Novel & Cerita Afton Family Portrait

I was Don Alexander's most skilled assassin and Consigliere, and also his secret wife. But for five years of our secret marriage, he never allowed our son to call him Dad. He always said that the enemy families were constantly watching our family, and that I and our son were his only weakness, so this was to protect us. I believed him, and silently helped him manage all the family affairs, until his first love, Bella, returned with a five-year-old boy. He booked out the entire Disneyland for them to play all day. That day was my son's birthday, and he stubbornly waited for his father to come home, holding a melting cake. I completely lost hope and made a phone call: "Help me cancel my and Leo's identities and erase all our information." But when my son and I truly disappeared, the powerful Don went mad, searching the entire world for traces of us...

Everyone thought Sophia Collins was the poor fake heiress. She lost her place in the Collins family, got sent to a brutal obedience academy, and spent three years eating dog food, sleeping in kennels, and wearing a leash like an animal. When my father finally brought her home, she knelt in front of him, covered in bruises, and sobbed, “Dad, I’ll behave. Please don’t let Ava chain me like a dog again.” Everyone looked at me like I was a monster. What they didn’t know was that Sophia had once stolen my body. In my last life, I was the one trapped in that academy. I was the one beaten, humiliated, and forced to bark on my knees. Then she switched our souls back and framed me for everything. My father believed her. He broke my legs and threw me into a dog cage. But this time, I came back before the nightmare began. And when Sophia stole my body again, she thought she had won. She didn’t know I had already turned her own trap into mine.

After my SATs are over, I go to the office block with my poverty certificate to apply for a school loan. The staff member glances at my paperwork before turning my application down coldly. "To think that you're already swindling loans from the government at such a young age! High-income families like yours aren't lacking in the money department at all!" At first, I think this is just a misunderstanding. That is, until the staff member passes me the information on my parents. "Your parents have a villa worth 20 million dollars in the city center, whereas your younger brother goes to an elite academy that costs 800 thousand dollars' worth of tuition fees per year! "Tell me, how can someone from your family be eligible to apply for a school loan?" I'm stunned, to say the least. The entire village has raised me since young. For the past 18 years, I've been the only child of an extremely impoverished family. Little do I know that my parents have already formed another family of their own in the city…

I returned home after studying abroad for three years, only to find that my brother’s girlfriend had brought her entire family to live in my mansion. The moment they saw me, they pinned me against the floor. "How dare you! Call him your sweetheart, spend his money, and now you're here to take my mansion? " When I saw the girlfriend’s crazed antics, I was shocked. “Who did you say owns the mansion?” “It’s my boyfriend’s, but it’ll be mine sooner or later. It has nothing to do with you.” With her parents, she yanked off the ancient pendant on my neck and crushed my heirloom bracelet. They even tied up my limbs, put me on the table, and positioned me in a humiliating pose to post online. Her brother pinned my legs down and reached under my shirt…

At the age when I should have been attending university, I was framed by my biological parents and sent to prison. My sister had been cruelly killed by her kidnappers when she tried to save me, and they blamed me for her death. On the day of my release, I was kidnapped and had one of my ears cut off. When I found the opportunity, I immediately called my father, asking him to save me. Instead, he snapped, saying, “You’re no longer my son! Don’t contact me!” I was then burned alive. After I died, my sister returned. However, when my parents found out that the charred corpse was mine, the family crumbled.

I was adopted. They were so good to me that every night before I fell asleep, I prayed to grow up healthy and happy in this home. Then Mom got pregnant. I hid under my covers and cried all night, quietly packing the little suitcase I had arrived with. But they didn't send me away. They loved me even more. The day my brother was born, Mom took my hand and gently stroked my head. "Having an older sister," she said, "is why we have a younger brother." Dad lifted me above his head and spun me around laughing. "Lily is our family's lucky star — our most beloved baby!" I finally stopped dreading every single day. I thought I had truly become part of this family. Then my brother snapped my favorite Barbie in half. I pushed him. He stumbled, sat on the floor, stared for two seconds, and burst into tears. Mom panicked, shoved me aside, and pulled him into her arms, asking over and over if he was hurt. Dad came running. He grabbed my shoulders and slammed me against the wall, eyes blazing. "Is this what I raised you all these years for — to bully your brother? Believe me when I say I will send you straight back to—"

After my beloved boyfriend dies in a fire, my sister marries a rich man. So, I marry her husband, Jason Grant's father. We go from being sisters to being mother and daughter-in-law. We're still a family, aren't we? Later, Jason pins me to a corner while breathing heavily. "Money is all you want, right? I can give you everything he can. Wouldn't it be much better for you to be with me than with a paralyzed old man?" Oh, he's got this all wrong. Money isn't what I want. His life is what I want.

The day my brother, Chester Rodney, came to the orphanage to take me home, my boyfriend Dominic Huxley looked at me coldly and said, "If you choose to acknowledge your birth family, we're over." I knew he had his pride—he could never accept the difference in our social standing. So, for him, I turned my back on the family I had yearned for my whole life. In the decades that followed, I toiled without complaint, saving every cent to help him rise to success. By the time I was not yet fifty, overwork had worn me down. Lying on my deathbed, my breathing shallow and weak, I watched Dominic on television. He was now an acclaimed scientist, just awarded the nation's highest research honor. Tears welled in his eyes as he thanked another woman. "All these years," he said, "I never felt worthy of Alicia. But now, maybe I can use this award as the prologue to a love I've owed her for decades." The "Alicia" he spoke of was the woman mistakenly switched with me at birth—the false heiress the Rodney family raised as their own. The camera zoomed out. Alicia Rodney stood radiant, graceful, and perfectly preserved by years of luxury, blushing as she accepted the trophy. "I waited for you for decades," she said sweetly, "but marriage is still something I'll need to ask my brother about." Chester, who had long taken over the family, looked at her with an indulgent tenderness tinged with something unspoken. "I was adopted by our uncle back then for one reason—to protect Alicia. Making the only princess of the Rodney family happy has always been my life's mission." Only then did I realize—everything I thought I had chosen freely, every sacrifice I made without regret, was nothing but a trap, carefully woven by two men, all for Alicia. The betrayal pierced my heart. I died without peace. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day Chester came to take me home from the orphanage. I glanced past the two men eyeing me with subtle disdain. Without hesitation, I stepped into the car. "Take me home," I said. This time, I'd send whoever stole my life back to the gutter they slithered from.

My father-in-law, George Lane, suffered from a brain aneurysm and fell onto the ground. The floor was covered in his blood. I calmly picked up a mop and wiped the floor clean. As his daughter-in-law, I gave up on saving him within the most critical time. In my last life, I was the first person who found out that George was injured. I immediately got an ambulance and sent him to the hospital. Before the surgery, the hospital required his immediate family member to sign off the consent form. However, when I asked my husband, Brian Lane to come to the hospital to sign that document, he thought that I was acting out of jealousy because he was spending time with his first-love. He thought I was making an excuse to get him home, so he refused to go to the hospital. In the end, George passed away as he did not receive the treatment on time. Brian did not manage to see George for the last time, and he blamed it all on me. He then hacked me to death. “It’s your fault! My dad was so old, and you didn’t take good care of him as a daughter-in-law! Since you’re not doing your part when he’s alive, then you should continue your duties as a daughter-in-law in hell!” When I opened my eyes, I found myself on the day when George died again.

After three years of living with my wife’s family, everyone thought they could treat me like a pushover. Me? I’m just waiting for her to hold my hand before I can give her the world.