Is 'The Family Upstairs' Based On A True Story?

On New Year’s Eve, my kidnappers forced me to climb down the inside of a 650-foot industrial chimney with my bare hands. The kidnappers started a live stream on the dark web. They claimed that what I was doing could drive away bad luck and bring blessings for the country. I climbed for a full eight hours in darkness and pain. When my family caught me at the bottom of the chimney, my body was covered in sores, and I was so injured that they barely recognized me. Rachel immediately covered me with a shawl. When she helped me get into the car, she was shaking. My fiancee cried and dared not touch me. That night, she destroyed the whole criminal organization. On that ambulance ride home, I could barely think straight. I heard them whispering to each other. “Rachel, Jason just wanted an unforgettable night! You said it’s not “impressive” enough and insisted on making Yannick climb the chimney!” “Miss Jones, how could an ordinary present leave such a lasting impression on Jason?” “It doesn’t matter if Yannick suffers a little physical pain. Our family will more than make it up to him.” It turned out that the eight hours of agony I endured, which nearly killed me, were just to ensure that another man’s holiday would be “truly unforgettable.”

One night, my family sat together watching the New Year’s Eve Live on television. My little sister, Stella Larson, said she had to pee and hurried to the washroom. Half an hour later, she still had not returned. When I went to check on her, the washroom was empty. “When did Stella leave the washroom?” I asked my parents. Both of them were stunned for a moment before feeling my forehead and saying, “What are you talking about? You’re an only child. Who is Stella?” They forcibly pulled me back to my seat. My mind went blank. Did the three of them just pull a prank on me? After finishing his drink, my father clutched his stomach and rushed into the washroom. I stared fixedly at the washroom door. A long time passed, but no one came out. My father had vanished, too. My hand trembled as I pointed at the bathroom. My mother stepped forward to go in. “Don’t go in! Dad and Luna disappeared in there!” My mother looked grief-stricken as she said, “Sweetie, it’s been just the two of us for the past twenty-plus years, remember?” Her words hit me hard. I was in total disbelief. I explained myself frantically, but the more I spoke, the more confused my mother became. She finally shook me off and said, “Why are you doing this to me? I’ve raised you your whole life! Why do you have to ruin New Year’s Eve?” She walked straight into the washroom, and the house soon fell into a dead silence. Terrified, I called my best friend, Kathy Scott, who lived nearby. I rambled incoherently as I begged her for help. But her words utterly crushed me. “What family members? You’re an orphan.” I hung up the phone, rushed out, and pounded frantically on the neighbors’ door.

My husband and I have been married for a decade. When I finally conceive for the first time in ten years, I realize my worst enemies are my family, who all want me dead. I've made a promise to return to the fertility shrine on the mountain and fulfill my vow if things work out, but my mother-in-law deliberately messes up the cable car tickets. In the process of hiking up the mountain for two hours, I lose my baby. In the hospital, I cry to my husband about all the vicious things his mother has done to me, but he kicks me in the stomach. "I had a vasectomy a long time ago. There's no way that bastard inside you is mine!" When he hands me the proof, I'm completely speechless. I break down in tears and run back to my parents' place. Not only do my parents hire a nanny to help take care of me, but they even move out of the house so I can rest in tranquility. When I'm eight months pregnant, I overhear them whispering in the bathroom. "We can never let Gina have the baby. I don't care if it kills her—we're all screwed if the child is born!" "Relax. The doctor already told me that Gina's got leukemia from all the formaldehyde in our new house. Even the baby's deformed!" Shocked, I burst into the bathroom to confront them, but the slippery floor causes me to fall hard. Instantly, blood snakes across the tiles. As I lie there in pain, I look up and see the cold, twisted smiles on my parents' faces before taking my last breath. I cannot fathom why my family wants me dead. I thought they'd been looking forward to his baby for a decade. When I open my eyes again, I return to the very day my mother-in-law insists on taking me to the mountain.

“I know who you are,” Rebecca said to him, breathing his perfume. He looked into her eyes. “Who am I?" A rebellious tear fell from his eyes. “You're not the tenant that came one day without a penny in his pocket, you're the CEO of the Muriel's company.” She expressed with pain breaking her heart. “We're not very different, Alexander Muriel. I'm the daughter of the mafia king who killed your sister and you're the idiot who took my son away." Rebecca smiled mockingly. Alexander's heart broke. “I should never have looked at you, I shouldn't have loved you.” The tenant's secret tells the story of Rebecca who was kicked out of her house and ran away with her son from her ex-husband who wants to kill her to owe her shares of the company but what she didn't expect to find in her way was a helpless man who had nothing to offer but his protection as a man. Living a double life, Alexander falls for Rebecca in the searching for the killer of his sister without knowing Rebecca is the mafia king's daughter who killed Graciela. Will the love between them be able to surpass any obstacle? Will they be able to forgive each other for their mistakes? Secrets don't last forever and they're going to discover they are not the only guilty ones.

When I'm washing Julian White's pants, I pull out a management fee invoice from one of the pockets. Surprisingly enough, the address is the unit on the floor above my apartment. The thing is, Julian's name is put down as the apartment owner. As I clutch the invoice, I feel my blood turning into ice. Suddenly, I recall the way Julian kept telling me he had overtime shifts to pull over the past six months. Because of that, he often came home past midnight. There were a few times when I realized that his car was still parked in its designated parking slot of the apartment block despite the fact that he had already "gone out". When I asked Julian for the reason, he answered, "The gas prices are very high right now. Taking the subway is more convenient, not to mention I get to save more money for our family's expenses." I used to feel happy about the fact that Julian cared so much about our family. But now, I finally realize that his so-called overtime shifts are just excuses for him to spend time in the unit upstairs. At that moment, I hear the sounds of a key being inserted into the front door's lock. Julian is home. When he notices the invoice in my hand, he takes it from me casually. "Maybe the staff placed it in the wrong mailbox." I nod with a smile. "It's nothing. I'm going to take out the trash first." After leaving the apartment, I head upstairs right away. Once I knock on the door, the woman who came to open the door for me is heavily pregnant. It seems that she's about to give birth.

After fifteen years away, I was finally brought back to the DeLuca family. I thought I was returning to my real home. Instead, I walked into a house where the adopted daughter wanted me dead, my father treated me like a burden, and my brothers would rather watch me bleed than make her cry. On my first day back, she set dogs on me. That night, I was dragged to the top of the observatory and forced to apologize to her. When I fell from the tower covered in blood, they still called me a liar. Because in the DeLuca family, I may have been the real daughter by blood— but she was the daughter they loved. She thought she could bully me, poison me, and freeze me to death without consequence. She was wrong. Because the night I nearly died, my mother finally chose me—and turned a gun on the whole DeLuca family.