I Gave Up My Parents' Love First

Mom looked at me, her eyes lighting up with surprise. "Really?"

She quickly cut me off before I could say anything else, as if she were afraid I'd change my mind.

"You can't take back what you just said. And don't go playing the victim. For years, we've only ever been able to spend eight hours a day with her. You have the daytime with us. Letting Suzanne have the engagement doesn't mean we're playing favorites."

Not playing favorites, huh?

"Okay," I murmured.

Mom breathed a sigh of relief, and Dad nodded along.

The worried looks on their faces vanished, replaced by pure relief. As for me, I just stood there, clutching the hem of my shirt and trying to hide how cold my heart felt.

They said I had them during the daytime, but I hardly ever saw them during the day.

They were always so busy with work that they didn't spend time with me during the day. At most, they'd be home with me for a rushed hour or two each day.

When I was little, I used to spend those brief hours desperately clinging to them, trying to make every second of their company count. But all that ever got me was a cold lecture from them.

They would say, "You need to stop being so clingy. We're exhausted from work, so you need to learn to behave and be independent."

To speed up my "independence", they shipped me off to boarding school. And just like that, I was out of the house.

At first, I came home every two weeks. Then it became once a month, then once every three months. In the end, this house became more like a place I stayed occasionally, while the dorm became my real home.

Dad, worried that I was still unhappy with it, said, "I know Suzanne's parents deliberately switched you with her after you were born, and because of that, you've resented Suzanne.

"But you need to understand that Suzanne was simply unlucky enough to be born to people like that. If you could just get over it and stop taking it out on her, she wouldn't have had to suffer all these years."

My grip on my shirt tightened. The years I was taken away were a living hell.

I had to endure beatings in the dead of winter wearing nothing but rags, and even when I was sick, no one would give me medicine… It was endless torture. Moreover, I had never taken my anger out on Suzanne.

That fake heiress, Suzanne Weston, was anything but innocent.

She knew exactly who her real parents were from a young age. And she colluded with them behind our backs to siphon off a ton of my parents' money.

As she got older, she even encouraged her biological parents to make my life even more unbearable.

As such, the very first thing I did when I was finally brought back home was throw a fit about living under the same roof as the daughter of my abusers.

Mom and Dad readily promised to send Suzanne back to her biological parents. But in reality, they kept raising her in the house next door behind my back.

I guessed Mom and Dad really did see Suzanne as their sweet, well-behaved daughter.