Chapter 3

"Aunt?"

"You're saying you're my aunt?"

Evangeline's face cracked. She turned her head stiffly and glanced at Reg and Violet, and only after both of them nodded did the look on her face grow even more mortified than when I'd wiped the fake wound off her arm.

I nodded.

"That's right. You were taken before you'd even turned one. A few days after you were stolen, my mother, that is, your grandmother, found out she was pregnant."

"She wasn't young anymore, but the doctors said her health was good, so I was born."

"Which means my existence has nothing to do with you. Even if you'd never been lost, I'd still exist. The room I live in, my name, everything of mine, all of it was always mine. I didn't take any of it from you."

"Can you understand that?"

Evangeline could understand it. She just couldn't believe it.

"How is that even possible?"

Reg and Violet vouched for me over and over, confirming who I was, but they still wanted me to apologize to Evangeline.

"Her injury was fake, yes, but if you hadn't pushed her, she wouldn't have had anything to pin on you in the first place."

"Evangeline only treats you like a rival because she's so afraid of being outshone by you. You've been pampered since you were little. Just let it go this once, all right?"

I said nothing. I pointed up at the security camera.

"Fine. Then let's call the police. We'll pull the footage and see whether someone pushed her or whether she walked down there on her own!"

I took out my phone to make the call.

Evangeline caved instantly. Her apology came fast.

"I was wrong. I didn't mean it."

"I really just lost my head for a moment. For the sake of everything I've suffered all these years, please, forgive me this once!"

Evangeline was crying hard, and Reg and Violet wore matching looks of apology.

I sighed.

In the end I didn't want to blow the whole thing up, so I said nothing. I just turned and went back to my room.

Five:

I'd assumed that after this confession, Evangeline would settle back to normal.

I'd assumed too much.

She kept grinding out the word "aunt" at me through her teeth, but her hostility ran just as deep as before, because she still believed I'd stolen her place.

So when a certain "male friend" of mine came by to see me,

she stood behind me, eyeing the person up and down.

"This is your betrothed, isn't it? You may be the Baxters' real heiress, but if I hadn't been taken away, this betrothed of yours should have been mine, shouldn't he?"

My "male friend" jumped.

"Girl, are you mentally ill? I cut my hair short, sure, but I'm still a woman."

"And what betrothal? You think this is the old days? Families like ours don't go in for that stuff. Read fewer novels. That's all poor people's fantasy writing. Us rich people really don't live like that."

Evangeline was so furious her face went crooked, and after that she came at me even harder, needling me with snide remarks at every turn. And every single time, Reg and Violet stood on their biological daughter's side and told me to bear with it.

"Evangeline just worries too much about losing what she has."

"You may be younger, but you're the elder here. How can you stoop to a junior's level?"

The result of Reg and Violet always taking her side was that Evangeline only grew more brazen, until one day, when she insisted on making me eat chopped chives, I slammed down my chopsticks.

"Evangeline, are you done yet? Is this how you treat an elder?"

But Evangeline was angrier than I was. Her chopsticks flew even farther than mine.

"Who's the one who won't quit here?"

"I've already played along with all of you pretending that you, the fake heiress, are actually my aunt. What more do you want? Do you expect me, the real heiress, to kneel to a knockoff like you every single day?"

I was at a loss for words.

What playing along, what pretending? I was her aunt to begin with.

But before I could explain anything, Evangeline flung out several DNA paternity tests.

"Didn't you say you were my aunt?"

"Then what is this?"