2.

I suspected that Vanessa wasn't really my parents' daughter. Back at reform school, I had uncovered a shocking piece of information.

***

On the day of my eighteenth birthday, Vanessa collapsed in front of everyone. My eighteenth birthday was supposed to be the day I got engaged to Lucas, the very man who had promised to love me forever. But she fainted right after declaring that she wanted Lucas for herself.

After being rushed to the hospital, she was diagnosed with severe blood loss and required an immediate transfusion. Unfortunately for me, my blood was a matching type.

“Arabella, give Vanessa your blood. Just this once,” my father demanded.

“No, I won't,” I refused softly.

Had they forgotten? I was severely anemic. Even the family doctor had warned that I was lacking blood. Because of my condition, Mom used to cook special nutrient-rich meals for me, and Dominic would pity me, sneaking me out of the house just to treat me to good food. Yet now, they were standing over me, demanding my blood for Vanessa.

I stared at them. They all looked eager to bleed me dry. Even Lucas, the man who was supposed to stand by my side, looked at me with cold disappointment.

“Mom, Dad, let me talk to Arabella,” Lucas told my parents before dragging me out into the quiet hospital corridor.

“Arabella, give Vanessa your blood, or I won't get engaged to you,” he threatened.

I was so foolish, so terribly naive. Lucas was the only person left who had seemed to care after my family discarded me. He was the one I wept to during sleepless nights. But looking back now, I realized he had never loved me at all.

“But, Lucas... did you forget I lack blood?” My hands trembled as I clutched his coat, my hazel-green eyes silently pleading with him.

“It's just once, Arabella. Don't be so selfish. I loved you because you were smart and kind, but I never knew you were this selfish and evil.”

His words sank deep, slicing through my heart like a blade. ‘Maybe I am selfish…’

“I'll... I'll give her the blood,” I whispered, looking at him with desperate eyes, begging him not to abandon me.

“Good.”

That was the first blood draw. It was meant to happen only once, but once turned into twice, and twice spiraled into an endless routine.

I began losing consciousness almost every day, but none of them cared. Instead, they dragged me back to the clinic again and again to extract more blood. Even the nurses looked at me with pity, warning my parents about my rapidly declining health. Still, my family pushed forward, and in my broken state, I let them, until one nurse pulled me aside.

“Girl, you need to stop letting them draw your blood. You're on the brink of death,” she whispered, staring at my pale skin and dark, hollow eyes with a mixture of pity and disbelief. “If you say no, the hospital legally cannot take another drop without your consent.”

I nodded weakly, staring up at the sterile ceiling.

The next day, my parents, my brothers, and Lucas returned to take more blood. But taking the nurse's advice, I refused.

Without my consent, the medical staff held their ground and refused to perform the draw.

The moment we stepped back into the Rosewood mansion that afternoon, a sharp slap cracked across my face. It was my father.

I collapsed onto the cold marble floor, too weak from blood loss to even stand or keep my vision clear.

“You are so ungrateful and selfish!” my father roared down at me. “After everything we've done for you, is this how you repay us?”

“Lock her up!” he commanded.

The maids dragged my limp body upstairs and threw me into my room.

For two days, I was left without a single bite of food. I just lay on the floor, too weak to move, too weak to see.

On the third day, the door finally burst open. Rough hands grabbed me, dragged me outside, and shoved me into a chair.

“Eat,” a voice demanded. My head was spinning so badly I couldn't even decipher who was speaking.

“We are sending you to a reform school. Vanessa said it's a good facility that will teach you discipline. You will be there for four years,” the voice continued.

I was too weak to fight, too weak to argue, but I managed to choke out a single plea. “Please... don't take me away. I'll be good... I promise I'll be good...”

I wept, but no one answered.

They had chosen to forget how terrified I was of being locked away in an institution ever since I was rescued from my childhood kidnappers.

At nineteen, I was dumped at the gates of the reform center, and a new kind of hell began.

From the outside, it posed as a prestigious academy, but inside, it was a brutal pit. The strong ruled, and the weak suffered.

I was beaten daily. My food was stolen, and I was locked in dark, cramped closets for hours. At first, I held onto a pathetic shred of hope that my parents would rescue me when they received my letters. But two years passed without a single reply.

That was the moment the truth finally hit me: no one was coming to save me.

And that was when I stopped cowering. The strong survive here? Fine. Then I would become the strongest.

At the brink of death, a powerful new drive ignited in my chest: ‘Revenge.’ I was going to make every single person who wronged me pay.

I began learning how to fight in secret, building my strength day by day. By my third year, I had become one of the most feared fighters in the center. Everyone who had bullied me received their punishment tenfold. And amidst it all, I discovered a hidden truth, it was Vanessa who had paid the guards and inmates to target me.

“Revenge,” I had sworn to myself in the dark.

Even if I wasn't their biological daughter, that gave them no right to treat me like trash, let alone drive me to the brink of death.

But why was Vanessa so desperate to see me dead? That question had consumed me throughout my years in reform school. Now, I needed to uncover the truth and find out if she was truly a Rosewood at all.

***

“Blood!” a maid shrieked, pulling me sharply back to reality.

I blinked, looking down at my hand. My skin was torn and bleeding, right where Sebastian's heavy grip had squeezed my unhealed wound.