All Chapters of The Heiress Nobody Wanted : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Go with him," Mrs. Perez said, before Ariel could even ask."Mom, no...""Ariel." Her mother's voice was steady in a way it rarely was anymore, like she had been saving up strength for exactly this sentence. "You have spent years wanting a door like this to open. I won't watch you close it because of me.""You are the reason, Mom. If I leave, who's going to make sure you take your medication? Who's going to walk you to the clinic when your legs won't...""I'll manage." A flicker of the old stubbornness. "I managed for eighteen years before you were old enough to worry about me. I can manage a little longer."Ariel looked past her mother into the dim apartment, the peeling wallpaper, the secondhand furniture, the taped-up Harvard crest above her bed that she'd stared at every night for two years like a prayer. Then she looked at the black car idling at the curb, and the old man waiting beside it with the patience of someone who had clearly done this exact thing before, for some other l

For a moment, Ariel just stood in the doorway of the wrecked room, too tired to feel much of anything beyond the ache in her legs. Somewhere below her she could hear dishes being cleared, someone's low laughter, the ordinary sounds of a household settling in for the night, as if a girl hadn't just been handed a rulebook instead of a welcome.Mrs. Dalton appeared in the doorway behind them before Ariel could take in the wreckage of the room properly, her voice suddenly tight in a way it hadn't been downstairs, sharper, almost frightened."Nathan. This is a storage room. She can't stay here.""It's fine, Mrs. Dalton," Nathan said, unbothered, already turning to leave, keys still swinging carelessly from one finger. "Plenty of space once you clear a path to the bed. Assuming there is one under all that.""I said this isn't acceptable." Something in Mrs. Dalton's tone made even Nathan pause halfway down the hall. It wasn't the voice of a woman correcting a servant's oversight. It was clos

Ariel ran three blocks before she accepted that the black sedan carrying Britney to school wasn't going to slow down for her, no matter how loudly she called after it, her voice cracking a little on the second shout.She stopped at the fourth corner, hands on her knees, catching her breath in the cold morning air. She didn't even glance back, Ariel thought, and then, more coldly, watching the sedan shrink into traffic: Or she glanced back exactly once, made sure I saw her not stopping, and decided that was worth the detour.She checked her mother's old wristwatch, scratched, secondhand, nothing like the crisp new Crestmore uniform Mrs. Dalton's staff had delivered that morning. Eight forty-two. Class started at nine. She had no idea which direction the school was in.Everything here looked the same. Wide streets with no landmarks, manicured lawns indistinguishable from one another, houses larger than her entire old apartment building. Back home she'd known every crack in the sidewalk,

"Mrs. Dalton." Ariel kept her voice level, though her pulse had picked up. "I need you to look at this again."Mrs. Dalton frowned, clearly not understanding the problem yet. "It's your placement results. Advanced tier across the board, apparently. You should be pleased.""I am pleased." Ariel opened the envelope and pulled out the single printed sheet inside. A signature sat at the bottom, her name, in handwriting that curved differently than her own, the T crossed high and looping instead of flat. "I just didn't write this. I wasn't in that exam room. I was in the library the whole period. Mrs. Whitfield sent me there herself."For a moment Mrs. Dalton said nothing, studying the page as if the paper itself might explain things if she looked hard enough."Someone submitted this under your name," she said slowly."Yes.""That's not possible. The exam is proctored. Students sign in.""I know," Ariel said. "That's what worries me."Mrs. Dalton's expression shifted into something Ariel h

Jim was polishing silverware in the pantry when Ariel found him that evening, the same slow, deliberate work she'd caught him doing before, hands busy so his face had somewhere to look besides directly at whoever was asking him questions."Sasha," Ariel said, without preamble.The polishing cloth stopped."Where did you hear that name," Jim said quietly. Not really a question either."Someone's been texting me. They told me to ask you." Ariel stepped further into the pantry. "Nathan told me about the girl who tried to con this family before I showed up. Was that her? Sasha?"Jim set down the silverware very carefully, like it had suddenly become something that could break. For a long moment he didn't answer at all, and Ariel almost thought he wasn't going to, the same wall he'd put up every time before."Sasha worked in this house," he said finally. "Before. As a junior member of staff. She knew the family's history well enough to build a convincing story around it. Close enough to fo