Chapter 1

I was the only princess of Royal St. Ashford Academy — the girl with four fathers.

After my mother died, her four childhood sweethearts found me still alive inside her belly.

And so I ended up with four fathers.

My first father, Ethan Sterling, was the head of a hundred-billion-dollar dynasty. He was also the sole trustee of Royal St. Ashford Academy, holding absolute authority over the institution.

My second father, Marcus Sterling, was the commander of the world's largest private military corporation — his army could annihilate a small country with ease.

My third father, Julian Sterling, was a universally recognized medical genius — the next Nobel Prize candidate.

My fourth father, Liam Sterling, was the most feared legend in the underground fighting circuit — before he even turned seventeen, he had defeated thirty-three elite enforcers from criminal syndicates around the globe.

I grew up drowning in the love of four fathers. No matter where I went, I was the center of everyone's envy.

Until the year I turned eighteen, when the four fathers' shared daughter, Bianca White, was found and brought back.

From that day on, these four men became entirely different people.

Bianca said I'd verbally abused her. My second father injected me with a hallucinogenic drug — I stripped naked on the school rooftop like a lunatic and danced, then fell and shattered both my legs, missing prom entirely. A video of my naked dance spread across the school's network in minutes. When my first father saw it, he locked me — a girl with severe claustrophobia — in a pitch-black closet for three days and three nights. When I came out, I discovered that every honor I'd ever earned at school had been transferred to Bianca.

She said I'd poisoned her. My third father, Julian, locked me inside his deadly fungal cultivation chamber. I became the perfect host for every pathogen inside — fungal hyphae burrowed through my pores and into my organs. Only when I was on the verge of death did they pull me out and blast me under cold water for an entire night, barely saving my life. But my right eye lost all its vision permanently.

After Bianca cried yet again, claiming I'd tricked her into going to a bar where she was nearly attacked by dangerous men, my first father flew into a rage and threw me into an underground bar — where I became the lowest of the low: a stripper.

For three years, I went from defiance to submission — because on my eighteenth birthday, my virginity was stolen by eighteen filthy strangers.

From that day on, I was reduced to nothing more than the cheapest whore. Whenever my door opened, I instinctively spread my legs and lay back on the couch.

That's when I heard a voice say:

"Iris, would you like to come back to your mother?"

......

I jerked my head up.

There was no one in the room.

But the voice came again — I spotted a glowing screen on the floor. An unfamiliar yet somehow warm face appeared on the small display.

She said her name was Helen, my mother's closest friend. She said my mother, Lillian, hadn't actually died that day. She'd been poisoned — a rare toxin that induced a death-like state — and then smuggled away by people who owed her their lives.

And now she knew I was alive. She wanted to bring me home.

The grief and pain I'd been suppressing broke free — I sobbed, crying out that I wanted to find my mother.

But Helen's tone was tense. She said the Sterling family's reach was too vast. If they discovered Mother was still alive, they would track her down. The only safe way was to make everyone believe I was dead.

"Only when you 'die' will they stop looking for you. Our people will extract you after your 'death.' Your mother is waiting on the other side."

"Iris, even a faked death will be extremely painful — are you willing to —"

Helen hadn't even finished her sentence before I was on my feet, grabbing a shard of glass from the broken mirror and pressing it to my throat without a moment's hesitation.

*Yes!*

Mother was alive!

All I had to do was "die," and I could see her.

Overwhelming joy drowned out every fear of death — this body had already endured too much. If "death" was the only way to reach Mother, I wouldn't hesitate for a second.

But just as I was about to drag the glass across my skin, a massive force knocked it from my hand.

The pain made me let go.

The shard fell to the floor, and a foot stepped on it.

"Iris, trying to kill yourself?"

That familiar voice made me look up.

When I saw who it was, I called out instinctively.

"Fourth Father."

The moment the word left my mouth, I regretted it.

Sure enough, the man's brow furrowed at the title.

"Don't call me that. I cut ties with you a long time ago."

The person standing before me was Liam Sterling.

When I was little, I'd been kidnapped by a rival family.

He alone stormed into their compound, took three knife wounds without flinching, and carried me out without a scratch on me.

After he rescued me, I cried so hard looking at his wounds that I couldn't breathe.

But he just ruffled my hair and said those cuts didn't hurt at all.

What hurt, he said, was watching me cry.

Of the four fathers, the fourth was the one who loved me most.

But that love vanished four years ago, when my second father Marcus brought an injured Bianca back from a school field trip.

I'd always known my four fathers shared a single obsession — a woman they all loved.

I just didn't know that woman wasn't my mother. It was Bianca's mother, Celine White.

The truth was something I'd pieced together fragment by fragment: my mother, Lillian, grew up alongside the four Sterling brothers. Their father had been destroyed by a corporate conspiracy — framed, bankrupted, driven to an early grave. It was young Lillian who hid the four boys, placing each with a different guardian, a different mentor.

They grew into their own. With Mother Lillian's help, they completed their revenge — Ethan reclaimed the family empire and cleared the Sterling name.

Lillian and Ethan were supposed to be together. Childhood sweethearts — two hearts long promised to each other.

But on the eve of the wedding, Celine White appeared.

The moment she walked in, all four fathers' eyes shifted.

After that, they called Lillian "jealous" and "unstable." They said she kept trying to hurt Celine. They said she eventually killed herself out of spite.

After Mother's death, Celine disappeared too.

It wasn't until Bianca appeared that the fathers learned — or thought they learned — the truth: Celine had left because she felt guilty about Lillian's death.

Honestly? I never believed any of it.

My gut told me Mother wasn't the villain. Celine was.

But the fathers didn't trust my instincts. The brothers didn't either.

They even thought I was just like my mother — petty, jealous, always competing for attention.

So every time Bianca and I clashed, all eight of them stood on her side.

Before long, I went from the most pampered princess of Ashford Prep to the lowest creature in an underground bar.

My fourth father picked up the glass shard from the floor, glanced at the cut on my neck.

Then his hand flicked, and the shard flew straight at me.

I stumbled back two steps on instinct.

The glass grazed my throat, leaving another thin red line.

My fourth father let out a cold laugh:

"If you really want to die, why'd you dodge?"

"Iris, you're just like your mother — always hurting yourself to get attention."

"At least she was smarter about it. She always performed in front of us. You picked this dump. Pathetic."