Shattered Vows The True Heiress's Revenge

I was standing on the rooftop, ready to jump, when a notification stopped me cold.

A familiar profile picture. A local forum post, pushed to my feed.

[My wife hurt the person who matters most to memy little sister. I taught her a small lesson. Accidentally sent her to the ICU ten times. Now that the punishment's over, how should I make it up to her?]

The comments erupted with outrage.

But the poster replied with breezy indifference.

[You people don't get it. Her own parents signed off on everything. That tells you all you need to knowshe had it coming.]

[She waltzed back home flaunting her status as the real daughter, immediately went after her adopted sister, snatched the most expensive hair clip, and made my sister cry for ten straight minutes. Her eyes were red and swollen.]

[So when she got pregnant, I staged a kidnapping. Made her believe she'd been assaulted by her captors. Then I forged ten separate paternity tests to prove the baby in her belly was some criminal's bastard. That way she'd be too ashamed to keep making trouble in front of my sister.]

[I only did it so she'd understand my sister's pain. A hard lesson now means she'll treat my sister better later. Really, it was for her own good too.]

I stared at that profile picturean avatar I knew down to my bonesand my heart seized so violently my fingertips trembled.

In my daze, another notification popped up. Someone new had liked the post, then commented.

[The poster's wife is my biological daughter. Everything my son-in-law did was just to help her fix that jealous, petty streak of hers. If you want to blame someone, blame her. Don't you dare drag my precious girl into this.]

The commenter's profile picture was the same as the poster'sLucinda Vance's favorite little cat icon.

So that was it. Every ounce of suffering I'd endured had been a gift from the people I loved most, all for the sake of their adopted daughter.

Fine.

If that's what they wanted, I'd give them their happy family reunion.

I closed my eyes and stepped off the edge.

"System... this time, I'm really going home."

...

My parents' tirade was still going.

[Ever since we brought her back, our precious girl developed depression because of her. We thought once she was assaulted by those kidnappersonce people were whispering about her carrying some stranger's bastardshe'd finally settle down and stop competing. But no. She turned around and set her sights on the company instead, clawed her way up to general manager, and made everyone point at our baby and call her a useless ornament!]

Nathan Sanchez followed up immediately beneath their comment.

[Luckily, I used my position as the client to make things as difficult as possible for her. Then I handed the contract she'd closed over to Lucy and promoted Lucy to general manager. But even over something that small, she had to go and cough up blood and land herself in the ICU againjust to frame Lucy. Poor Lucy had nightmares the entire night.]

I bit down on my lip until I tasted iron.

That contract. I'd begged and scraped and drank until my stomach bled to close that deal.

It was the light I'd clawed toward with my own two hands, dragging myself out of the abyss of being called a whore carrying a stranger's child.

And because of one tearful complaint from Lucinda

the people I loved most snuffed it out with their bare hands.

A commenter asked him: [If you hate your wife so much, why did you marry her? And what's with this "how do I make it up to her" post? You're scum. Just get a divorce already. If I were your wife and found out about all this, I'd lose my mind!]

One minute later, Nathan posted a single line.

[Are you kidding me? She's crazy in love with me. So what if she finds out the truth? A little lesson like thisall I have to do is sweet-talk her and she'll get over it. But Lucy's different. She and I grew up together. She depends on me more than anyone. She's suffered enough from not being the one I married. It's only natural I treat her better.]

My parents chimed in right below.

[If it weren't for the fact that our son-in-law was in a coma after his car accident, we never would have brought her home in the first place. We even gave her the honor of being his healing bride. We've been so good to her, and she still doesn't know how to be gratefulalways going after our Lucy. Our Lucy is the one who's been wronged the most here.]

Every word dripped with righteous indignation.

They were so worked up, they forgot to hide the names.

It didn't take long. Sharp-eyed users online were already connecting the dots.

"A ritual marriage to ward off bad luck? In the last five years, the only case like that was the Sanchez heircomatose after his car accident, needed a bride for the ceremony."

"Oh my God! Then 'Lucy' must be Lucinda Vance! They were childhood sweethearts, and she turns out to be a fake heiress!"

"Am I the only one who thinks the real bombshell is that the Sanchez heir is already MARRIED?"

That last comment wrapped around my throat like a fist.

Because he didn't love me, even something as simple as being acknowledged was too much to ask.

I wanted to laugh, but the tears came insteadrolling down my face like a broken string of pearls, impossible to stop.

The moment the anonymous account was exposed, the screen flickered and the post vanished.

In its place: a cease-and-desist letter from a law firm.

"This thread shall not be linked to any real individuals. Any comments defaming Miss Vance's reputation will be pursued to the fullest extent by Sanchez Group Legal."

Miss Vance.

No need to guess which Miss Vance they meant. That shield was for Lucinda, and Lucinda alone.

In the ten minutes I'd spent scrolling, a crowd had already gathered at the base of the building.

Nathan ignored the firefighters trying to hold him back and climbed onto the rooftop.

He hadn't even caught his breath before he was moving toward me, face tight with panic, voice trembling as though he were terrified.

"Tilly, pleasedon't do anything rash. This is all my fault, every bit of it. I can't live without you."

That desperate, guilt-ridden tone

a completely different man from the one who'd just had that post scrubbed clean.

For a moment, I genuinely couldn't tell which version of him was real.

Ever since I arrived in this world and accepted the mission to win his heart, my entire life had revolved around him.

Nathan had been a minor branch member of the Sanchez family. Under my careful devotion he woke from his coma, and with me holding the script of future events, he rose through the ranks and inherited the Sanchez empire without a single obstacle.

During the years when I loved him most, Nathan used to hold me and whisper promises.

"Tilly, without you, being alive means nothing. We'll never be separatedonly death could part us."

I believed him.

When I was "violated" by kidnappers, I locked myself in the bathroom and scrubbed my skin raw until the bathwater turned red with blood.

When I found out the child I carried was supposedly another man's, the revulsion was so unbearable I grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to cut the baby out of my own body.

When my contracts and my position were stolen from me, he said I wasn't capable enough to command respectbetter to stay home and rest. I obeyed. I waited through thousands of cold, empty nights for him to come home.

It was during that stretch of darkness that the System appeared.

[Host, your heart is breaking. I'm not going to ask you to complete the mission anymore. Let me take you home...]

The System said that even though the mission was unfinished, it could still grant my wish

A pair of parents who truly loved me.

A partner who would never betray me.

Back then, I hadn't seen through the filth hiding beneath Nathan's and my parents' so-called care.

I only told the System, "Isn't that exactly the life I'm already living?"

Now the lies and the masks had been ripped away by that single post.

I couldn't keep lying to myself anymore.

When I came back to my senses, the System's voice echoed in my mind again.

[Host, Nathan is here. You're definitely going to go soft again. It's windy up hereif you're not going to jump, at least go back inside.]

Ten trips to the ICU. Nine of those times, I'd been on my knees begging the System to let me live.

Every word out of my mouth had been about Nathan and my parents.

I'd made them my entire world.

And what had they made me?

"No, System. This time I'm really going home."

The words slipped out in a murmur, my voice cracking.

Nathan heard me and let out a quiet scoff. A flash of contempt darted through his eyes

Ten ICU visits, and when had she ever actually died?

But the loving-husband act still had to be maintained. He forced his eyes to redden and stepped closer again.

"Tilly, if you jump, I jump. I'll die right alongside you"

I didn't hear him. Didn't want to.

I closed my eyes and spread my arms wide.

In the chorus of screams rising from below

I stepped off the edge.

Nathan Sanchez, I'm done.

Mom, DadI don't need you either.

Consider this my gift. Now you and Lucinda can have your perfect family reunion.

When I came to, the sharp sting of antiseptic flooded my nostrils.

For one breathless moment, I thought I'd made it back.

But before the hope could even take shape, a familiar voice shattered it.

I hadn't died after all.

"Tilly, you're finally awake. Do you have any ideaif you'd jumped even a little more to the side, you would've missed the safety cushion entirely. And if you hadn't woken up soon, I was about to call an emergency shareholders' meeting just so I could follow you."

Nathan's eyes were rimmed red, his voice trembling and choked with emotion. He gripped my hand so tightly it hurt, like he was clutching something precious he'd nearly lost forever.

But the moment he leaned down to press a kiss to my forehead

I saw the marks on his neck. Fresh, unmistakable hickeys that hadn't been there before. And clinging to his clothes was the scent of magnoliaLucinda's signature perfume.

Details I'd never noticed before.

My stomach lurched. I dry-heaved right there in the bed.

Nathan's face went white. He called in every doctor in the hospital.

He stood to the side, eyes locked on the medical team, looking for all the world like a man who'd rip the pain out of my body and bear it himself if he could.

The doctor checked my thready pulse, his expression grave.

"Mrs. Sanchez's body is severely depleted. There's significant emotional distress compounding her condition. She needs careful, sustained careand absolutely no further agitation."

He paused, then continued more quietly. "The day of her incident, I was called to the Sanchez residence. I don't know what happened, but by the time I arrived, she was in full respiratory alkalosisconvulsing, barely breathing. Ten more minutes and she would have been gone." He glanced at Nathan. "Mr. Sanchez, I'd strongly recommend paying attention to your wife's mental health."

The memory hit me without warningBiscuit's glassy eyes staring up at me, wide open, unseeing. Blood seeping along the grout lines between the tiles, creeping up the soles of my shoes.

My hollow gaze trembled.

Biscuit had been my longest companion in this world. My most faithful friend since I'd arrived.

And Lucinda had poisoned him with a cup of drugged milk, then butchered him into hot pot.

Nathan must have felt me shaking. Something raw flickered behind his eyes, and he pulled me into his arms.

His voice dropped low, dangerous, as he turned to his assistant. "Find out exactly what happened that day. Whoever's responsibleI want them begging Tilly for forgiveness on their knees. With their life."

The words had barely left his mouth when the door slammed open.

Lucinda swept in wearing a white couture dress, her makeup immaculate, two perfect tears glistening on her cheeks. She looked like a delicate flowerpure, fragile, innocent.

But the instant her gaze landed on me, something venomous flashed through her eyes. Gone in a blink.

She dropped to her knees in front of me. In her pale, slender hands, she held a leather riding crop.

"Nathan, this is all my fault. If I'd known my sister would react this way, I would have let Biscuit bite me to death before I ever hurt him. It's all because of me." She lifted the crop toward me, her voice breaking. "Please, hit me. I deserve it."

Nathan froze. But beneath the shock, that telltale softness crept into his eyes.

My parents filed in behind her. When they saw Lucinda kneeling there, their fingers twisted into the hems of their clothes, knuckles whitebarely holding together the performance of parents who loved me.

Nathan reached out to pull her up. "What is this about?"

But Lucinda refused to move. She stayed rooted to the floor, stubborn and trembling, tilting her tear-streaked face up at him.

"Nathan, if my sister can't bring herself to do it, then you do it for her. If she doesn't get this anger out, her depression will only get worse. It's just a few lashes." Her voice quavered with rehearsed courage. "Hit me as hard as you can. Even if it tears the skin off my backas long as it makes her feel better, I'll take it willingly."

She pressed the riding crop into Nathan's hand, closing his fingers around it.

That look on her facewounded, selfless, enduringmade it seem like I was the one bullying her from my sickbed.

Even the doctor standing nearby softened toward her. The look he turned on me was one of barely concealed disgust.

She could do this every single time. A few carefully chosen words, and suddenly I was the villain.

Before, I would have scrambled to defend myself. Argued. Explained.

But not anymore.

While Nathan hesitated, I grabbed the riding crop. But before I could hurl it away, his hand clamped around my wrist.

"Enough! Tilly, stay out of this. I'll deal with what happened with Lucinda myself."

His grip was crushing. My thin wrist throbbed under his fingers, the skin already flushing an angry red.

I looked up into his eyes and found something that stopped me coldwariness. The kind of guarded vigilance reserved for someone he considered a threat.

I laughed.

Something stirred in the dead hollow of my chest. Not sorrow. Not resignation. Anger.

What gave him the right to assume I was the one capable of hurting someone?

Just because she was Lucinda Vance?

My heart clenched like a fist. I tightened my grip on the whip and swung it straight at Nathan

"No!"

A slender figure threw herself forward, shielding him with her body.

The whip cracked through the air, sharp and shrill.

"Ah!"

Lucinda cried out, her delicate frame swaying once before she crumpled.

Nathan caught her. When he lifted his gaze, his eyes were glacial.

"Tilly, you've gone too far this time!"

He turned on his heel, Lucinda limp in his arms, and the door slammed behind him hard enough to rattle the walls.

I stood there, alone. The whip trembled in my hand until my fingers gave out and it clattered to the floor.

That night, after the nurse finished her rounds, someone lunged from the darkness and clamped a cloth over my mouth and nose.

A sharp, chemical smell flooded my sinuses. I thrashed twice before the world dissolved.

When I woke, everything was black.

A blindfold pressed tight against my eyes. My wrists were bound to a chair, every muscle locked in place.

Crack.

The first lash struck my chest. Pain tore from my collarbone down to my stomach, and my spine arched involuntarily.

"This is what happens when you cross someone you shouldn't have crossed. Consider it punishment."

The voice came from directly in front of me.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

The lashes fell like a downpour, each one splitting the air before splitting my skin. I could feel myself coming apartwet, raw, burning.

"Is this because of Lucinda?"

I bit down on my lip until I tasted iron, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.

The whip paused. Ten seconds. Twenty.

Then it came down harder. Faster.

It went on and on, until my thoughts blurred at the edges and my body stopped registering individual strikes. Only when I was barely conscious did it finally stop.

Thenthe sound of a phone being dialed.

"Sir, ma'am, it's done." The man's voice was deferential. Polished.

From the other end of the line, a woman's voice. Familiar.

"Good. I'll pass the word along to Mr. Sanchez. Take her back."

Every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.

That was my mother's voice.

One accidental lash on Lucindaand they'd repaid me with ninety-nine.

Agony and cold devoured me whole. Inside my mind, the System's voice flickered to life.

[Host, hold on. I'll bring you home soon.]

I didn't expect to open my eyes again.

The doctor told me I'd been unconscious for half a month.

My parents and Nathan had kept vigil at my bedside every single daydonating blood, flying in the best specialists money could buy, doing everything in their power to pull me back from the edge.

When Nathan reached over to press the nurse call button, his sleeve rode up. The skin of his wrist was striped with welts.

His eyes were heavy with guilt. "Tilly, I failed you. I let someone take you, let them hurt you like this. However many lashes you took, I gave myself the same. I wanted to carve your pain into my bonesso I'd remember. So I'd never let it happen again."

I laughed. Tears spilled down my cheeks.

He was the one who'd ordered it.

I turned my face away. I didn't want to waste another word on him.

Nathan took my silence for sulking. Every day after that, a fresh bouquet of Juliet roses arrivedflown in from halfway across the world.

My parents, too, showered me with gifts. Couture gowns. Diamond jewelry. One extravagant offering after another.

But every time they left, like clockwork, a text would light up my phone.

Lucinda, lounging in a sea of Juliet roses worth a fortune,

The broken stems on the ground were identical to the ones Nathan had given me.

The jewelry my parents had sent over was clearly castoff pieces from Lucinda's wardrobeI could tell at a glance.

"Trash gifts for a trash person. If I were living your life, sis, I'd have killed myself already. Hehe."

No need to guess who sent that message.

When I woke again that night, my hands and feet were bound. Strapped to my chest was a bomb with a fifteen-minute countdown timer.

Lucinda was there with me.

She wasn't the least bit panicked. When she saw me open my eyes, she fixed me with a vicious smile.

"Matilda, take a guessif we're both kidnapped at the same time, who do you think Nathan and Mom and Dad will come to save? Oh, and here's something you didn't know. I'm carrying Nathan's baby. He'll choose me. And you? You were always meant to be abandoned."

I thought of the lipstick mark on Nathan's neck that day. I wasn't surprised in the slightest.

When I showed no reaction, Lucinda stood and slapped me hard across the face, then pressed her foot down on the unhealed whip wounds across my chest.

The pain drained the color from my face. I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached.

"You worthless bitch! Ha! How does it feel? You should've died out there! Who told you to come crawling back and steal my money and my Nathan?! All I had to do was shed a few tears, and those three pathetic lapdogs hired kidnappers to set you uphad you whipped ninety-nine times! You cling to them like gum on a shoe, and it's disgusting! They don't love you anymore! Why won't you just leave?!"

She grew more frenzied with every word.

By the end, she was grinding her heel into my skull as if venting every ounce of hatred she'd ever felt.

My cheek scraped against the rough concrete floor. My face burned like it was being pricked by a thousand needles.

She didn't stop until the shrill screech of tires sounded outside.

Lucinda looked down at me with the imperious gaze of someone who'd already won.

"Matilda, your time is up. This bomb is real. The detonator is in my hand. The moment I walk out that door, I'll trigger it. So go ahead and die."

Blood ran down my face. I didn't care.

It didn't matter who they chose. I hadn't planned on surviving anyway.

A commotion erupted outside. Moments later, several bodyguards in black escorted Nathan and my parents through the door.

Their eyes locked onto Lucinda almost instantly.

A flash of triumph darted through Lucinda's gaze before she crumpled into a picture of fragile, weeping helplessness.

"Nathan Mom, Dad, please save me, I'm so scared. They hit me, they screamed at methe baby, the baby can't take it"

The anguish in Nathan's eyes was so thick it practically spilled over.

My parents were even worse. Ignoring the knife-wielding kidnappers entirely, they stepped closer to Lucinda, pleading, "We'll agree to anything you want. Just pleaselet our daughter go!"

But when the kidnappers asked who they wanted to save, they hesitated.

"Both of them. We'll pay more."

The kidnapper shook his head and pressed a blade to Lucinda's throat. "You can only pick one."

Nathan closed his eyes. Then, abruptly, he turned to me. "Matilda, why did you run off on your own?"

I had nothing to say. But something dark flickered behind his eyes, and his expression turned so cold it could have frozen ink.

"I'm saving Lucinda."

"Matilda, you orchestrated this whole thing yourself, didn't you? All because you couldn't get over the whipping? I already found out everything. How can you be this vile?"

"Ever since you came back to the Vance family, Lucinda has bent over backward for youterrified of doing the slightest thing wrong in case it triggered an episode. We all know your depression is an act. We chose not to call you out, and you just pushed further and further!"

"I'm saving Lucinda. Consider this a lesson. When you've come to your senses, find your own way back. And stop staging these fake suicide attempts. You don't actually want to die. Eleven trips to the ICU and you still haven't had enough of the act? Well, I've had enough of playing along. We're leaving. You're on your own."

I drew a deep breath and let a faint smile surface.

Nathan's heart clenched without warninga sharp, sudden sting, as though something precious was slipping through his fingers.

Lucinda clutched at his wrist. "Nathan, my stomach hurts so much... the baby must be suffering..."

At the mention of the baby, Nathan pushed the feeling aside. He scooped Lucinda into his arms and carried her out of the abandoned factory.

The kidnappers had tied me to a pillar. They were already gone, fled through the back door.

I could barely lift my eyelids. I made one final deal with the system.

"Every point I havecash them all out. Everything that's happened, every last detail from the past and today, broadcast it on the public screen for the entire world to see."

The words had barely left my lips when

BOOM.

A deafening explosion tore through the building. Fire surged upward like a living thing and swallowed me whole.

My parents and Nathan whipped around. The column of flame lit up the sky, and every drop of color drained from their faces.

Two voices rang out at the same time:

"Tilly!"

Congratulations, Host! Welcome home!