Chapter 1They Can Hear Every Savage Thought

I woke up inside a trashy, early-2000s alpha-billionaire melodrama. Worse, I was the villainous stand-in daughter.

Unloved by my adoptive parents, despised by my adoptive brother, and deeply aware of my precarious shelf life, I had spent the last seventy-two hours playing the part of a serene, delicate little saint.

"It belongs to Gwen anyway," I said, my voice soft enough to pass for velvet as I offered a placid, beatific smile. "I wouldn't dream of keeping what isn't mine."

Across the polished marble coffee table, the Harrington family looked at me with varying degrees of strained paternal warmth. It was a suffocatingly performative portrait of domestic reconciliation, and in the quiet privacy of my own skull, I couldn't help myself:

Absolute morons.

Every set of eyes in the room snapped to mine.

I blinked, keeping my expression like still water, while my internal monologue rolled its eyes into the stratosphere:

What are you staring at? Staring at me isn't going to raise your collective IQ.

Preston Harrington’s dark brows knit tightly together. His gaze lingered on my mouth, searching for movement that hadn't occurred.

"Did you... just say something?" he asked, his voice low and hesitant.

Is he going deaf? Did my lips move, you magnificent idiot?

Outwardly, my gentle smile didn't waver. "No, Preston. You must be hearing things."

He let out a small, guarded breath.

Then my internal voice fired off again:

Not only is this family hopelessly biased, they’re experiencing group auditory hallucinations. Someone ought to book them a four-for-one consult with a neurologist.

The room froze. The expressions on all four faces went rigid, turning an unnatural, sickly shade of grey.

I didn't care enough to investigate. My only goal was to survive this agonizing "welcome home to the real heiress" summit and get out with my skin intact.

Three days ago, my soul had been unceremoniously shoved into the body of Paige Harrington, the designated antagonist of Cruel Surrender: The Tycoon’s Reluctant Captive. In the original text, Paige had occupied Gwen Harrington’s rightful place for twenty years. When the truth came out, instead of bowing out gracefully, Paige went full scorched-earth—terrorizing Gwen, clinging desperately to the Harrington fortune, and orchestrating petty, vindictive schemes.

Her reward in the final chapters? She was booted onto the curb by the Harringtons, dragged back to her deadbeat biological parents, and sold off to a fifty-something loan shark to settle their gambling debts. She died fleeing from a motel window, hit by an oncoming semi-truck.

Gwen, the saintly heroine, hadn't fared much better. The Harringtons used her as financial leverage, packaging her into an arranged marriage with the story’s male lead, Damian Cross. What followed was eight hundred chapters of physical and emotional degradation—kidnappings, miscarriages, forced isolation, and cold-blooded gaslighting. In the epilogue, Damian whispered a single I love you, and Gwen wept, forgave him completely, and they rode off into a sunset made of trauma.

As for the three Harrington family members sitting in front of me? Arthur Harrington went bankrupt and died in a federal penitentiary; his wife, Eleanor, suffered a catastrophic stroke; and Preston plunged his sports car off a cliff on Mulholland Drive.

A picture-perfect family tragedy. Every single one of them had been ground into cheap kindling to feed the toxic bonfire of the main couple’s romance.

When I read that book, I didn't cry for the romance. I cried for the subscription money I was never getting back. A pack of utter lunatics, every last one of them.

Eleanor cleared her throat, breaking the heavy silence. She looked at me with an apologetic, rehearsed gentleness. "Paige, sweetheart... this emerald bracelet was left by your grandmother for the Harrington daughter. Now that Gwen is home, you... you understand it should go to her, don't you?"

Without a second of hesitation, I extended my wrist. "Of course."

I pulled the jadeite clasp open with such frantic efficiency that you would have thought the piece was coated in arsenic.

Take it. Take the damn thing. It’s only an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar heirloom. I don’t care. Truly. I’ll only wake up at three in the morning in some cheap studio apartment and slap myself across the face twice for giving it away.

Eleanor’s hand stalled mid-reach. Her eyes grew wide, almost frightened.

Before she could touch the gold clasp, Gwen crossed the rug, gently catching my hand. With careful, surprisingly steady fingers, she slipped the emerald back over my knuckles.

Eleanor opened her mouth to object, murmuring that it belonged to her by right of blood, but Gwen cut her off quietly.

"I never had the chance to meet Grandmother," Gwen said, her voice clear and devoid of malice. "I can't feel robbed of something I never knew."

I looked down at the cool green stones resting against my pulse, feeling an immediate, eight-hundred-thousand-dollar spike of affection for this girl.

She’s actually an angel, I thought. No wonder she managed to endure eight hundred chapters of that walking federal indictment, Damian Cross.

Across the table, Arthur’s tea cup clattered sharply against its saucer. The old man sat bolt upright, his face dark with sudden tension.

"What did you just say about Damian Cross?"

A spike of panic hit my chest. I kept my face smooth as glass, staring back at him blankly.

Had I spoken out loud?

Jesus. The old man has the ears of a hunting hound.

Arthur’s face twitched violently, his complexion darkening from pale to stormy purple.