Chapter 1
By the third time Maisie Spears came back, she finally understood how ridiculous "family" really was.
The first time, she humbled herself and tried desperately to fit into the wealthy family that treated her as if she were nothing. Still, the day the real heiress, Victoria, returned, her parents had her locked away in a mental hospital.
The second time, she kept her head down and fought to prove her worth, only to be forced to donate a kidney to Victoria.
When Maisie came back for the third time, the butler greeted her with a cold announcement. "Ms. Spears, the real heiress has been brought home. Please move out of the master bedroom immediately."
Maisie simply smiled. Then she tore up the family trust worth hundreds of millions and threw a list in their faces, detailing everything the Spears family owed her after all these years.
Since her so-called parents thought she was greedy, and Victoria loved playing the victim, she decided she was done playing nice.
She reclaimed the core patents that belonged to her, took her private medical team with her, and joined the Spears family's biggest rival.
She said, "Go ahead and spoil Victoria all you want, but I'll be taking back all the money I've spent on you and half the shares of Spears Capital.
"From this moment on, what happens to the Spears family has nothing to do with me."
*****
This time, Maisie sought neither favor nor revenge.
In December, the wind in Jalvenor felt like it could freeze people to the bone.
Maisie sat on the second-floor terrace of Spears Manor, holding a cup that was stone cold in her hands.
The cup had a thin gold rim, gleaming sharply under the dim lighting.
"Seriously, Maisie? Are you sitting here drinking coffee?" a sharp voice shattered the silence.
Chloe, their family's trusted butler, stood at the door. There wasn't a hint of respect in her eyes. There was only the grim satisfaction of revenge served.
She said, "Mrs. Spears said, since you've lived here for twenty years, we'll leave you some dignity. Pack your things before Mr. Spears throws them out."
Maisie took a slow sip of her bitter coffee, showing none of the panic or desperate pleading that had defined her previous lives.
She simply turned her head, her strikingly beautiful yet cool eyes narrowing. "Where am I supposed to go? The storage room, or maybe that leaky shed in the backyard?"
Chloe was caught off guard, not expecting Maisie to respond this way.
Before, whenever anyone mentioned Victoria's name, Maisie would panic, trying desperately to show how good and capable she was.
"Those places are for the servants. Mrs. Spears wants you out of Spears Manor," Chloe said.
She puffed out her chest, her voice dripping with contempt. "Ms. Victoria Spears has been through so much hardship all these years. Now that she's finally home, she gets the best room.
"She's weak and can't stand any mess, especially those useless impostors who sit around doing nothing."
Maisie let out a soft laugh. "Impostors?"
She'd been hustling for the Spears family since she was eighteen. For Shane's big merger, she drank herself sick at some business dinner overseas so the Spears Group could finally get its foot in the door.
However, to the Spears family, she wasn't only an imposter; they saw her as the one standing in Victoria's way.
"Fine," Maisie said, setting her cup down and rising to her feet with a calm indifference.
She wore an off-white cashmere dress that hugged her slender frame, her long hair casually pulled back in a loose knot, radiating a laid-back elegance. "Since Victoria is back, I'll step aside."
Before Chloe could even show her smug satisfaction, Maisie pulled out a stack of printed documents from her dress and neatly put them on the table.
"What's this?" Chloe asked.
"The bills for everything the Spears family spent on me over the past twenty years," Maisie replied, pointing to the first page calmly.
She said, "Tuition, meals, clothes, and the money for my IV drip when I was eight. I've calculated it all with compound interest. I rounded it down, and the total comes to 8 million."
Maisie paused, her eyes meeting Chloe's, a hint of amusement curling her lips. "And here are the net profit dividends from the three patents under my name at Spears Biotech over the past five years.
"Plus, there's that 100 million contract Shane had me sign last year to win over the Lewis family. According to industry standards, my commission and service fees add up to 20 million."
Chloe's face flushed dark with anger. "Are you out of your mind? How dare you demand compensation from your own family? The Spears family raised you for twenty years. They owe nothing to you."
"Really?" Maisie's gaze turned sharp, carrying the lethal edge only someone who had faced death possessed.
She said, "Chloe, you'd better pass this on to Mrs. Spears. Victoria went missing because she was too busy having an affair to notice she had left her own baby on a bench.
"Mr. Spears only adopted me from the orphanage because I happened to look a bit like her, all to hush up the scandal. The Spears family kept me around because I was useful to silence the gossip."
"Shut up. How dare you slander Mrs. Spears?" Chloe screamed, swinging her hand at Maisie, aiming to slap her.
Maisie dodged without missing a beat, snatched up the coffee from the table, and dumped it straight over Chloe's head.
Chloe shrieked, stumbling back and frantically wiping coffee from her face.
Maisie calmly pulled out a tissue and cleaned her hands, her gaze cold as ice. "I don't owe the Spears family a damn thing. It's they who owe me.
"Make sure the money hits my account by tomorrow morning. Not a cent less, or I'll send that video of Mrs. Spears straight to the board of Spears Capital."
Maisie had never brought out this footage in her previous lives. Even if she wasn't their real daughter, she felt twenty years of care mattered, and she didn't want to burn every bridge.
However, in the first cycle, while she was being force-fed meds in the mental hospital, Camila Spears, her mother, was holding Victoria's hand.
She grinned as she said, "That fake heiress is finally gone. Every time I saw her, it reminded me of my mistake back then; it always made me feel sick inside."
In the second cycle, as Maisie lay on the operating table, feeling her life drain away with every drop of blood, Shane was out in the hallway, coldly telling the chief surgeon, "Make sure Victoria's recovery is perfect. As for that girl, I don't care."
Therefore, this time, Maisie wasn't going to play nice anymore.