Chapter 1 The Girl Who Returned With Ice Cream

I leaned forward anxiously, scanning the crowd for my adoptive father.

It was my brother Reid's engagement party that day, and the butler had given me this address—there was no mistake.

Ansel grabbed my arm. "Everyone inside is someone important in Evarra. Showing up like this will only disgrace our family."

I gave a faint, mocking smile. "I'm not a Gervais. How could I possibly disgrace it?"

Ansel's expression faltered, though he quickly covered it with arrogance. "Typical hick—All talk, no class."

I yanked my hand free and headed for the entrance, but a security guard stopped me. "Strays off the street are off limits."

At that, he sized me up with open contempt, then turned to his colleague. "A beggar thinks she can crash a high-society party—the people you meet working this job!"

I looked down at myself. I had run here in a rush, and the soft pink designer dress I'd worn was now smudged with dirt.

Ansel frowned, disgusted. "You're really an embarrassment! Your response to being disowned is to give yourself up and be a beggar? Get lost!"

I furrowed my brows. "I'm here to attend my family's engagement."

Reid had returned from overseas to handle business and said he'd found a perfect match for marriage. My father and I had flown straight from our vacation estate to be here for Reid and his fiancee's engagement celebration.

Ansel's lips curled into a strange smile. "Your family? You claim you have no designs on the Gervais family, yet you call yourself one of them. Who do you think you are?"

Confusion pricked at me. 'Is someone from the Gervais family getting engaged too?'

"You've learned nothing ten years abroad, have you? I was even planning to be generous and let you return to us, but clearly, you're still as defiant as ever!"

I let out a silent, bitter laugh. 'So, he remembers that I've been sent away for a decade, huh?'

I'd first arrived in Rimala when I was 12—a stranger in a foreign land, terrified and lost. The region was torn apart by war; explosions thundered daily, and every morning I woke wondering if I'd survive the night.

By sheer coincidence, I saved a man who'd been attacked. He was badly injured, and I nursed him back to health, even sharing the meager scraps of food I could scavenge in the refugee camp. When he finally recovered, he took me home with him—to a gleaming eighty-story mansion dripping in gold and marble. I had been stunned speechless.

Only later did I learn that the conflict had been part of a power struggle among oil tycoons. The man I'd rescued was my future adoptive father, who rose to dominance after that battle and claimed every rival's empire. The war soon ended, and the mines flourished under his control.

They called me his lucky star, the "oil princess" of Rimala—known by everyone in the region. In those ten years, if the Gervais family had cared enough to ask about me even once, they would have known I'd long since been adopted by a petroleum magnate.

I was just about to speak when a bright, cheerful voice interrupted.

"Ansel, it's my big day! No fighting, okay?"

A girl in a pink dress stepped out from the hall, radiant as sunshine.

But the moment I saw her face, my whole body began to tremble—because that face looked exactly like my adoptive mother, the one who had once locked me in a junkyard.