The Quiet Daughter

I couldn’t speak until I was eight years old.

Everyone in the Sterling family called me dumb. Even my mother would secretly wipe away tears, convinced she had given birth to an autistic daughter. Whenever my father looked at me, his eyes were filled with nothing but disappointment. However, for the sake of the family’s reputation, he could never bring himself to send me away to a special education school.

Then came the day someone from a prominent hedge fund company arrived to acquire our family company, Sterling Group. He was so arrogant that he chewed out everyone in the boardroom until all of them hung their heads low. The room full of corporate executives fell silent, too terrified to speak.

Meanwhile, I stood there in the corner, listening to the whole thing until I felt sleepy and fed up. Taking a step forward, I spoke the very first words of my life.

My name is Savannah Sterling, and I am the sole successor to the Sterling Group. This was supposed to be a life born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Yet, here I was at eight years old, and I still hadn’t spoken a single word. Everyone in the Sterling household knew that their young lady was dumb.

My mother came from a highly respected, old-money family in South River City. She was gentle and well-mannered, and she poured every ounce of her love into me.

She would hold me close, repeating words over and over, trying to teach me. “Savannah, say Mommy. Say… Mom-my…”

I would just stare at her, completely silent.

Slowly, the light in her eyes dimmed. She would turn around, subtly wiping the corners of her eyes with a tissue, thinking I didn’t notice. However, I saw everything. I knew exactly what was happening. It wasn’t that I couldn’t speak; I just didn’t want to.

I was born with the memories of my past life. In that life, I was a chatty financial analyst who spoke nonstop for thirty years, but I was utterly exhausted. So, in this life, I just wanted to be a useless couch potato and enjoy the ride.

Unfortunately, I severely underestimated the crushing weight of being the successor to Sterling Group. It wasn’t a ticket to absolute freedom, but a gilded cage.

My father, the chairman of Sterling Group, was a ruthless businessman. Every time he looked at me, there was always hope in his eyes.

“Savannah, do you know what this is?”

He would point to the rows of numbers on the financial statements, and I would nod.

“Can you tell Daddy what the net profit for this quarter is?”

I would reach my small hand out and point precisely to the correct figure. The anticipation in his eyes would intensify. Then, he would finally ask the one question he wanted answered more than anything else.

“Savannah, can you say ’Daddy’ for me?”

I would look at him, maintaining my absolute silence. With that, the light in his eyes would vanish, and all that remained was disappointment. He would sit in silence for a long time before standing up and storming out of the room.

“Sigh.”

That heavy sigh felt weighty enough to shatter the glass walls of the entire skyscraper.

I knew very well that if I weren’t the only daughter, and if my mother’s family weren’t so prominent, my position as the successor would’ve been stripped away a long time ago. Even my cousins’ attitudes toward me had shifted over time. Their initial fear had completely transformed into blatant mockery.

“Hey, Sav, did you actually understand a single thing the tutor taught in English class today?”

The speaker was Jane Sterling, the daughter of my uncle, Ross Sterling. She was only a year younger than me, but she was sharp-tongued, articulate, and deeply favored by my father.

I spared her a glance, unbothered to give her a reaction.

Seeing my silence, she laughed even harder. “Oh, I forgot! Sav is a natural-born prodigy. She knew everything the moment she was born, unlike us average kids who actually have to hit the books.”

“Jane, don’t talk like that,” Harper Sterling, the daughter of my other uncle, Graham Sterling, chimed in with a fake, hypocritical tone. “Sav just hates talking to us. Great minds are late bloomers, don’t you know?”

They played off one another perfectly. Around us, the maids kept their heads down, but their shoulders were trembling. They were laughing and mocking me, the dumb fool who couldn’t speak.

I walked right past them with a blank expression. To me, they were just two annoying grasshoppers jumping around in front of my face. They were boring and childish.