
1.5 K readers · 10 chapters · 4 free
The clock on the wall of the military hospital's maternity ward read 11:40 p.m. In less than two hours, Mary Lynn, the head nurse, a woman my family's enemies had bought off, would slip into the locked delivery room and switch me with their daughter. She didn't only steal my place as the heiress to a powerful military family. She planted that false daughter inside my home like a ticking bomb, someone who would tear us apart from within until none of us drew another breath. I clawed my way up from the gutter for twenty-five years. By the time I uncovered the truth, my parents and brothers had already died brutal deaths, caught in the enemy's web. I never even had the chance to speak. They silenced me, weighed me down, and sent me to the cold, dark bottom of the river. I stood guard at the gates of Wrathom, the underworld fortress, for thirty years. I burned every last bit of my soul's credit to buy this one chance to be reborn, to return. I came back to protect my family. I came back to make every last one of them pay in blood.