Chapter 1

I didn’t drown. A split second before the air was sucked out of me, a guard saved me. However, all he did was haul me onto the riverbank and dump me onto the ground.

I coughed violently, gasping for air in the pitch-black darkness, my hands trembling as I reached out carefully to feel my surroundings.

“Shawn?”

No one answered. The only things I could hear were panicked footsteps in the distance, followed by his frantic roar.

“Butler! Get a doctor here, now! Ava, wake up! Keep your eyes open. Look at me!”

As their voices drifted further and further away, my hand, frozen in mid-air, slowly dropped to the ground. I had no strength left to support my freezing, soaked body.

A crowd had gathered around me, their voices lowered into whispers. However, ever since I lost my sight, my hearing had become incredibly sharp.

“This whole situation with Ella is just embarrassing. How does the Mercer family have a second daughter like her?”

Another voice said with contempt, “Second daughter? She’s not entitled to use the Mercers’ name. When Shawn was brought back to the family, she begged him to let her change her last name!”

“That’s so manipulative.”

I heard every word. I wanted to scream back at them and tell them that it wasn’t like that at all. When Shawn was brought back to the family, he was the one who told me, “You’re taking my last name, Ella. I’m your older brother. Whatever my last name is, yours is too. We are the only real family we have.”

Shawn and I had relied on each other to survive since we were kids. He used to say, “I hope Ella stays sweet forever and lives a life free of hardships.”

My name used to be Ella Long, and his was Shawn Long. However, that wasn’t true anymore. I lowered my eyes, hiding the tears welling up in my sightless eyes. My brother’s name was Shawn Mercer now, and he was Ava’s brother.

Only after the crowd had thrown enough insults at me did Mrs. Lewis, the servant assigned to care for me, reluctantly stepped forward to help me back to the house.

She shoved a cane into my hands and said, “You can get upstairs by yourself, can’t you? What a nuisance.”

I nodded. Using the cane to guide myself, I stepped onto the tactile guiding tiles on the floor, feeling the raised bumps beneath my feet. For a moment, I lost myself in the sensation. Shawn had installed these bumps himself when we first arrived at the Mercer estate. He had done it just to make things easier for me, his blind little sister.

However, just as I was about to walk into my room, a set of hurried, angry footsteps approached from behind.

“Hold it right there!”

Shawn grabbed my wrist, twisting it with a force so brutal that it felt like he was going to break my bones.

“Why did you push Ava into the river? Do you have any idea that she can’t swim at all? If I hadn’t happened to walk past today, you would’ve murdered her!”

He flung my wrist away as his chest heaved.

“Ella, when did you become so vicious? This is attempted murder!”

My swollen wrist was throbbing with agonizing pain. He didn’t even seem to notice that I was dripping wet, and he didn’t seem to care either.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

At my hollow defense, he sneered impatiently. “You didn’t? Ava just told me herself! You tricked her into going down there and deliberately pushed her in!”

I gritted my teeth and replied, “You believe her just because she said it? Why won’t you believe me?”

He fell silent for a couple of seconds before saying wearily, “You spent your entire childhood conning, cheating, and stealing just to get by. Lying is practically in your blood! Ella, you’re blind. Just stay in your lane and be quiet. I’m begging you. Stop causing trouble for everyone else, alright?”

With that, he brushed past me and headed straight to Ava’s room.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m right here, Ava. Don’t be scared. As long as I’m here, no one will ever hurt you again.”

I stood frozen in the hallway, my face pale and my heart sinking.

Conning, cheating, and stealing… Wasn’t all of that just to keep us alive back then? If I hadn’t resorted to stealing medicine to save his life, I wouldn’t have been beaten so badly that I lost my eyesight forever…

Back in my room, I pulled out my phone, and the robotic text-to-speech voice of the accessibility mode began reading the incoming notification.

“Ella, would you be willing to take part in the clinical trial to treat both your eyes? It’ll take quite a while, though.”

My fingers trembled over the screen, and the robotic voice said, “I accept.”