Chapter 1Murdered by Mom and the Fake Heiress

From the first day I was brought home,

The girl who’d been living my life wanted me gone, maybe even dead.

Even my own mother treated me with a chilling indifference.

Then, one day, when my life hung by a thread, that girl’s boyfriend dove in front of me, taking a bullet meant for me.

And that was when my mother finally broke down.

* * *

When my biological parents came to get me, Dad was beaming, but Mom looked miserable, depressed even. The way she looked at me… it felt like disgust.

I couldn’t figure it out.

Okay, so I wasn’t exactly living some main character fantasy. My grades sucked, I was painfully shy, but I knew I wasn’t hard on the eyes. Especially because— I looked exactly like Mom did when she was young.

So why would she hate me?

The moment I stepped into the Ashton house, a giant wedding portrait hung in the foyer. It was Mom and Dad, twenty years ago. Faded, sure, but you could still see how bright her eyes were, how dazzling her smile. Beautiful, vibrant.

…

“Splash—!”

The instant I crossed the threshold into my new bedroom.

A bucket of rank, stinking water drenched me. Behind the door, a shrill laugh erupted.

“Welcome home, Ava! Like your little sister’s housewarming gift?”

Brooke stood there, wearing a face mask and holding a big, now empty, bucket, smirking at me.

I picked off the slimy bits clinging to me. Looked like old shrimp shells, fish bones… stuff left to rot.

You know the saying, garbage in, garbage out. Brooke, yeah, the ‘imposter daughter,’ must have been brewing this welcoming committee stink bomb for days just to make a point.

Real classy.

Brooke looked nothing like Mom or Dad. She did, however, bear a striking resemblance to the family’s former driver, the one who’d just gotten locked up.

Simple reason: she was his daughter.

I’d been born two weeks premature, whisked straight into an incubator. The driver’s wife gave birth a few days later. He saw his chance and swapped me with his own baby girl.

He wasn’t about to raise me with kindness. When I was just a month old, he dumped me by the side of the road. Lucky for me, a kind old woman, my Gran, who scraped by collecting cans and bottles, found me and took me in.

Until… well, until I grew up looking so much like my mother. Someone, I still don’t know who, snapped a picture of me working at the coffee shop and sent it to Dad.

Dad looked at me, then looked at Brooke, who looked more and more like the driver every day.

Next thing I knew, the driver was in prison, and I was ‘home.’