Chapter 3

The summer after William left for abroad, Vivian showed up at the front gate of Linley Villa on his second day gone, screaming and causing a scene.

The whole family was home that day.

The moment they saw Vivian's face, they all froze.

Vivian's expression twisted with rage as she laid out the truth.

She spat out, "I'm your real daughter. This girl has nothing to do with your family. Her mother switched us when we were babies so her kid could live the good life. If you don't believe me, we can do a DNA test."

The Linley family owned two private hospitals, so my grandfather, Timothy Linley, called a doctor to the house immediately. They drew blood and cut a few strands of hair right then and there.

The results came back fast, and they confirmed exactly what Vivian had said.

My whole world fell apart, and so did theirs.

Timothy and my parents, the people who had loved and spoiled me my entire life, were now looking at me with nothing but hatred in their eyes.

My mother choked out, "It was you. You're the reason my own flesh and blood suffered all those years." And then she collapsed.

Timothy gave the order. "Get her out of my house."

I shook my head and begged him through my tears not to send me away, but he wouldn't even look at me.

Vivian had taken over as the Linley family's real daughter, and she wasted no time giving orders to the butler. She said, "She keeps the clothes on her back and her ID. Nothing else leaves this house, not even her phone."

I was thrown out of Linley Villa.

I cried and begged at the gate for what felt like hours, but no one came out. No one even looked at me. I eventually started walking down the road, and the grief hit me so hard that I collapsed.

When I woke up again, I was in a hospital bed, and Emily was sitting beside me.

Emily was a girl I knew from high school. Her father had made his money in recent years and moved the family into the same gated neighborhood, not far from Linley Villa.

She told me she had spotted me on her way home and rushed me to the hospital with her driver.

She asked me what happened.

By then, I was too numb to even cry. So I told her everything.

Emily didn't hesitate. She handed me all the cash she had on her and asked, "Do you need a place to stay?"

I nodded because I had absolutely no idea what to do next.

Emily let me move into a spare apartment she owned. I stayed inside for days, never leaving. She ordered delivery for me, but I couldn't bring myself to eat. I just sat there, staring at nothing.

When the semester started, I had no intention of going back to school. Emily tried to talk me into it more times than I could count, but nothing got through. We weren't even close back then.

We had been classmates in high school, but that was about it. The fact that she had done so much for me meant more than I could say, but I was too broken to show it.

Eventually, Emily asked a relative to visit my university on my behalf. They paid my tuition under my family's name and filed for a leave of absence.

Then one morning in late November, I looked out the window and felt the sunlight on my face, and something inside me shifted.

All those sleepless nights, the anger, the grief, the longing, the pain, every feeling that had been tearing me apart for months, they all seemed to settle quietly into place.

Emily was enrolled at another university in the city, but she took a day off to come be with me as I took my first step outside.

We grabbed burgers and fries at a diner, and then we went to the phone store to get me a new phone and a new plan.

When the clerk asked about my old number, I barely hesitated. I said, "Cancel the old one. I want to start fresh."

I went back to school, and everyone noticed I had lost weight. Some of them said I seemed like a completely different person. I just smiled and let it go.

On Christmas Eve, I was walking across campus alone. Couples passed by me, laughing and holding hands, the girls carrying gift bags and little wrapped boxes. And out of nowhere, I thought of William.

He was the most important person in my life outside of the family I had lost.

And in that moment, I finally understood. I had loved him. But we had been together so long that everything between us had become routine, and I had never recognized the spark for what it was.

That first flutter of my heart had come and gone so quietly that I missed it entirely.

But I wasn't the Linley heiress anymore. The distance between our worlds had grown too wide, and we were never going to end up in the same place. So I let it go.

Maybe the kindest thing we could do for each other was to move on and be happy apart.