PART 2
For the next few weeks, I acted like nothing had changed.
I picked up extra shifts at the bookstore.
Applied to every scholarship I could find.
And pretended to consider the suggestion my parents kept repeating:
“Maybe just try a community college for one year first.”
My mother suddenly became overly cheerful — like guilt wrapped in denial.
My father stopped asking questions, growing more relaxed the more Marco bragged about his “company” at the dinner table.
Meanwhile, quietly, I was preparing.
Marco’s startup was registered under his name, but the initial capital — my money — had come from a joint account my parents managed when I was still a minor.
Now that I was legally an adult, I submitted a formal request for a full audit and immediate freeze of the funds.
When the freeze went through, my father’s rage shook the house.
He stormed into my room, slamming the door, waving documents in his hand.
“What did you do, Angela?!” he yelled.
I didn’t even try to hide my calm.
“I moved the money Grandpa left me.
The money you didn’t even know existed.”
All the color drained from his face.
I looked straight at him.
“If you touch anything under my name again, I will report you.
To the bank.
And to Grandpa.”
He stepped back.
Not from guilt.
From fear.
But I wasn’t done.
A week later, Marco posted photos on Instagram celebrating meetings with “potential investors.”
Champagne glasses.
Buzzwords he barely understood.
My mother commented proudly, as if her son were the next tech billionaire.
I took screenshots.
Every post.
Every brag.
Every hint about where the money came from.
And I sent them to my grandfather with a single message:
“I think you deserve to know what happened to my college fund.”
He called me minutes later.
His voice was ice.
He didn’t shout.
He planned.
Over the next two weeks, he contacted lawyers, financial advisors, and the institutions that handled both accounts.
He didn’t tell me everything — he kept me away from the legal chaos — but I knew enough.
My parents had committed misuse of educational funds.
Marco had directly benefited.
And none of them had legal justification.
Once the legal pressure began, their confidence collapsed quickly.
Marco’s “investors” pulled out as soon as they learned the family was involved in a financial dispute with potential fraud implications.
The startup’s accounts were frozen.
The coworking office contract was terminated.
Suddenly, the golden child had no clients, no funding, no direction.
But the real breaking point came when my parents tried to file a request for “financial hardship,” claiming that I had “deprived them” of assets they were “entitled to.”
My grandfather destroyed that petition in a single day.
He opened a formal investigation into the original college fund, froze everything they still managed jointly, and rewrote his will entirely — redirecting assets and assigning financial authority to me instead.
Then the calls began.
First my mother, her voice shaking.
Then my father, quieter than I’d ever heard him.
Then Marco, stumbling through apologies and desperate excuses.
But nothing compared to my mother’s final message:
“We’re going to lose the house. Your father could face charges. Marco is devastated. Please… don’t destroy this family.”
The irony almost made me laugh.
They destroyed it the moment they stole my future
and toasted to it on the balcony.
PART 3
By the time I moved into my dorm near UP Diliman in late August, my parents were desperate enough to pretend nothing had happened.
My mother arrived in heels and a summer dress, holding a basket of gifts like we were in some cheap reunion movie.
My father tried to give a speech about resilience and the importance of family.
I stopped them on the sidewalk.
“You don’t get to do this,” I said.
“You don’t get to play proud parents after stealing my entire future to fund Marco’s hobby.”
My mother’s eyes filled with tears instantly — but it felt performative.
My father deflated. His shoulders slumped, like he was finally seeing himself without excuses.
I didn’t let them inside.
Didn’t let them meet my roommate.
Didn’t let them touch a single inch of my space.
When I looked at Marco, he actually seemed ashamed.
But shame without accountability means nothing.
I leaned closer and said quietly:
“I hope your startup fails.
But hey — at least you got a huge head start, right?”
Then I walked away.
The first three months of university were a strange mix of healing and constant alertness.
I joined two student orgs, made real friends, and landed a part-time internship at a small publishing house — the field I’d always dreamed of.
But at night, the echo of betrayal still returned, reminding me how fast trust can rot.
One afternoon in October, my grandfather called.
“They tried again,” he said calmly.
“But they forgot something: you can’t rewrite history.”
He told me the investigation had uncovered emails where my parents and Marco explicitly admitted they were using my educational funds to launch a business with no legal connection to me.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) was now involved due to irregular transfers.
And my father’s employer had been notified over compliance concerns.
Everything was collapsing.
Fast.
I didn’t feel satisfaction. Not fully.
What I felt was clarity.
A line had been crossed, and it wasn’t my job to save them from consequences they created themselves.
A week later, my mother called again, sobbing uncontrollably.
Her voicemail said the house was close to foreclosure.
My father might be suspended.
Marco had moved back home, drowning in debt.
But the sentence that hurt the most was this:
“We’re being punished for a mistake we made out of love.”
Love does not steal a child’s future.
Love does not lie.
Love does not choose one child by sacrificing the other.
I replied with one sentence:
“You broke it. Now live with it.”
Thanksgiving passed quietly.
I spent it at my grandfather’s home, surrounded by books, cinnamon tea, and the calm of someone who truly valued me.
He handed me a letter with a single line:
“You were strong long before any of this. I only helped you see it.”
For the first time in months, I cried.
Not from pain.
From relief.
Today, months later, my life is stable. Peaceful. Mine.
I write again.
I study.
I grow.
I am building a life that belongs to me — not to their expectations, not in Marco’s shadow, not according to anyone else’s agenda.
They stole from me once.
They will never get the chance again.
And you…
If you were in my place, would you have forgiven them?
Or would you have walked away like I did?
I’m reading your thoughts in the comments.