Chapter 2

The air in the room froze.

Lily's chest, which had been heaving moments earlier, stilled for a split second before she caught herself.

A moment later, she was breathing even harder. "I... I'm not faking... If you don't believe me... you can look at my medical records."

She was hunched over, her face completely drained of color.

I scoffed at her clumsy performance. "If you were in real cardiac distress, your breathing would be weak and uneven, not these huge, theatrical gasps. And when you fainted, every muscle in your body stayed braced. You did it on purpose."

Panic flashed in Lily's eyes, but she kept insisting, "I'm not... I'm really not."

I was about to say more when my mother stepped up and slapped me across the face. "Jessica, that's enough. Do you have any idea how many pills Lily has taken all these years, how much she's suffered? Just because she lived your life for 18 years, you think you can slander her like this?"

I stared hard at my mother and raised my hand to hit her back.

Before I could, my father grabbed my wrist. "Jessica, she's your mother!"

I scoffed. "Exactly. Because she's my mother, you should be grateful all I was going to do was hit her back."

After all, the last person who had laid a hand on me had been in the ground for years.

"Enough!" my father snapped. He walked up to me and said coldly, "You've spent 18 years out there picking up bad habits from all kinds of lowlifes. I don't blame you for that. But from now on, if you keep acting like you were raised in the gutter, I won't go easy on you."

Bad habits? Raised in the gutter?

Of course. When people don't love you, even standing up for yourself gets dismissed as "making a scene."

My two adoptive fathers had treated me far better.

They always told me, "Anyone who hurts you should pay twice over. If you can't make them pay yourself, find someone who can."

"You're right, Father. That was out of line. So since you can't stand the sight of me, why don't you hurry up and send me back?"

My father's face went dark.

Maybe he'd never met anyone who refused to fall in line.

Or maybe he'd expected me to be groveling for forgiveness by now.

Too bad. I don't grovel.

"Jessica, there's nothing I hate more than being threatened. You should be grateful you're Andreani blood. Otherwise, I'd send you straight to hell today."

With that, my father pulled out a stack of papers and set them down in front of me.

"I'll let what just happened slide. But now that you're back in this house, you'll follow its rules. Sign this waiver of your inheritance rights. Don't worry, it's only a little test to prove you're not after the family fortune."

Here for the family fortune?

What a joke.

My first adoptive father had once held a gun to his own head to make me take over his business.

And my second adoptive father had made himself sick and stayed in bed for six months just to get me to come home and run things.

And now my own biological father thought I was after his money and wanted me to sign away my inheritance.

Fine. I'll give it up. That little fortune isn't worth the trouble anyway.

I picked up the pen and, without even reading it, signed my name on the last page.

My father froze. He clearly hadn't expected me to sign without hesitation.

Lily came over and took my hand. "Jessica, don't blame Dad. He's the head of the family, after all. Sometimes his hands are tied. But you're his real daughter. In the end, all of this will be yours anyway."

Daniel stepped forward and tossed the signed agreement at me. "Jessica, the engagement is over. Listen carefully. If you ever bully Lily again, I'll throw you into the pond behind my house and feed you to the crocodiles."

I smiled, folded the agreement, and tucked it into my pocket. "Now that the engagement's off, you and I have nothing to do with each other. And as for you..."

I turned to my father. "If the Andreani family ever goes broke, don't come to me for a loan."