Chapter 1
[Ava Sterling, hello. I'm Charles Bennett.]
[Your grandfather left a will before he passed. If you marry me, you'll inherit all of his assets in one year.]
[If you're interested, please contact me.]
There was a phone number at the end.
I quickly replied: [Right, and I'm a Nigerian prince. Venmo me $100K and I'll make you a billionaire.]
Ten seconds later, the other party transferred one hundred thousand dollars.
Are scammers really putting this much money on the line these days?
*****
Inside the police station's mediation room, a sharply dressed, strikingly handsome man sat across from me.
The officer looked awkward, rubbing his hands together.
"Ms. Carter, this is Mr. Bennett, the person who sent you the message.
"We've verified everything. The content is legitimate and not a scam.
"As for the marriage, you two can discuss it privately if you'd like."
The moment I saw Charles, I knew I had made a fool of myself. After apologizing to the staff, we quickly left the station.
I opened Venmo and pulled up the profile of the person who had sent me the money. The name was Charles. The profile picture was SpongeBob wearing a chef's hat.
I held my phone out to him. "Is this you?"
"Yes."
His voice was cold and flat, without a trace of emotion.
Seriously.
Using his real name on Venmo was one thing, but who would expect a stone-faced CEO to use that kind of profile picture?
"When did we even add each other?" I had no memory of it.
"Your eighteenth birthday."
Then it came back to me.
My parents had thrown me a lavish party that day.
They took me around to greet all sorts of business elites, and I exchanged contact information with quite a few people.
Anyone who later tried to bother me got blocked and deleted.
The ones who never messaged me just stayed in my contacts.
I put my phone away and apologized. "I'm sorry, Mr. Bennett. I thought it was a scam, so I called the police. I wasted your time."
The Bennett family of Oceania City stood at the very top of the elite hierarchy.
Charles was its current head. The most eligible bachelor in Oceania City.
When I was still the Carter family's eldest daughter, my profit-obsessed parents never even dared to push me toward him.
And yet that message really had been from him.
"You're very aware of scams."
I couldn't tell if he was praising me or being sarcastic, so I gave an awkward laugh. "The police do a good job with their public awareness campaigns."
"Will you marry me?" Charles asked.
The shift was so abrupt that I couldn't respond right away.
"You don't have to," he added. "If you don't, you can still inherit your grandfather Lawrence Sterling's estate when you turn forty."
Forty? That meant waiting more than ten years.
No way. I couldn't wait that long.
After thinking it over, I tested the waters. "Can I break up with someone first?"
Charles studied me with a heavy gaze for a long moment. Just as it started to make me uneasy, he spoke again, his tone as cold as ever.
"If you can't end it, you can get married first and deal with it afterward."
I was completely stunned.
Is this even human words?
I'm the Carter family's mistaken daughter, the one who was switched at birth.
A month ago, Reginald Carter and Eleanor Carter, hosted a banquet for the real heiress, Sophia Carter.
She fell down the stairs during the event, hit her head, and was rushed to the hospital.
When she woke up, she cried and begged Reginald and Eleanor not to blame me.
They were furious anyway and threw me out of the Carter family.
A luxury car pulled up in front of Charles and me. He opened the back door himself and stood there, looking at me.
"Want to grab a meal? You can ask me anything you want then."
I did have a lot of questions, so I agreed.