2
The day the Hensons found me, I'd just gotten off a late shift and was sitting on my little electric scooter, waiting for the light at an intersection.
A black Bentley cut across the road right in front of me.
Two men in black suits got out and very politely asked me to get in the car.
They said the chairman of the Henson family wanted to see me.
My first thought was that I'd stumbled into some pyramid scheme.
I reached into my bag for my pepper spray, ready to teach them a lesson.
But before I could make a move, they actually pulled out a DNA test and held it up in front of me.
That was how I learned that the adoptive parents who'd died young weren't my real parents.
I'd been switched at birth, which was why I'd spent all those years wasting away in the slums.
My true identity was the Hensons' long-lost real heiress.
When I heard it, I was so thrilled I could have jumped up and down.
I brought the two of them straight back to the office, pulled out my resignation letter, and slapped it in the face of Connor Gilbert, the boss who'd been squeezing me dry for years.
Connor was just about to leave for the day. When he saw me barge into his office in the dead of night with two men in tow, looking ready for a fight, he immediately smiled.
He said, careless as anything, "Bernice Henson, did you go and hire two kidnappers to abduct me? Relax... I'll have finance wire your overtime pay to your account tomorrow. No need for all this drama."
Connor was my college classmate, from a prominent family.
Back in college he'd pursued me.
But my head was full of one idea back then: if I couldn't marry into money, I'd make my own!
So I turned him down without a second thought.
And that decision was exactly what triggered his obsessive streak.
From then on the man stuck to me like a burr you can't peel off.
I started a business, and he immediately founded an identical company to steal my clients.
I took a job, and he threw down a fortune and bought out whatever company I was working for.
The man had money and no shame about it!
In the end, all I could do was bow to reality and become another beast of burden getting worked to the bone under him.
Three whole years he had me under his thumb, and I'd had more than enough.
So I slapped the DNA test down on his desk, chin tilted so high it was practically pointing at the ceiling.
"See this? I'm an heiress too, so don't you ever think you can push me around again! I'm telling you, I quit!"
Hearing that, Connor twirled the pen in his hand.
Those peach-blossom eyes swept over the two black suits standing ramrod straight beside me, then came back to my face, and he gave a faint smile. "Oh? Is that so? Care to tell me which kind soul took in a spitfire like you and made you an heiress?"
I gave a cold laugh. "The Hensons! The Hensons, whose money is every bit a match for your Gilbert family!"
The moment Connor heard the name Henson, he couldn't hold back a laugh.
There was something in his eyes I couldn't read, a kind of amusement that made my skin crawl.
I was about to demand what was so funny when he beat me to it.
"So it's the Hensons. Then congratulations, Bernice Henson, truly..."
I froze for a second, whether my brain had short-circuited or floated off I couldn't say.
And right then I fired back, "Ha. Scared now, aren't you? Just you wait, Connor Gilbert. One day I'll make you get on your knees and apologize!" And I walked out of his office with my head held high.
Back then, I was still thinking.
I was finally free of this burr, and once I got my footing I'd make the man pay.
But reality dumped a bucket of cold water over me soon enough.
