Who's the Gold Digger Now"

My girlfriend is an heiress from the upper class of Jetland, and she is worth tens of billions of dollars.

In order to test me, she has never spent a single cent on me, nor given me any presents during the seven years that we have been together. She even splits the bill with me when we buy rubbers.

After my mother falls severely ill, I borrow all the money that I can from all my family and friends. I only need two thousand dollars more to afford my mother's operation.

However, even when I beg my girlfriend to lend me money, she refuses.

After my mother passes away, I take care of everything on my own.

When I go home to pack my things, I accidentally come across a list of presents that she has bought for our neighbor, whom she treats like a younger brother. These gifts include a luxury villa, a designer watch, and haute couture suits.

There is also an audio recording of her conversation with her best friend.

"Tessie, I heard that Ethan begged you so he could borrow two thousand dollars from you. Is that true?"

Tessa Seinfeld snorts, and her voice rings out carelessly. "Zeke's right. Only a leech would go down on his knees just for two thousand dollars. We've only been together for seven years, and he's already so eager to get money out of me."

In the end, our seven years of relationship mean nothing. It only takes a provocative comment from her neighbor, Zeke Palmer, for everything to fall apart.

But it doesn't matter. From the moment my mother died, I have already decided to leave Tessa.

Chapter 1

I had just put the list of presents back in its original spot when the door to the foyer opened.

Tessa Seinfeld swaggered over and sat down beside me, smelling faintly of alcohol.

"You disappeared for a few days. I thought you'd finally grow a spine and leave for good. You still ended up crawling back to me, because you just can't leave me."

Tessa almost blurted out that I had just come back to scam her out of her money. Perhaps from the beginning, she had only ever seen me as a leech who was after her money.

I didn't even look up and just moved aside. I dodged her when she tried to hold my hand.

Tessa was startled for a moment. She looked at her hand, then at me. She thought I was throwing a tantrum because of the two thousand dollars she refused to lend me.

"I've been drinking, and I feel a little thirsty. Make me some soup to cure my hangover."

Tessa was always like that. She would unknowingly start acting like a spoiled heiress.

However, when she had made her move on me seven years ago, she pretended to be poor. She put on a terrible show, coming off as a broke young woman.

Still, Tessa had me completely fooled.

"Ethan, I don't have anything, and I can't have a stable future with you. However, we can work hard and build a good life together."

Back then, I nodded when I saw how sincere she looked. I lacked money, but I could rely on my own diligence and hard work to build a life for myself.

I chose Tessa because I had been touched when she said that we could work hard and build a good life together.

However, the longer we spent together, the more I felt that she was different from ordinary people.

Tessa would show contempt for bargain-priced items without realizing it. She would also order me to do things that she could easily have done herself.

When I was at work one day, I saw her get out of a luxury car and walk into a high-class club, surrounded by admirers. That was when I was sure that there was nothing but lies between us.

She had always been afraid that I would go after her money.

Tessa spoke again, interrupting my thoughts.

"If you want money in the future, you can just tell me. Don't use your mother's health as a smokescreen. Watch out, or you might end up getting what's coming to you."

Her words made me feel that the entire situation was laughable. I looked up at her coldly. "Would you give it to me if I asked you directly?"

Tessa was startled, and she looked hesitant. Then, confirmation washed over her face, and a mocking glint instantly flickered in her eyes.

Chapter 2

"Zeke was right. You're only with me for my money."

Tessa transferred 1.88 dollars to me via her phone and added a note, labeling me as "Leech".

During the seven years we had been together, I had never spent a single cent of Tessa's. I would even prepare gifts for her during our anniversaries or on special days.

Tessa would accept them without any qualms, but she never prepared anything for me. She would remark sarcastically that men should buy their girlfriends gifts to make them happy, and that it was their duty.

Despite this, she had described me as a leech.

As an heiress from the upper class of Jetland, Tessa was worth tens of billions of dollars.

I thought of the list of presents that she had prepared for Zeke Palmer.

I thought of my mother, who had been tormented by her disease and had passed away in great pain because we hadn't had the money for treatment.

I did not want to face Tessa for a single moment longer.

I had just got up to leave when there was a noise at the door once more.

Zeke called Tessa's name with love in his voice as he walked in, taking off his coat. However, he looked startled and jumped in fright when he saw me.

"Ethan, what are you doing here?"

I turned to look at Tessa. "Unless I'm mistaken, this is the place we rent together. Not only did you give the password of the digital doorlock to someone else, but you even let him barge in."

Upon hearing this, Zeke looked as if I had wronged him immensely. He ran over and wrapped his arm around Tessa's shoulder as he sat down beside her.

"Tess, how could I be an outsider? I only came to stay the night because I forgot to bring the keys to my place.

"Besides, if Tess hadn't agreed to split the rent for this place, you'd have to pay it all by yourself. No matter how you look at it, you're the one with an advantage."

I wondered how often Zeke had made such provocative remarks without my knowledge.

When Tessa heard this, she did not feel like she had made a mistake. To her, Zeke made perfect sense.

"Zeke's right. I have a place of my own, and I'm really the one at a disadvantage here since I have to share the rent with you. This is just like spending money on escort services. There's no difference."

She showed me her bank account number.

"You don't want people to call you a leech, do you? Pay me back for the rent that I've paid over the past seven years."

Tessa and I had rented the apartment when we first got together. It was only about 450 square feet in size.

After graduating from university, I stayed in Jetland to work and earn more money. At the time, I had only been able to afford the rent for a cramped place that was far away from the city.

Tessa had been the one who said that the place was too far away and that it would be inconvenient for her to visit me.

It was also Tessa who had said that it wasn't a place fit to live in, and that it would ruin the mood for her to get intimate with me.

She wanted to rent a bigger place with me.

Therefore, I took on the pressure of a high rental fee and got a part-time job with the extra time I had from a shorter commute.

Now, not only did she want me to return her half of the rent for the past seven years, she even felt that she had been paying to sleep with me and that it was her loss.

"Tessa, it's been seven years. What am I to you?"

My expression was filled with humiliation and rage, and I couldn't help but feel regret.

I had wasted seven years of my youth on someone like her.

Her hand was still stretched out in front of me, but it shook slightly when she saw my dejected expression.

She pressed her lips together and withdrew her hand. "I was just joking. After all"

Before she could finish, Zeke clicked his tongue again and looked contemptuous.

Chapter 3

"How could you have the audacity to claim that you're not after Tess' money? If it weren't for her, you wouldn't be able to afford such a nice place to live in.

"Tess, I think you should stop renting this next month. You can't let outsiders keep taking advantage of you. Alternatively, you can tell Ethan to write you an IOU. That would be fair."

If it wasn't illegal to hit people, I would have slapped Tessa and Zeke. But if I did that, they would definitely find a way to scam me out of my money.

Rich people with no morals loved malicious games like that. I had played along with them for seven years.

It was more than enough. I wasn't going to do it any longer.

"I won't write an IOU. If you want money, then sue me. We'll see who's the loser. Also, I refuse to stay in this place any longer.

"Since you want to stay for a night, Mr. Palmer, remember to pay Tess the rental fee. Otherwise, you'll be considered a leech too."

I was about to leave when Tessa grabbed hold of me. The playful expression she had had earlier was gone, replaced by a reproachful anger.

"Ethan, must you go this far? Zeke and I were just joking. I advise you to think this through. Once you leave, you won't be able to stay in such a nice place any longer."

I had made a terrible, ridiculous mistake.

I shouldn't have given up on the idea of breaking up with Tessa when I found out that she was one of the heiresses in Jetland's upper class, just because she had persuaded me.

Whenever Tessa felt that I was greedy for her money, she would keep talking about equality in love and that we should not let money control us. I never should have believed her.

The only thing I had in mind back then was during the coldest time in winter, she had let me warm my hands on her stomach. When I had a headache, she would massage my head gently with her warm hands.

We had once been in love, and we had once been sweet together. However, we should not have let money taint our love.

"Tessa, let's break up." Once I said the words, Tessa's tantalizing smile finally dropped. There was a tinge of panic in her expression.

"Break up? Ethan, are you actually breaking up with me? I won't agree to it! What right do you have to dump me? Even if you're throwing a tantrum, you should know your limits."

Tessa had always acted as if she were superior. It was as if she were doing me a favor by dating me.

I merely looked impassively at her.

"I'm not throwing a tantrum. Since you keep thinking that I'm a leech who's out to get your money, you'd better find someone who has the same status as you so that you can have an equal relationship."

I did not want to say a single word more. I turned around and went back to the bedroom to continue packing my things.

After about half a minute, I heard Tessa scream angrily, "Don't regret this, Ethan!"

I ignored her threats and did not care when she left with Zeke, slamming the door behind her.

I had persisted in our relationship for seven years, even though I had been treated like a leech while doing so.

I did not blame Tessa for the fact that I had been unable to save my mother's life.

It was true that she was not obligated to lend me money.

However, at the time when I needed help the most, she had ignored me and even called me a leech. I had even gone down on my knees with an IOU and begged her to save my mother.

I had completely lost hope in her and our seven-year relationship.

Late that night, I walked along an empty street with all my luggage.

Jetland was huge, but there was no place for me there. I no longer had any reason to stay.

My mother was gone, and I had parted ways with the woman I loved.

Every further second I spent there would just make me feel more grief.

I had nowhere to go, so I sat in the lobby of a nearby hospital for the whole night.

When I went to work the next day, the first thing I did was to resign from my job.

My superior looked shocked when she received my resignation letter.

Chapter 4

"You're resigning? Has Ms. Seinfeld agreed to let you do so?" my superior asked.

"By the way, you won't get much of a bonus for this month if you resign now. I'll transfer the rest of your salary to your account."

I frowned. There was too much information, and it took me a while to process everything my superior said.

What did she mean by transferring it to my account? Since when did I receive bonuses?

More importantly, why had she mentioned Tessa?

When my superior saw how confused I looked, she looked equally puzzled.

"Aren't you dating Ms. Seinfeld? She was the one who gave the finance department special instructions to pay you your salary separately.

"You were given your basic salary, but any bonuses and salary increments were put in a different account. She said you needed to save money.

"I didn't expect you to still be so frugal with someone like Ms. Seinfeld as your girlfriend. That's rare to see."

That was why I had only received my starting salary for so many years.

I had requested again and again for an increase in my salary, to no avail. It turned out that it wasn't because I wasn't diligent enough at my job. It was because Tessa had transferred all of it to a different account.

When I went to the finance department to request my payroll records, I saw "two thousand dollars" written in bold letters in the box that indicated the amount of my expected bonus.

A few days ago, I had been one day late in paying the hospital because I had been scrambling to find the last two thousand dollars that I needed.

As a result, my mother passed away before she could get her operation.

What was even more laughable was that the total amount of the bonuses I should have received over the past seven years, which Tessa had withheld, would have been more than enough to treat my mother's condition.

I had been a complete fool.

I had been so foolish that all I had done was to work hard. I had been terrified of being fired and losing my means of making a living.

I had been such a fool that I had not realized Tessa's deception.

I had never spent her money so that she wouldn't think of me as a leech, but she had been the one who had transferred away all the fruits of my labor.

I had actually persisted for seven years in a relationship that was full of nothing but lies and humiliation.

I was on my way to find Tessa with my payroll records so that I could settle the score with her when she strutted up to me.

"Ethan, all we had was a minor argument, and you left home? You even resigned! I think you're becoming more and more hot-tempered."

Zeke was behind her, looking gleeful at my discomfiture.

He walked over and said insincerely, "Ethan, you really have no conscience at all. You spent Tess' money and lived in the place that she rented for you. Without her, could you even survive in Jetland?"

He was so thick-skinned that he could lie with a straight face.

I laughed out of sheer anger. I was about to defend myself when Tessa interrupted me.

"Zeke's right. If I hadn't been around for the past seven years, you'd have starved to death long ago. I'll just think of today as you throwing a tantrum, and you can have the day off. Come home with me. I won't dock your pay for not going to work today."

The more I saw Tessa's true colors, the more I wondered how blind I had been over the past seven years.

People around me began to point and mutter amongst themselves. Since Tessa did not stop them, their voices became louder.

"Ms. Seinfeld hid her identity because she didn't want Ethan to feel insecure. She also told us to keep it a secret, which shows just how much she cares about him."

"He lives off Ms. Seinfeld, and yet he's losing his temper with her?"

"If he wants to go from rags to riches, he should reflect on whether or not he's capable of doing so. He'd be nothing without Ms. Seinfeld."

The more the people around us speculated, the more triumphant Tessa was.

Zeke kept egging them on and heaped a pile of false accusations on me. "Ethan, didn't you lie because you wanted two thousand dollars from Tess? You even said that your mother was about to die and needed the money to survive."

Chapter 5

"You want money, yet you also want to create a good image for yourself. You can't have your cake and eat it too," said Zeke.

Upon hearing him, an uproar broke out around us. Everyone looked contemptuously at me, and I could hear a relentless stream of insults being hurled at me.

I looked at Tessa, who still looked completely unfazed. In fact, she even appeared slightly aggrieved, as if Zeke had just described how she felt out loud.

The corners of my mouth twitched, and I smiled incredulously. I was just about to open my mouth when Tessa grabbed hold of me casually.

She tried to sound magnanimous by making peace between us. "Forget it. The past is in the past, and I don't need the money.

"If you want money in the future, just be honest about it. There's no need to make so many excuses."

After hearing what Tessa had said, everyone in the office looked even more indignant. They all felt that I was being too greedy.

"Exactly. Ms. Seinfeld's so rich. He should just say so if he wants money."

"It's despicable of him to curse his mother for the sake of getting money."

"I didn't know Ethan was like that. I used to bring him things to eat because he always seemed to be so frugal."

"People like him deserve to get dumped by Ms. Seinfeld. He won't be able to stay in Jetland any longer."

I looked at a colleague whom I had once been on very good terms with, yet he was stepping all over me just like the others right now.

I thought again about what Tessa had done. Suddenly, everything seemed meaningless.

I was planning to leave anyway. Even if I slammed down my payroll records in front of Tessa right now, she and Zeke would still say all sorts of ridiculous things to make everyone keep humiliating me.

I quietly put my payroll records back in my pocket. I looked up at Tessa and smiled. "We've been together for seven years. You can work out how much of your money I've spent.

"If you can't list out what you spent on me, then please pay me back the hundreds of thousands that you owe me. Otherwise, I'll be suing both you and this company of yours."

She always talked about how money should not be mentioned when it came to relationships, yet the issue of money was omnipresent between us.

She was an heiress in the upper class of Jetland, and everyone thought that she spent lavishly, but she had been spending the money that I had saved up to save my mother's life.

Tessa thought long and hard, after which there was a flash of panic in her eyes.

Of course, she could not remember what she had spent on me, because she was the kind of person who had even made me split the bill with her when buying rubbers.

I had thought about it, and I knew that it wasn't because she was stingy. The truth was Tessa didn't think I was worth spending a single cent on.

Perhaps she wanted to protest, but I no longer wanted to hear it.

When I turned around to leave, Zeke suddenly pushed me. I stumbled and fell to the floor.

"Ethan, don't try to distort the facts. Why would Tess owe you money? Aren't you afraid that we'll call the police? We can get you arrested if you dare to make up rumors.

"If you go to prison, no one's going to take care of your mother, who's lying in the hospital and waiting for you to earn money. Hurry up and apologize to Tess!"

Zeke still thought that he could threaten me. However, nothing was holding me back any longer.

At that moment, my superior happened to pass by. When she saw Tessa, she squeezed into the crowd. She was holding an application form.

"Ms. Seinfeld, Ethan's mother passed away a few days ago, and you still haven't signed to approve the employee condolence payment.

"I've also followed your instructions and withdrawn the application that Ethan made for an advance payment of two thousand dollars.

"It's a pity, though. I heard that Ethan's mother just needed that exact amount to get enough money for the operation."