Chapter 2

Eight years ago, I was only weeks away from my eighteenth birthday.

I had just graduated as valedictorian and earned a full scholarship to a university in New York.

The people who raised me refused to let me go.

They wanted me to give up my scholarship and marry an older man in town who was known for his violent temper. In exchange, he would clear their debts.

When I refused, they locked me in my room.

That night, rain hammered against the windows as I pried open a locked drawer in my parents’ room.

Inside was a faded newborn identification bracelet.

The label read BABY GIRL BENNETT.

The date of birth was mine.

I did not understand everything yet, but I knew they had been hiding the truth from me.

I took the bracelet, my scholarship letter, and the little money I had saved. Then I climbed out of the window.

The storm had flooded the roads. I walked for miles before finding a bus station, soaked through and covered in mud.

I had never left that small town before. I changed buses three times, slept in stations, and repeatedly got lost because I did not know the way.

After reaching New York, I spent weeks tracing the name on the bracelet.

Eventually, a genetic genealogy test pointed me toward the Bennett family.

With the genealogy report in hand, I finally found the Bennett estate.

Inside, Lily was celebrating her eighteenth birthday beneath a crystal chandelier. She wore a designer gown and stood between my parents while Adrian placed a diamond necklace around her throat.

No one noticed me until I stepped into the ballroom.

The music stopped.

My father read the genealogy report twice.

My mother looked at my face, then at Lily’s.

Lily started crying.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. I’ll leave right now. Evelyn can have everything back.”

She reached for the necklace as if she meant to remove it.

My mother stopped her at once and pulled her into her arms.

“You’re still our daughter.”

Adrian moved in front of Lily and looked at me as if I had come to destroy their family.

At the time, Bennett Medical Group was preparing for a major financing deal. My father could not risk the scandal of throwing his biological daughter out.

Instead, he offered me five hundred thousand dollars and spoke to me in a gentle voice.

“Evelyn, I know you’ve suffered all these years. But Lily has been our daughter for eighteen years. Can you give her some time to accept you?”

My mother immediately agreed.

“Lily has been sheltered her entire life. She doesn’t know how cruel the world can be. Please be patient with her.”

I said nothing.

I did not take the money either.

I simply turned around and left.

A formal DNA test later confirmed that I was their biological daughter.

Now Lily is kneeling in front of me in a hospital room.

She takes my mother’s hand and begins to cry.

“If Evelyn leaves today, I’ll refuse all further treatment. You can let me die.”

My parents agree immediately.

My father looks at me with obvious reluctance.

“Fine. We’ll publicly acknowledge you as our biological daughter and bring you into the family.”

Lily then calls Adrian closer.

“Promise me you’ll never hurt Evelyn. You have to love her the way you’ve always loved me.”

Adrian turns and glares at me.

“Whatever happened to her, she deserved it.”

How ridiculous.

Lily spent years turning Adrian against me. Now she is pretending to protect me from the hatred she created.

I try to remember what I ever did to deserve it.

Perhaps my greatest crime was working my way through university while Lily lived as the Bennett heiress.

That fall, we attended the same university in New York.

Lily told everyone I was a poor girl who had fabricated a DNA report to steal the Bennett name.

When I asked my parents to tell the truth, they refused. They said the attention would upset Lily and damage the family.

Their silence gave her permission to do whatever she wanted.

Her friends took photographs of my worn clothes and posted them online. They called me a liar, a stalker, and a gold digger.

Lily led everyone in isolating and humiliating me, but she never touched me herself.

She only watched with tears in her eyes and asked everyone to be kind to me.

Then she blamed me for every scandal she created.

When rumors spread about her, she claimed I had started them.

When she stayed out all night, she told Adrian I had threatened her and made her afraid to come home.

When she got into fights or dated men our family disapproved of, she blamed the scandals on me.

When she failed classes, she claimed I had falsely reported her for cheating.

Adrian believed every word.

To him, Lily was his innocent, kindhearted sister.

I was only a jealous outsider determined to destroy her.

After that, Lily tormented me in private.

And Adrian usually punished me in public.