The Fake heiress's secret husband

Aria

Today was the day I was finally going home. Or that was what the guard told me this morning when she unlocked my cell and threw a plastic bag with my old clothes at my feet.

Home. I almost laughed. I didn't have a home anymore. Grace was gone. Our little apartment was gone. The only thing waiting for me out there was a cold city and a world that thought I was a monster.

Two years. I had been inside these grey walls for two years, two months and eleven days. I counted every single one of them.

"Are you really leaving me alone with these animals?" Lena asked from her bunk. She was pretending to be angry but I could see that her eyes were red.

"You will be out in six months," I said as I folded my prison shirt for the last time.

"Six months is a long time, princess. Who am I going to fight with now?" she said and pouted.

I rolled my eyes at her. She had called me princess since the first day I came here, crying and shaking with a cut on my lip. Back then she said it to make fun of me. Now she said it like it was my real name.

"Come here," she said and pulled me into a tight hug. I hugged her back and blinked back the tears that were burning my eyes.

"Promise me you won't let them break you out there," she whispered.

"I promise," I said.

She was the only family I had left. The only one who never let go of my hand.

"Bennett! Let's go!" the guard shouted from the door.

I walked behind the guard through the long hallway. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would jump out of my chest. When the last gate opened, the cold wind hit my face and I closed my eyes for a second.

Freedom.

I opened my eyes and looked around. The road outside the prison was empty, just like I expected. No one was waiting for me. Grace would have been here. She would have been standing right there with a big smile and a box of my favourite donuts.

But Grace had been dead for four years. I held my plastic bag tighter and started to walk.

"Aria?" I stopped. A woman's voice. Soft and shaking.

I turned around slowly. There was a long black car parked on the side of the road. I didn't even see it before. Standing beside it was a couple I had never seen in my life. They looked rich. Very rich.

"Do I... know you?" I asked.

The woman put her hand on her mouth. Her eyes were full of tears.

"Oh God. Richard, look at her. She has my mother's eyes," she said.

"Ma'am, I think you have the wrong person," I said and took a step back. The man came forward. He held out a white envelope.

"Miss Bennett, my name is Richard Whitmore. This is my wife, Diane. Please. Read this," he said.

Whitmore. Everyone in this city knew that name. Why would people like them be standing outside a prison waiting for someone like me?

My hands were shaking when I opened the envelope. It was a paper from a hospital. A DNA test. I read it once. Then I read it again. The words didn't make sense. Probability of parentage, ninety-nine point nine percent.

"What is this?" I whispered.

"Twenty years ago, there was a mistake at the hospital where you were born. Two baby girls were born on the same night. The nurses switched them," Richard said slowly.

"You are our daughter, Aria. Our real daughter," Diane said and her voice broke. I stared at them. The world was spinning around me.

"No. No, that's not possible. My mother is Grace Bennett. She raised me. She..." I said and stopped.

Grace, who had blonde hair when mine was dark. Grace, who always said I didn't look like anyone in her family. Grace, who used to look at me sometimes with sad eyes I never understood.

"We only found out a few weeks ago. We came as soon as we could," Diane said.

"We have been looking for you, sweetheart," she added. Sweetheart. Nobody had called me that since Grace died.

Diane opened her arms. I didn't know what to do. I just stood there with the paper in my hand and my old plastic bag on the ground. Then she stepped forward and hugged me.

She smelled like flowers and expensive perfume. Her arms were warm. And something inside of me that was broken for so long just fell apart.

I cried. I cried like a little girl in the arms of a woman I had met two minutes ago. And she held me and rubbed my back and said,

"It's okay. You're home now. You're home." For the first time in two years, I believed it.

The car was so soft inside that I was afraid to sit down. I was afraid I would make it dirty.

Diane didn't let go of my hand the whole ride. She asked me what I liked to eat, what my favourite colour was, what music I listened to. Richard didn't say much. He was typing on his phone, but every few minutes he looked at me like he couldn't believe I was real.

"Do you... know why I was in prison?" I asked quietly. My stomach was in a knot. I had to ask. I had to know if they knew. Diane and Richard looked at each other.

"We read the file," Richard said.

I looked down at my lap. Here it comes, I thought. Here comes the look. The disgust. The same look everyone gave me.

"Whatever happened, it's in the past now. You were young and alone. We were not there to protect you. That's our fault, not yours," Diane said and squeezed my hand.

I didn't tell them the truth. That I didn't do it. That I was set up by the man I loved and a girl I barely knew. I wanted to tell them so badly, but the words got stuck in my throat. Nobody ever believed me before. What if they didn't believe me either?

What if they looked at me like everyone else did? So I just nodded and said nothing. Maybe this is for the best, I thought. A new life. A clean start.

The Whitmore mansion was not a house. It was a palace. White walls, tall windows and a garden so big I couldn't see where it ended. There was a fountain in the middle with a stone angel on top. I just stood there in the driveway with my mouth open.

"Welcome home, Miss Aria."

An older woman in a black uniform was standing at the door. She had grey hair in a bun and the warmest eyes I had ever seen.

"This is Rosa. She has worked for us since before you were born," Diane said.

"Hello," I said shyly.

Rosa looked at me for a long moment. Then she did something I didn't expect. She pulled me into a hug.

"Look at you. You look just like your grandmother," she said in my ear. Her voice was shaking.

I liked her right away. Diane took me upstairs herself. She opened a white door at the end of a long hallway.

"This is your room. I decorated it myself. If you don't like anything, we will change it," she said.

I walked in and my eyes filled with tears again. It was bigger than my old apartment. There was a huge bed with soft pink pillows, a desk by the window, a closet full of new clothes with the tags still on. There was even a small bookshelf full of books.

"Rosa told me you would like books," Diane said with a smile.

"Thank you. Thank you so much," I said. It was all I could say.

"Take a shower and rest. Dinner is at seven. There is someone very important who wants to meet you," she said and kissed my forehead before she left.

I stood under the hot shower for almost an hour. I wanted to wash every bit of that prison off of me. When I came out, I put on a soft blue dress from the closet. It fit me perfectly.

I looked at the girl in the mirror. Clean hair. A pretty dress. A real bedroom behind her.

She didn't look like a prisoner anymore. She looked like a Whitmore.

At seven, Rosa came to take me downstairs. The dining room had a table so long it could fit twenty people. Richard was sitting at the head of it. Diane was beside him. Next to her was a young man with dark hair and a cold face. He was looking at me like I was something dirty on his shoe.

"Aria, this is Julian. Your brother," Diane said.

"Hi," I said and gave him a small smile.

He didn't smile back. He just nodded once and looked away.

"Don't mind him. He needs some time," Diane whispered as she pulled out the chair for me.

I sat down. My hands were sweating. I didn't know which fork to use. There were so many of them.

"Where is she? She's late again," Richard said and looked at his watch.

"She was so nervous, Richard. Give her a minute," Diane said. Then she turned to me with the softest smile.

"Aria, sweetheart, there is one more person in this family we want you to meet. She grew up in this house. She's been our daughter for twenty years, and she was so excited when she heard about you," she said.

I heard the sound of heels on the marble floor. Click, click, click.

"Come meet your sister," Diane said. I turned toward the door.

A girl walked in wearing a white dress, her long blonde hair falling down her back. She was smiling. A perfect, sweet, beautiful smile.

The glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor. I knew that face. I would know that face anywhere.

It was the face I saw every single night for two years when I closed my eyes. The girl who stood next to Ethan in that courtroom and held his hand. The girl who was crying in front of the police the night my whole life was destroyed.

She looked at me. And for just one second, before anyone else could see it, her sweet smile turned into something else.

"Hello, sister," Camilla said.