Chapter 1

Three years ago, I unexpectedly awakened the true-and-fake heiress system.

The system told me that the driver's daughter, my best friend, was the real heiress.

By then, the driver and his wife were already dead in an accident.

Guilt-ridden, I ran a quiet test of my own, and then I offered to give her place back to her.

After that day, everything changed.

My parents, who had once doted on me endlessly, took to hitting and cursing me over nothing.

My sunny room was handed over to my best friend as a storeroom, and I was moved into a cramped, airless attic.

The boy who had loved me like his own life announced, on my birthday, that he was switching his bride-to-be.

I, who had once been the center of every party, was left kneeling to scrub floors, watching everyone crowd around her with envy in my chest.

My childhood sweetheart was right. All of it had belonged to her from the start. I was the one who stole her life.

I had no right to resent anything.

Until the night he drank himself senseless and let a few slurred words slip out:

"Margie, don't blame me for being cruel. Blame yourself for clinging so hard you made me feel like I couldn't breathe."

"Even your parents agreed to the hypnosis, so you'd believe there really was some system. We swapped out the hair samples we sent for testing..."

I froze, my whole body shaking, so close to dropping him on the floor.

The tears came all at once.

So all of it had only been a scam, set up because I wasn't good enough for them.

I wiped my eyes and messaged my mentor to confirm the study-abroad exchange spot.

A little sapling they'd been pruning with lies. I didn't want to be that anymore.

1

When I came out of the hotel, the Simmons car had already driven off.

The manager pulled out a twenty. "Here. That's your pay for today's shift."

I didn't take it.

"They said it was five hundred a day."

The manager sneered.

"The Simmons family already collected the rest. This is the cab fare they were generous enough to leave you."

"All right, all right, take the money and get lost."

"You've eaten and drunk off them free for years, and you still haggle this long over a few hundred bucks. Guess trash blood really does run dirty."

Before, whenever someone attacked my background, I would just lower my head and take it.

Now that I knew the truth, it struck me as funny, funny enough to laugh through tears.

So what was blood, what was family, if two careless lines could rewrite it all.

Holding that crumpled bill, all I could do was take the bus.

The Simmons mansion was out in the East End suburbs. A cab started at fifty, at least.

Passing a narrow alley, I was yanked inside.

A rank, foul hand clamped hard over my mouth.

"Saw you come out of that hotel. Bet you've got some cash on you. Be smart and hand it all over."

I fought with everything I had, and then a sharp knife pressed into my side, so I gave up and pulled out the only thing I had, that twenty.

The man saw it and laughed in disbelief.

"You messing with me? You walk out of a five-star hotel and try to fob me off with twenty bucks?"

"Where's your phone? Get it out. Have your family wire over a few hundred grand. Now."

I licked my cracked, chapped lips.

I said quietly, "They won't help me."

"You dial when I tell you to dial. Where's all this backtalk coming from? A few hundred grand is pocket change to a family like yours. Quit the act!"

"There's no such thing as parents who don't love their kids. Even for some useless rich brat, if this much money makes the problem go away, they'd hand it over without blinking."

I pulled out my phone in silence, and still, some small part of me held on to hope.

The day Marcia Sullivan was brought back into the Simmons house, my mother had said I was still her daughter.

If I ever got into trouble, I had to tell her.

The call went through. It rang and rang, then cut off on its own.

The thug's face darkened.

"Your dad, then. Call your dad."

I didn't say anything else. I did as he told me.

A few days ago, to get me to hand over my childhood sweetheart's heirloom bracelet, my father had personally cooked a whole table of the dishes I loved.

I hadn't eaten that well, that full, in a very long time.

On the other end, again, no one picked up.

Not long after, a message came through.

"Your mom and I are helping Marcie shoot her videos. Stop calling and ruining the takes. You've already wasted two of them."

"Just get yourself home. We left you cab fare. You're a grown woman, or are you telling me you'll get lost?"

Once, when Marcia went out for a morning run and still wasn't back by noon, my parents had been beside themselves. They rallied the whole household, combed the entire hillside, even pulled strings with their police contacts to check the security footage and find her.

They still doted on their Marcie. Just not on me, their Margie.

The thug clicked his tongue. "So you're the unwanted one, after all."

"Forget it. You've still got a bit of a face on you. No money, so you can pay with your body instead."

A crack of thunder split the night, and on reflex he shut his eyes. I bit down against the searing pain of the knife tip in my belly and hit back.

Two bucks for the bus. With the eighteen left, I bought myself a little medicine.