Family

I've been overlooked by the Lawson family a hundred times over. On birthdays, they only ever get a cake for my sister, Jocelyn Lawson. When I'm sick, I lie alone in a hospital bed while they fuss around her. I tell myself to tough it out and be a good daughter, but no amount of my endurance ever earns me a drop of their favor. On my wedding day, I think I'll finally get my moment to shine, at least for once. But I'm wrong. My parents, my brother, and even my fiance—Felix Wright, the head of a mafia empire—abandon me to attend Jocelyn's graduation ceremony. They leave me standing alone at the altar, enduring the guests' whispers and pitying glances. But Felix just throws me a cold line. "It's just a wedding. We'll make it up another day." It's not the first time. At our engagement party, Jocelyn whimpers about a stomachache, and he rushes her to the hospital without a flicker of hesitation. I'm left to smile through gritted teeth, making excuses to a room full of guests. That's the moment it hits me. To them, I'll always be the spare. So, I walk away. I pack my bags and carry a secret with me—the child growing inside me. This time, I'm done waiting for their scraps of affection. I'm starting a new chapter in my life, for me and my baby.

On the day of my birthday, my adopted sister, Juliette Griffin, and I get into a car accident. The flames are already licking me hungrily, and yet my fiance, Leon Sinclair, points at the front passenger seat. "Save Juliette first! She has a heart disease!" When I wake up, I'm completely disfigured. At most, I only have one month left to live. Later on, my family decides that Juliette will marry Leon on my behalf for the sake of our families' interests. Leon caresses my bandaged face with heartbreak in his eyes. He then vows to me, "Once you get better, the position of Mrs. Sinclair is still yours." I just smile and say okay. I even give all of my shares, properties, and my unpublished artwork to Juliette as her pre-wedding gifts. Just like that, Juliette becomes a famous artist by publishing my artwork. When the reporters interview Mom, she's so happy that she bursts into tears. "I'm so glad that Juliette isn't the one who got badly hurt in the accident! Otherwise, we'd have lost a genius!" Leon also announces in a high-profile manner that Juliette will be his one and only wife. But what they don't know is that the actual genius is gazing at them coldly from a corner. The things that I've voluntarily given away from the start are actually offerings meant for my vengeance.

My name is Adrian Hart. The day my sister Serena found me and brought me home, I thought I finally had a family again. I was wrong. In Serena's eyes, her adopted brother Evan mattered more than I ever would. When he was too scared to marry into a powerful family, I walked down the aisle for him. When he wanted out, I swallowed a fake-death pill and disappeared. Every time, Serena swore it was the last. The seventh time, she poured the pill down my throat herself. And that was the time I actually died. My soul stayed behind. I watched Serena stand over my body in the morgue and fail to recognize me until it was too late. And the cruelest part wasn't dying. It was knowing that, until my very last breath, my sister still wasn't on my side.

When I was seven years old, my younger brother went into anaphylactic shock after sneaking a handful of peanuts. Outside the emergency room, my mother slammed my head against the wall over and over, her face twisted with rage. "If you had been watching him like you were supposed to be, this never would have happened! You should be the one with a ruptured stomach, not him!" After that, whenever my brother so much as caught a cold, my mother forced me to eat spoiled leftovers as punishment. I once prepared an elaborate feast. She flipped the entire table and made me crawl on the floor to lick it clean. When I said I wanted to study culinary arts, she poured hot oil over my hands. My father wanted to send me to vocational school to learn a trade, but my mother clutched my brother to her chest and wailed. "She destroyed her brother's health! She owes him a lifetime of service!" When I was fifteen, my brother's gluttony cost my father an important business deal. I took the blame without even being asked, and the furious client forced me to drink more than half a gallon of hard liquor. By the time I was sent home with a bleeding stomach, my father had already scolded my brother. My mother took out her anger on me instead, slapping me so hard my ears rang and my vision went dark at the edges. "You useless thing! You should’ve choked to death at that table! I get sick just looking at you!" I coughed up black blood. From my pocket, I pulled out a piece of sour candy that had gone soft and sticky. It was the only treat my mother had ever given me with a smile, back before my brother's allergic reaction. I put the candy in my mouth and swallowed it down with the taste of stomach acid. The candy was so sour it made my throat burn. Whatever came next, I just hoped I would not have to be my family’s garbage disposal again.

It was my birthday. I thought he would take me to see the fireworks by the sea, but he showed up with another woman and her child. “Vera has a kid with her, and it’s inconvenient for them. Be a little understanding. She doesn’t know her way around here, and she has a lot of luggage. I’ll just drop them at the hotel.” He said it so casually, as if he were just explaining some trivial, everyday chore. It was that very gentleness of his that made me feel like I was so unreasonable getting angry over it. He helped them into the car. He leaned down to buckle the seatbelt on the child. Then, he turned to me with a smile. “I’ll be right back. Don’t overthink things.” I stood by the roadside and watched them drive away like a picture-perfect little family. As night fell, the sea breeze turned sharp and biting. Still, I waited until a notification of Vera Cannon’s social feed update lit up my screen. He was holding her daughter in his arms. They were watching the fireworks by the beach. It was a surprise I had planned for my own birthday. The comments poured in. [What a perfect match. What a beautiful little family!] Someone asked him why he was not picking me up. He just smiled and said, “Indy is very patient. She won’t be mad.” At that moment, my birthday cake melted into a puddle of frosting. I finally realized that he had not done that to be cruel to me. He was certain that I would always wait for him. However, even the warmest heart grew cold when neglected too many times. The waves crashed against the shore, over and over. With each crash, another shred of my hope washed away. This time, I was not going to wait for him to come back.

The day I died, the baby in my womb was only five months old. In that final phone call, my father, John Harlow, the godfather of the Harlow family, spoke with a voice as icy as a loaded gun. "A married woman belongs to her husband's family, even in death." When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I had been placed under house arrest. He was circling my college application with a red pen. "Girls who study art are easier to marry off." In front of him, I tore the family's marriage alliance files into pieces. "I'm going to Camford University. I'm studying Computer Science." He sprang to his feet so suddenly that his finger nearly jabbed my face, his sleeve cuff revealing the family crest tattoo. "If you dare defy me, don't ever regard me as godfather." I smiled. "Exactly what I want." Meeting his stunned gaze, I spoke each word deliberately. "The name Harlow. I have long stopped wanting it."

After my eight-year-old twin sister was kidnapped, my dad became the person who wished for my death more than anyone else in the world. He would always say, "Zachary is an ungrateful brat! A good-for-nothing!" So, when the news of my disappearance reached the school, my dad leads everyone in cheers. He even spreads word of my misdeeds everywhere. "Zachary stole a poor student's tuition fees and even made a false police report accusing the teacher of hitting him!" "That's right! He even helped traffickers kidnap children—his own sister was almost sold by him! I hope he dies soon!" Five years later, my memories are extracted and projected onto a large display screen. And yet my dad, who hates me to the core and wishes for my death, falls to his knees and begs for my forgiveness the moment he learns of my death.

My boyfriend’s cousin went to live at his place after her divorce. Not only did she have a five-year-old, but she was even pregnant. She regarded my boyfriend as her support as if it were her right and blamed me for everything. She thought I had taken away her cousin. At a family gathering one day, her son splashed a drink at me and yelled, "You’re not allowed to steal my dad!"

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.

I was the top engineer at the National Deep-Sea Research Center, and the only person in the world with experience in deep-sea rescue. When my sister’s submarine malfunctioned and was stranded ten thousand meters below the surface, I hung up on her distress call. Then I calmly walked into a police station and turned myself in for leaking classified research. A few minutes later, my father called. His voice was frantic and furious. “Your sister is missing. Where the hell are you? I’m ordering you to get to the site immediately and save her, or you won’t see a cent of the family inheritance!” I calmly pulled the blanket over my head and said into the phone, “I don’t have time, and you’re interrupting my sleep.”