There was only one week left until my wedding with Liam.
I was going to give him the surprise he had been waiting for all this time — a child.
The doctor’s report in my hand was still warm from the printer when I rushed straight to our apartment.
The door wasn’t fully closed.
God knows how badly I wished I had never pushed it open.
Liam… my Liam… was holding my sister, Vanessa.
She lay sprawled across the sofa I had chosen myself, her loose tank top sliding off one bare shoulder. One long leg rested casually on Liam’s shoulder while he knelt between her thighs, his shirt a wrinkled mess, one hand holding her red-soled heels like some devout servant.
Her head tilted lazily.
And she was kissing another man.
A man who looked almost exactly like Liam.
My heart slammed so hard against my ribs it physically hurt.
The fake heiress who had bullied me my entire childhood.
And the man I had loved for five years.
I froze in the doorway. They were so absorbed in their little performance that none of them noticed me.
Their voices drifted out clearly.
“Have you prepared the *surprise* for Clara’s wedding next week?” Vanessa asked lazily.
“Of course.” Liam kissed her deeply before lifting his head. “We’ll make sure she falls from heaven straight into hell. At the happiest moment of her life.”
My fingers went stiff around the doorframe.
What…?
Just last week, this same man had held me in bed and whispered that after the wedding, he’d take us to see the seaside house, that he’d spoil me and the baby until we were the happiest family in the world.
“Damn, bro, you’re ruthless.”
The other man chuckled — his voice almost identical to Liam’s.
“She never even suspected we’re twins. You think if she finds out it’s been me, Lucas, your brother, sleeping with her all these years, she’ll lose her mind on the spot?”
My world went silent.
Twins?
Lucas?
Five years.
For five years… the man I had given everything to wasn’t even him?
“She’s stupid,” Liam sneered without hesitation.
“A stray that got picked back up and thought she could actually hold the position of Mrs. Foster? Vanessa is the only fiancée the family ever recognized. She’s the rightful future mistress of this house.”
Vanessa.
Her name pierced my chest like ice.
I remembered being brought back to the Foster family ten years ago — her standing in the middle of the living room in a princess dress, pointing at me and calling me a thief who stole what wasn’t mine.
She stole my identity.
My parents.
My inheritance.
My childhood.
What I got in return… was years of humiliation.
She locked me in the attic for days when no one was home.
She deliberately spilled boiling soup on me and blamed it on my clumsiness.
She threw my adoptive mother’s only keepsake — a silver bracelet — into the drain and watched me go crazy looking for it.
She planted dirty words in my textbooks, tampered with my water bottle, turned my classmates against me.
And my parents?
“Vanessa’s still young. Give her some slack.”
“You just came back. Don’t keep causing trouble.”
Same age.
Same blood.
But she got the love.
Designer bags. Jewelry. Private tutors. Foreign vacations.
I got silence. Cold stares. And unpaid babysitting for a grandmother they barely cared about.
And then Liam appeared.
When she shoved me down the stairs and I lay there bleeding, it was Liam who helped me up.
When I held back tears in the bathroom stall after being publicly humiliated at school, it was Liam who said, *“I’ll protect you from now on.”*
When my depression swallowed me whole, he hugged me and whispered,
*“You’re not broken. They just never understood you.”*
When I doubted whether I deserved happiness… he held my hand and said,
*“I don’t care who you were before. You’re my future.”*
He even fought his parents for me.
Moved out for me.
Chose me over his family.
Or so I thought.
Now the truth was tearing me apart.
“To be honest,” Lucas laughed lightly, “keeping her for five years took some endurance. But hey, not bad in bed. Guess you get used to lowers.”
“So you didn’t feel sick?” someone teased.
Liam’s lips curled in contempt.
“Sick? I felt filthy.”
“If it weren’t for making her pay, I wouldn’t have touched her at all.”
I stopped breathing.
I waited.
For him to deny it.
Even a lie would have hurt less.
But he didn’t.
“Are you at least compensating her?” someone asked casually.
“For what?” Liam replied calmly.
“She wanted money, status, marriage — she begged for this wedding herself. I’m just giving her a life-changing lesson. I’ll throw some money at her, make sure she doesn’t crawl back like a parasite.”
Parasite.
My hands trembled violently.
Rain had soaked through my hair and soaked into my clothes, but I barely felt it anymore. My blood had turned to ice.
Everything was planned.
Every tenderness.
Every hug.
Every promise.
A performance.
A punishment.
A trap they wanted to snap shut on my wedding day.
Then Lucas said, almost as an afterthought,
“Hey… she acted kind of weird today. She threw up this morning. What if she’s pregnant?”
There was a brief silence.
Then Liam burst out laughing.
“Pregnant? Really?”
Lucas chuckled. “You should’ve been more careful, man.”
“So what?” Liam said indifferently.
“If she is, she’ll get rid of it. I’m not letting a bastard child stain the Foster bloodline.”
That sentence shattered everything.
My legs gave out.
I collapsed on the cold corridor floor outside, my back sliding down the wall.
The pregnancy report slipped from my bag, soaking up rain from the open window. The ink blurred — like everything else in my life.
Five years of love.
Five years of believing I had finally escaped my nightmare.
All fake.
And now even my baby… was just “a stain” to them.
The storm outside slammed harder against the glass, like it was mocking me.
Laughter and voices still drifted out of the room, every word slicing deeper.
I curled into myself, shaking — not from the cold, but from the rage burning inside me.
Vanessa.
Liam.
Lucas.
And everyone who ever stepped on me.
Fine.
You don’t want me as your bride?
I won’t bring you a happy ending.
Seven days from now —
I’ll still show up at that wedding.
But I won’t walk down the aisle.
I’ll bring hell with me.
I took out my phone and typed a message to the man who had been calling me nonstop these days, calling me “boss” like some kind of joke:
I’m in. I’ll go with you.
But in seven days… you show up and crash my wedding.**
