Chapter 2A Decade of Standing In: The True Heiress Becomes His Unreplaceable

In our first year of marriage, Adrian’s half-brother suddenly had a severe allergic reaction. His stepmother insisted I’d laced the cookies with peanut butter.

Two housemaids held me down, forcing me, the supposed young mistress of the house, to kneel on the floor.

I looked at Adrian, pleading. He had been with me the entire time; he knew I was innocent.

But he just kept his head down, silent.

That day, those two old women slapped me twenty times, until my lip was split and my face was a swollen, bruised mess.

When we got back to our room, Adrian handed me two ice packs, his face a mask of guilt. “The timing isn’t right,” he’d said. “I hope you understand.”

That single word, understand, forced me to swallow all the pain and humiliation.

Later that night, the throbbing in my face woke me. I went to the kitchen for more ice and heard Adrian on the phone.

“Thank God it wasn’t Livia,” he was saying. “She never would have been able to handle it…”

I froze on the spot.

Building a relationship, seeing true colors in hard times… what a goddamn joke.

To this day, Adrian has no idea I heard him.

My sarcastic remark brought him back to the present. He lit a cigarette and got out of the car, agitated. Just then, Livia called again. He answered, but he forgot to disconnect the Bluetooth.

Trapped in the car, I was forced to listen to Livia’s sweet, cloying voice.

“Adrian, can you come be with me tonight?”

The Bluetooth cut out instantly.

Through the window, I saw Adrian crush his cigarette under his shoe. He kicked at a small stone on the pavement as he listened, a flustered expression on his face that made him look like the twenty-something boy I first met.

Ha. So this was the power of the one that got away. It could make a man an idiot in a second.

Ten minutes later, he got back in the car, his eyes weary.

“Amy, I’ll take you home first.”

“Tonight, I might have to…”

“Don’t,” I snapped, cutting him off. I couldn’t bear to hear what bullshit excuse he would invent for Livia’s sake.

Realizing I’d lost my composure, I forced my voice to soften. “Mr. Thorne, you don’t need to report your plans to me.”

The cold formality wasn’t lost on him. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel in frustration.

“Amy Ashwood, you’ve always kept a wall up around me. Are you that desperate to draw a line between us?”

How ironic. He was the one dancing on the edge of our marriage, yet he had the audacity to blame me.

I turned my head away, fighting back the tears that were threatening to spill over. Ten years had taught me one thing: you can lose anything, but you can never lose your composure.

As the tension thickened, my mother called.

“Amy, your father and I… we’re not good with words. We had to ask Adrian to come over and help us convince Livia to move on.”

“Can you just give your sister a little time? She’s still young. She’ll understand eventually.”

I let out a bitter laugh. Young? She was thirty years old. How funny. Ten years ago, when they were forcing me into this marriage, they’d said, “You’re a grown woman now, Amy. You need to learn to help the family.”

My voice was ice. “Mom, I see you and Dad haven’t changed. Still cleaning up Livia’s messes for her.”

“But I will say,” I added, “your tone is much gentler now than it used to be.”

I was eighteen when my biological parents found me. But Livia couldn't stand me. She framed me again and again with clumsy, obvious lies, and every single time, my parents chose to believe her.

The last straw was when she threw herself down the stairs and claimed I pushed her.

My father slapped me without even asking for my side of the story. My mother called me vicious and said they never should have brought me back. Without a single thought for my feelings, they unanimously decided to send me back to the countryside.

They only remembered they had a biological daughter when Livia ran from her wedding, and they needed a replacement. All in all, I had spent barely a year of my life with them.

“Amy, do you really hate us that much?” my mother’s voice was filled with disbelief.

Her question actually made me pause. I thought my lack of affection for them was obvious.

Had the last ten years, free of Livia’s presence, somehow made us all forget our places?