high-grade herbs you've been giving him, even if absorption were poor, he shouldn't be this weak. It doesn't look like a worsening illness, but… It looks like he's been starving."

"Starving?"

My head buzzed, and the suspicion that had been gnawing at me suddenly screamed for action. To confirm it, I asked a friend to get me a box of top-grade deer antlers. This time, I was careful.

When I brought the deer antlers home, I deliberately put the box on the liquor cabinet right in front of Susan and said, "Ms. Miller, I spent 1.2 million dollars to get these deer antlers from East Albern. It's specially made for royalty.

"But since Dad is too weak to take any supplements now, don't touch it. Wait until I check with the doctor, alright?"

Susan nodded eagerly, and her eyes stayed glued to the box. That look was pure greed, like a starving wolf staring at meat while pretending to be harmless.

The next evening, when I got home from work and glanced at the liquor cabinet out of habit, the box remained, though slightly moved. I hurried over and opened it, and sure enough, more than half the antlers were gone, leaving only a few scraps.

Before I even had a chance to get angry, my phone buzzed. It was an Instagram live notification. The title read, "Employer's Million-Dollar Deer Antlers All-Nighter Challenge!"

On a whim, I tapped it. Soon, a shirtless man, muscles popping everywhere, was shouting at me from the screen. In his hands were the very deer antlers I had just bought.

He was chomping on it like corn, crunching it loudly, looking completely arrogant and out of control.

Someone in the live chat asked, "Where did you get them from? Are they real?"

Roman Cox laughed and winked at the camera. "Of course, they're real! My mom swiped it from her idiot boss.

"That woman is a clueless rich kid. She only knows how to buy them without checking if her dad has taken them. My mom just had to put on a little act, and she totally fell for it!"

My hand tightened into a fist, and my polished nails dug into my palm.

When the camera panned, I saw a familiar figure—Susan. The same top-tier caregiver who had knelt and slapped herself in front of me was now holding a plate of sliced fruit and grinning obsequiously as she offered it to her son.

Roman impatiently pushed her hand away, even shoved her a little. "Go away! Don't block the camera! And where's that wine you were supposed to bring? I've been asking for it!"

Susan stumbled but didn't get angry. Instead, she smiled even wider. "I'm trying! The wine's locked in the cabinet, and I've been figuring out how to open it…"

Blood rushed to my head, and my temples throbbed.

So, this was it. Dad had become nothing more than a "food supplier" in their eyes. My restraint had turned me into a sucker to be milked.

I stared at the laughing face on the screen, then glanced toward Dad's bedroom. He was lying on the bed, unconscious from malnutrition. Meanwhile, these parasites were siphoning his life away, celebrating it online.

After the anger came an eerie calm. I didn't rush out to confront them or call the police. What good would that do?

Stealing things like this would, at most, mean brief detention and some compensation. For shameless leeches like them, that would barely sting.

What I wanted was more than compensation. I wanted them disgraced, destroyed, and wishing they were dead.

I looked at the man on the screen, still shouting about wanting good wine, and a cold smile spread onto my face.

Was that what he wanted? Fine. I would make sure he drank his fill.

To acquire solid evidence and see Susan and Roman's cruelty for what it really was, I installed hidden cameras in Dad's bedroom, the living room, and even the kitchen—4k resolution, crystal-clear audio.

The next day at work, I sat in my large office chair and opened the surveillance feed on my phone.

On the screen, Susan was carrying a bowl into Dad's room. That was the kingroot soup I had specifically told her to prepare that morning.

She walked to the bedside and glanced at Dad, the caring mask she wore in front of me long gone. In its place was a look of pure disgust and malice that made my stomach turn.

"You old thing. All you ever do is sleep!" she grumbled, pouring the kingroot soup into an insulated bottle she carried with her. I immediately recognized that it was the same bottle she used for Roman, the one I had seen on the livestream.

Then, she pulled a bottle of sleeping pills from her pocket, shook out two, crushed them, and mixed the powder into a bowl of pitifully watery porridge.

She sneered. "Kingroot soup? You don't deserve that. Just die and stop wasting my time!"

Roughly, she grabbed Dad by the chin and forced his mouth open, pouring the drugged porridge down his throat. He choked and made hoarse, gurgling sounds, instinctively trying to struggle as the liquid went down.

Susan didn't hesitate to slap his withered shoulder. "Stop moving and just drink it while I'm being nice! My son is still young and needs all the nourishment he can get.

"What do you, a crippled geezer, need from this good stuff? Once you die, everything in this house will belong to my son and me, anyway!"

On my end of the feed, I stared at the screen without blinking. My nails dug into my palm, nearly breaking the skin. I felt the pain as much as I felt it in my chest.

I had never imagined that humanity could sink this low. This wasn't greed anymore. This was murder. Susan was slowly killing Dad, milking that last bit of value out of him to feed her useless, man-child of a son.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, forcing down the urge to do something irrational.

Then, I picked up my phone and dialed a number. It was an old friend of mine, someone who now ran one of the largest farms in the country.

My voice was unnervingly calm. "Hey, Ryan. Do you have any aphrodisiacs? The kind you use on breeding bulls, where just a few grams can drive a multi-ton animal insane."

Ryan Manson was silent for a few seconds before asking dubiously, "What do you need that for? That stuff is banned. Too much of it can kill someone."

"Oh, it won't." I looked at Susan's twisted face on the surveillance feed and said deliberately, "I just want to buy a couple of animals a good drink."