Another gulp of cold beer went down her throat, the cool liquid burning hot in her veins. After the day she had, Serafina was wishing that she would pass out and never wake up again. Even death would be better than another day of being pestered by her trashy family.
The Gold family was a wealthy clan of traders and investors—in her grandfather's time.
Now, it was as good as a den full of scheming, useless vermin. Her father could only drink his troubles away without bothering to earn money for the family. Her mother was bitterly angry and spent all her time gambling away their meager funds. Her siblings took after both parents in the worst ways.
Yes, she thought sarcastically. I really won the lottery of life!
Growing up, she always dreamed of breaking free of her horrible family. She studied hard and got the top grades, even getting accepted into one of the best colleges in the nation with a scholarship. But somehow, even that wasn't enough.
No, even now she was still being harassed by the family she wanted to disown, and not only that, but every single loan they had taken out was weighing on her back!
Since she was the only reliable one in the entire family, she was always the emergency contact, even for loans. So it was always her door that was knocked on, her phone that was endlessly called, her patience that was relentlessly tested.
Even earlier, she had been greeted by another suited man outside her door.
He hadn't even gotten a single word out before she slammed the door right in his face, telling him that whatever family member owed him money was not her problem anymore. She would no longer live as a doormat for her stupid family!
Serafina drunkenly nodded to herself, hands clenching into fists. "I can do better than this! Who do they think they are to try and bully me, anyways?"
She downed another sip of beer before pondering deeply about her struggles.
I need to find a way to get them to leave me alone, she thought. I don't want to hear from them ever again, I want them to stop bothering me completely.
At that time, a bright idea popped into her muddled mind.
"I'll write their boss a long complaint," she declared to herself, stumbling to her feet and going over to the small desk in the corner of the cramped room. "He'll fire all of them once he hears what I'll tell him! This is no longer work for them, it's just abuse and harassment!"
Of course, she had to find out who the boss was first.
She blearily opened her phone, searching for the most insistent loan company that had been breaking down her door and eardrums for the past few months. It only took her a few seconds to find the name that she was looking for.
Road to Eden, which promised a gateway to paradise… packaged in installments of repayment, of course.
Even seeing the name made Serafina scowl. Memories of her father telling her that this would be the loan that brought them out of debt filled her mind. Disgusted, she hurriedly scrolled past rows of customer platitudes to find what she was looking for: the big boss, the CEO. The one to whom she would send a very strongly worded letter.
Lucretius Asper, was that his name? How posh. In her eyes, it was a very hateworthy name.
With a little sleuthing, she found the company's mailing address, then sat down at the table once more to start venting her grievances out at the nameless, faceless Lucretius Asper. She imagined him as the bane of her existence, the reason why her family was falling apart.
That night, Serafina wrote line after line of scathing retort. As an avid online commenter, she was skilled in this field: she cursed his name, his face, his family, his dog, his cat, everything she could think of. She sentenced him to a thousand years of death in hell and five minutes in heaven before being returned to hell again to suffer more. She called him names that she would not call her own father.
And at the end, she signed her name. 'With all my hate, Serafina Gold'.
She drunkenly laughed at her own audacity then found an old bank envelope, hastily folding the paper and sealing it with her saliva. As if she was controlled by some otherworldly force, she stood and walked to the post office down the street. Within a matter of minutes, she had already mailed it to whoever this Lucretius Asper was.
For a while, she stood out on the street, taking in the cold air. It cleared her senses a bit, enough so that she wondered if she should take back the letter while she still could.
"Nah," she decided aloud. "What are the chances that bigshot trash CEO will read some random hate mail, anyways?"
She made her way home, washed her face, and went to sleep immediately, unaware that said bigshot trash CEO was already opening her letter while she slept in until noon the next morning, snoring along with no clue of what was about to happen.