Scalding water splashed across my ankles.
"You insolent brat! Get on your knees!"
I lifted my gaze to the man screaming at me.
Around sixty years old. My mother's biological father, Max Harding.
A middle-aged woman dabbed at her eyes, her voice trembling with practiced hurt:
"Dad, please don't be angry!"
"I know my sister hated me for taking her place, so the moment she came back, she wanted me dead."
"But Margot is her only daughter. Your own granddaughter by blood."
"Even if she beat up the butler and threatened to kill me and my daughter, I won't hold it against her."
"If it makes her happy, my daughter and I will leave the Harding family right now and give Margot our place!"
She made a show of turning to leave. Max grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
"The mix-up at birth wasn't your fault!"
"The title of Harding heiress isn't something any stray off the street can claim!"
So this was her. The fake heiress who'd stolen my mother's identity for thirty-eight years. Caroline Harding.
The Harding family butler was this woman's lapdog.
Our eyes met.
Those upturned, fox-like eyes, identical to her birth mother's.
Revolting.
She did have some self-awareness, though. I absolutely intended to destroy her and her daughter.
I studied her, and my gaze settled on her hands. Adorned with expensive jewelry, the skin pale and pampered smooth.
I counted silently.
.
Ten fingers. Every single one intact.
Not like my mother's.
My mother's palms had been covered in thick calluses from years of hard labor.
The backs of her hands had been covered in scars from cigarette burns.
Three fingers on her left hand had been hacked off. Two on her right had been beaten so crooked she couldn't even hold a pair of chopsticks steady.
I licked my lips, excitement buzzing through me. I wondered if fingers that soft and white would make an even crisper sound when they snapped.
That was when Caroline leaned in close and dropped her voice, taunting me with a smug little smile:
"You cheap little tramp. So what if you've got Harding blood?"
"You're just like your worthless mother. Born trash. You both deserve to spend your whole lives under my heel."
She reached for my hand, pretending to take it in a show of affection, but her nails dug into my skin.
Every cell in my body screamed with excitement.
I seized that soft, pampered hand and split my lips into a grin.
The next second, I locked my grip around her fingers and snapped them. One by one.
I closed my eyes and savored it. The crisp crack of each breaking finger, her agonized screams layered on top. Like a symphony. Every note sent a wave of pure satisfaction through my bones.
Ten fingers broken. I tossed her onto the floor like a dead dog.
I pulled out my phone and hit play.
Her taunting words from moments ago blasted through the entire hall of the mansion.
I looked at Max Harding, his face contorted with rage, and let out a cold laugh.
"Old man. If I'm a cheap little tramp because I've got your blood, then what does that make you? A cheap old bastard?"
I ground my heel into Caroline's broken fingers and smiled, all teeth.
"And this cuckoo in the nest, this nanny's daughter living off someone else's name, what breed of trash does that make her?"
Max's face cycled between green and white. He gasped for air, clutching his chest, and collapsed back onto the sofa.
His hand shook as he pointed at me, cursing me as an animal, an abomination, swearing he'd have me beaten to death.
On his command, a squad of bodyguards stormed in and surrounded me.
Then a delicate, syrupy voice rang out.
The girl who appeared looked about my age, wearing some kind of princess dress I'd never seen before.
But her complexion was sallow. Sickly at a glance.
Caroline's daughter. Lindsay Harding.
She was supporting an elderly woman by the arm. I recognized her instantly. My mother's birth mother.
Because they looked exactly alike.
Madeline Harding's eyes lit up the moment she saw me.
