Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The day I returned to my birth parents, the fake heiress held a knife to her throat.
“I’m a person, not your puppet! Stop controlling me! Do you need me dead to be happy?” she screamed. “Fo rce me into marriage again, and I’ll make you front–page news!”
She spun dramatically, pausing near me.
“Now that your real daughter’s back, go suck the life out of her!”
Furious, my father slammed a leather document on the table: The Beaumont Legacy Agreement.
“To be our daughter,” he growled, “sign this lifetime contract.”
My hands shook as I read it:
- Tai Chi with Grandpa at 6 AM. Reward: $10,000/session.
- II. Never speak to unsavory people near parents. Reward: $1M/day.
III. Compliment your brother 10 times daily. Reward: $10,000/each.
Isabelle laughed from the doorway. “You actually want this puppet life-”
I snatched a pen and signed boldly.
“Ten compliments? How about a hundred? I’ll even throw some in for Mom, Dad, and Grandpa!”
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‘Are you insane? That’s an indenture contract! Once you sign it, you’ll never be able to leave the Beaumont
family!”
Isabelle whirled back around, shocked by my sycophantic tone.
‘I’ve already lived twenty years in this suffocating prison,” she declared. “And you people won’t even spare
your own flesh and blood, who just got here? Are you monsters?!”
With that, she snatched the papers from my hand and ripped them to shreds with a vicious shrrriiip.
My heart sank.
Judging by her tortured expression, you’d think her life for the past eighteen years had been worse than mine -and I’d spent them scrounging through trash cans.
My father slammed his fist on the table with a deafening crack. My mother looked at Isabelle, her face etch- ed with pain.
“You wear Chanel, you’re driven in a Rolls–Royce, you dine on foie gras and lobster, and your monthly allowa- nce is five million dollars. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that your life is ‘suffocating‘.”
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02:46
Chapter 1
02.46
Isabelle rolled her eyes, retorting without a shred of gratitude, “Did I ask for any of that? You forced it all or me. Do you really think I’ve been happy all these years?”
Grandfather struck the marble floor with his cane. “Get out! If you insist on leaving with this gutter rat, ther from this day on, the Beaumont family no longer has a daughter named Isabelle!”
The “gutter rat” in question, a boy named Leo, clenched his fists, his eyes burning with humiliation. “What‘:
that supposed to mean? You think you’re better than me?”
My brother let out a cold snort.
That only enraged Leo further, but before he could launch into some cliché speech about the poor rising u against the rich, the security guards arrived and began escorting him out.
Isabelle threw herself in front of him. “What are you doing? Leo can go wherever he wants! This is a violation of his personal freedom!”
“Isabelle, let’s go,” Leo said, grabbing her arm. “One day, they’ll regret what they did today!”
As he pulled her away, she made one last appeal to me. “Aren’t you coming? Are you really going to sell you freedom for a little bit of dirty money? To become a pawn in their marriage games?”
All eyes in the room turned to me.
Terrified my new sugar daddies might misunderstand, I immediately declared my allegiance.
“Isabelle, you have no idea what you’re talking about. This family raised you with everything you could eve want, and you throw it back in their faces. If anyone’s suffocating here, it’s Mom, Dad, my brother, and Gran
dpa!”
Isabelle trembled with rage, pointing a finger at my nose. “I try to help you, and this is the thanks I get.”
“Aurora Beaumont! You’ll regret not listening to me!”
