Chapter 2
The year I turned fifteen, my mother told me the Sterling Family's young master had been a stand-in, and the real son had been brought home.
He was in the family register, and his name was Michael Sterling.
I watched the boy from a distance at the gates of Sterling Manor.
He wore a plain shirt and black pants, and he stood perfectly straight.
Tall and still, he seemed cut from finer material than everyone around him.
My heart turned over right there.
I had been raised spoiled, and I never hid anything I felt.
I wanted the whole world to know I liked Michael.
I went after him with everything I had.
I sent roses, confessed in front of a crowd, fell into his arms on purpose, and showed up at the Sterling place every day to ask him about math.
I tried every trick there was.
His parents raised no objection, and Michelle's grandmother, Sarah Sterling, settled our engagement in front of everyone.
But Michael still wouldn't say yes.
The year he turned twenty, I threw my arms around him and refused to let go, and my voice came out brazen.
"If you won't make me your girlfriend, I'll tell your parents we already spent the night together."
For the first time ever, calm and even-tempered Michael turned red.
He pointed at me and couldn't get a word out for the longest time.
I held his stare and pushed harder. "I belong to you for the rest of my life, Michael. You have to marry me."
But Michael still didn't give in.
In the seventh year of chasing him, right as I was ready to quit, he said something out of nowhere.
"We can give it a try."
We slept together, got the marriage license, and had the wedding, all in one stretch.
Michael showed no particular feeling about it, but he didn't turn me down either.
Luck had finally come around to me.
I had melted the one man everyone called a block of ice.
After the wedding, we had two good years together.
In our free hours, we cooked, walked the dog, hiked, and went out on trails.
Sometimes we went to the children's home to teach the kids piano and help them with lessons.
My friends liked to joke that someone as loud and restless as me had been turned into a settled adult by Michael.
I smiled and never argued with them.
Life was plain and comfortable, and the person I loved was right beside me.
That was until Michael hired a new secretary.
I had seen her before, and her name was Sophie.
The first time I laid eyes on her, my heart hammered and my right eyelid twitched hard.
Something was wrong.
The private investigator came back with a report.
Michael and Sophie had lived in the same children's home for seven years, from eight until they were fifteen.
So he and I weren't the only two who had grown up together. Someone else had that with him.
And what they had ran deeper than anything I ever managed.
Michael cheated on me in front of my own eyes, and none of it surprised me.
I was holding a trophy at the time, ready to show it to him.
The trophy hit the floor.
The heavy sound filled the whole room.
Michael smirked, not even the slightest bit flustered at being caught.
His eyes rolled over the trophy once before he spoke, unhurried.
"Charlotte, how much did you pay for first place this time?"
I broke down for the first time, sobbing as I demanded to know why he had done it.
Michael blew out a ring of smoke and laughed at me. "Weren't you the one who forced my hand?
"What made you think I could ever like someone as rotten as you?
"Charlotte, you make me sick."
I tore Sterling Manor apart and dragged my parents into it to make them deal with Michael.
Michael only watched me from above, calm and untouched.
"Charlotte, you are not the Evans Family's real daughter.
"She is." Michael pulled Sophie out in front of everyone.
He laid out DNA reports from ten different labs, one after another.
My parents and I were stunned, so we had our own tests run.
I really wasn't the Evans Family's child.
I looked at Sophie's face and saw how much of my parents was in it.
It came to me a beat late that something was about to disappear.
Michael dropped the divorce papers in front of me.
"Sign it."
Bitter tears circled my eyes, but I lifted my chin and stared him down.
"I'm not divorcing you."
Michael laughed low in his throat like he had heard a joke.
"Charlotte, do you really think you get to say no?"
I tore the divorce papers into pieces.
"Michael, from fifteen to twenty-five, ten whole years, did you never feel anything for—"
Michael cut me off fast. "No.
"Charlotte, all I have ever felt for you is disgust."
My throat felt like it had been dragged over a blade a thousand times.
I had so much I wanted to say, but none of it would come out.