Amnesia Game: The Heiress Strikes Back

Our daughter is finally home!

A jagged wail tore through the sterile room, grating against my eardrums. My eyes snapped open.

Just a few feet away, my biological parents were clinging to a stranger, their arms wrapped tightly around her. Meanwhile, I lay forgotten on a stiff hospital bed. Their actual flesh and blood.

They had already found a replacement.

I was entirely erased.

I gripped the IV needle in the back of my hand and ripped it out. A drop of blood hit the white sheets. I walked toward the door.

If they wanted a new daughter, they could keep her. I was done.

Ten years later.

I returned as the apex predator of the venture capital world.

Silas, the biological brother who used to treat me like invisible dirt, hammered his palms against the bulletproof tinted window of my Maybach. His knuckles were white, his fist crushing a crumpled, bankrupt financial report.

"Sloan! Please, you have to give the family a way out!"

Reid blocked the front of the car. His eyes were bloodshot. "Why didn't you come back sooner?!"

I rolled the window down an inch and looked down at them. I tilted my head, pulling my lips into an empty, polite smile. "Who are you people? Do we know each other?"

Chapter 1

The wind ripped along the edge of the cliff.

I gripped Silas's hand. My nails dug into his skin until blood slipped through the gaps of my fingers.

"Sloan, let go!" Silas yelled. His eyes were wild.

I didn't let go. If I did, he would drop.

But I was an eight-year-old kid. My grip was slipping.

As the gravity dragged us down, a scream pierced the air from the ridge above. "My son! Silas!"

It was our mother. She didn't look at me. Not even a glance.

The truth hit me right before the freefall.

She only had a son.

She didn't have a daughter.

The sterile smell of the hospital hit me before I opened my eyes. A splitting pressure throbbed against my skull. I forced my heavy eyelids apart.

A tight circle of people stood near the foot of my bed. My father. My mother.

And a stranger.

The girl was wearing my clothes. She sat in the chair meant for me, her fingers laced tightly with my mother's.

My mother was sobbing, her chest heaving. "My daughter my daughter is finally home."

My father rubbed her shoulder, his own eyes wet. "Alright, don't cry. It's a good thing she's back."

The girl leaned softly into my mother's chest. "Mom, I'm not leaving. I'm never leaving again."

The monitor beside me beeped steadily, but static roared in my ears. Who was she? Why was she in my clothes? Why was she calling my mother "Mom"?

Then the memories hit. Three years ago. I was five.

The suffocating crush of the mall crowd had swallowed me whole. I was dragged away, traded across state lines to the backwoods, and eventually dumped with an older couple who gave me the bare minimum of food and a floor to sleep on.

It took three years to find a window to run. I spent every second dodging and running. When the hunger twisted my stomach, I dug through gas station dumpsters for expired sandwiches. When the thirst burned my throat, I drank from public restroom sinks.

Just before the fall, I had spotted Silas fishing by the riverbank. The adrenaline had spiked. I sprinted toward him, shouting his name. He slipped on the wet rocks, his body tilting toward the raging water.

I threw myself forward and grabbed him. The momentum dragged us both over the edge. I had traded my safety for his.

But now I stared at the girl in my clothes. I watched my family form a protective shield around her. Not a single pair of eyes shifted to the hospital bed. No one even noticed I was awake.

My mouth opened. The word hovered on my cracked lips. I swallowed the dry ash in my throat.

My mother's fingers were interlocked with the stranger's. Her tears soaked the stranger's hair.

Her "daughter" was no longer me.

I let my heavy eyelids fall shut. I lay perfectly still against the stiff sheets. I lay in that hospital bed for three days. Over those seventy-two hours, the whispered conversations pieced the truth together.

The girl was Vivienne. My parents had brought her home three years ago from a foster system. She had my hair color, my build, my exact age. They decided she was me.

No. They chose to believe she was me.

Because if she was me, the search was over. The guilt was erased. They didn't have to keep a porch light on for a ghost.

Chapter 2

"Vivienne is such a good girl." That was my mother.

"Our daughter is finally home." That was my father.

"I'll always protect you." That was Silas.

I lay stiffly on the hospital bed, the sterile sheets scratching my skin. The voices drifted through the crack in the door, scraping against the inside of my skull. I didn't cry. I felt nothing.

On the fourth day, the nurse walked in to change my IV and gasped. "Oh! You're awake!"

The heavy door swung open. The two people who shared my DNA stepped into the room. My mother stood by the edge of the bed. Her gaze was unreadable, shifting everywhere but my face.

My father stood behind her, a silent shadow. Silas didn't show up.

"You" My mother's voice was tight, like she was swallowing glass.

"What's your name? Where is your home? We can contact your family for you."

I stared at her. I looked into those blank eyes. The corners of my mouth twitched upward into a dry smile.

"My name is Sloan," I said quietly. "I don't have a family."

Her breath hitched. A sudden rim of red flushed the edges of her eyes. Maybe the name struck a buried nerve. Maybe she remembered a ghost.

But she didn't ask. She just gave a stiff nod. "Rest up and heal. We'll cover the medical bills."

She turned and walked out. The heavy door clicked shut behind her.

I stared at the fluorescent lights humming on the ceiling. I had dragged myself through hell, crawled across state lines, just to find my way back to a locked door. They had already filled the vacancy.

My trace was completely wiped clean.

The day I was discharged, I stood a block away from the sprawling estate that used to be mine. The wrought-iron gates were towering and pristine. In the manicured courtyard, Vivienne sat on a wooden swing. My mother stood behind her, pushing her gently.

Silas leaned against a marble pillar, holding a melting ice cream cone, waiting for the swing to slow down before handing it to her.

Vivienne took it with a bright smile. "Thanks, Silas."

My mother laughed, reaching out to smooth the girl's hair. The golden afternoon sun bathed them in a picture-perfect glow, like a flawless commercial for a family I was never part of.

I stood in the shadows of the iron fence. I watched the scene play out for exactly sixty seconds. Then I turned my back to the estate. I didn't look over my shoulder.

As my worn-out sneakers hit the pavement, I made my final assessment.

The old Sloan was dead.

What happened next was simple math. I hitchhiked back to the backwoods, to the old couple who had originally taken me in. They asked why I was back.

I told them I wasn't needed there.

The old woman sighed, scooped a heavy portion of stew into a bowl, and set it in front of me. The old man puffed on his cheap cigarette for a long time before letting out a cloud of smoke. "Then get your head straight. Grind your way out of here, and never look back."

I nodded.

They emptied every crumpled bill from their rusted tin box to buy me a secondhand laptop. I worked three shifts at the local diner, burning the midnight oil until my eyes blurred, clawing my way to a perfect GPA. I dominated every full-ride scholarship available.

The year I graduated high school, I held a full-ride acceptance letter to an Ivy League university. A local reporter doing a human-interest piece shoved a microphone in my face, asking what my biggest motivation was.

I looked straight into the camera lens. "Survival."

The reporter chuckled, thinking it was a heavy dose of teenage edge, and printed it as a joke. But it wasn't a joke. I just wanted to survive. I wanted to climb high enough that I would never have to look at another person's face to know my worth.

Chapter 3

I left the country shortly after. Full ride, Ivy League. The old couple came to the airport to see me off.

The old woman gripped my hands, her eyes brimming with tears. "Sloan, you be good out there. Don't let anyone push you around."

The old man grumbled beside her. "With her? I'd feel sorry for the person trying to push."

I laughed. Then the heat pricked the back of my eyes. I dropped my duffel bag and pulled them both into a crushing hug, burying my face in their worn coats. "When I make it big, I'm buying you both the world."

The old man waved me off, his voice gruff. "Go on, get out of here. You'll miss your flight."

I grabbed my bag and walked toward the security checkpoint.

As the plane broke through the clouds, I stared out the window and let the reel of memories play one last time. The suffocating crush of the mall when I was five. The jagged rocks of the cliff when I was eight. The absolute zero recognition in my biological mother's eyes.

The picture-perfect family portrait on that manicured lawn.

I watched the clouds swallow the city below.

None of it mattered anymore.

Ten years. A full decade. I never flew back. It wasn't that I couldn't; I just didn't want to.

I brought the old couple over to the States for a few years, but when the old man's health started slipping, he insisted on returning to his roots. I flew them back, bought them a sprawling ranch-style house in their hometown, hired full-time care, and wired them a blank check every month. They bragged to anyone who would listen about their girl. Whenever I heard that, a rare, genuine warmth settled in my chest.

At least someone in this world thought I was worth loving.

This year, the firm decided to open a massive branch overseas and tapped me as the lead executive. I weighed the options and signed the contract. Ten years was a long time. It was time to survey the old hunting grounds.

My flight touched down at 3:00 PM. The afternoon sun was a blinding glare against the tarmac. I slipped on my designer sunglasses and let the sharp click of my stilettos echo through the arrivals terminal. The local liaison sent to pick me up was a girl in her early twenties.

She took one look at me and started stammering.

"M-Ms. Sloan, the car is waiting outside"

I gave a curt nod and followed her lead.

Halfway to the exit, a massive digital billboard caught my eye. I stopped. It was a glossy ad for a real estate conglomerate. Bold letters spanned the bottom of the screen: Song Enterprises.

The girl followed my gaze. "That's one of the legacy firms around here. They've been aggressively hunting for investors lately. Rumor has it they're bleeding cash and on the verge of collapsing."

I casually adjusted my custom, million-dollar cufflinks, my voice dropping to a frigid calm. "Notify the venture capital division. Tell them to run a cost assessment for a hostile takeover of Song Enterprises."

Without waiting for her reaction, I turned on my heel and kept walking, my heels clicking sharply against the tile.

Song Enterprises. The Song family. Such familiar words.

Yet, I couldn't even map their faces in my mind anymore. I really couldn't.

On my third day back, I attended a high-end corporate gala. I had zero interest in attending, but my business partners practically begged for my presence to secure the optics. So, I showed up.

The second I stepped past the velvet ropes, someone intercepted me. A man in a tailored, expensive suit, though the fabric couldn't hide the desperate, washed-up exhaustion radiating off his posture.

"Ms. Sloan. An absolute pleasure to meet you. I'm Silas, from Song Enterprises" He extended a hand, his smile practically dripping with sycophantic eagerness.

I stared at him. I let three seconds of dead air hang between us.

Then, the puzzle pieces clicked.

This was my brother.

No. This was the Song family's son. He wasn't my brother. I hadn't had a brother in a very long time.

"Hello." I extended my hand and gave his a sterile, calculated shake.

His grip lingered as his eyes locked onto my face, the sycophantic smile dropping. "Ms. Sloan, have we have we met somewhere before?"

I yanked my hand back with a smooth, surgical precision. "No."

He froze, opening his mouth to press the issue, but another executive swept in and dragged him away by the shoulder.

Chapter 4

I retreated to a dimly lit corner, a crystal flute of champagne balanced in my grip. A brief spike of static buzzed in my skull, but I crushed it down. There was nothing to spiral over. They were all just strangers.

A few minutes later, another shadow fell over me. A young guy this time, objectively handsome, wearing a tailored white suit that looked straight out of a Hollywood rom-com.

"Ms. Sloan," he paused in front of me, flashing a polished, polite smile. "Can I buy you a drink?"

I swept my gaze over him. Zero recognition.

"I'll pass," I said, my fingers casually swirling the untouched champagne in my glass.

He didn't miss a beat. The smile stayed firmly in place. "Something non-alcoholic then? Just as an icebreaker."

A junior partner from my firm leaned in, dropping his voice. "Ms. Sloan, that's the heir to the Reid family, Reid. Blue-blood money. One of the top-tier young executives in the city."

The Reid family. Reid.

Fractured splinters of memory flared in the back of my mind. The boy next door who always let me tag along. The time I scraped my knees to the bone, and he carried me on his back to the ER. The time he threw punches when the older kids pushed me around.

And right before I disappeared, he had given me a hairpin. I kept that piece of plastic for a very long time. Eventually, it got lost in the dirt.

"Ms. Sloan?" Reid's soft voice snapped me back to the present.

I locked eyes with him. Ten years had carved out his jawline and dressed him in old money confidence. The boy who carried me to the hospital was dead and buried.

"Nice to meet you," I said flatly. "I'll pass on the drink. Thanks."

The corner of his smile twitched, a micro-expression of disappointment cracking his polished facade, but he nodded. "Alright. Maybe next time."

He turned to leave, took two steps, and stopped. He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes searching mine. "Ms. Sloan, do you really not remember me?"

I met his gaze dead-on. Held it. Then, I shook my head slowly. "Never seen you before."

He walked away. His pace was slow, his shoulders stiff.

I stayed in my corner, my fingers curled around the untouched champagne glass. My pulse was a flatline. I felt absolutely nothing.

When the gala finally wrapped, a shadow blocked my path at the exit. Silas.

He planted himself right in front of the hood of my car. The blood drained from his face, his jaw tight. "Ms. Sloan, can I get a second of your time?"

I tapped the face of my Patek Philippe. "You have five minutes."

He sucked in a jagged breath. The first words out of his mouth almost made me laugh out loud.

"You're my sister."

I raised an eyebrow, my expression glacial.

"Sloan. You're Sloan, aren't you?" He took a step forward, his eyes rimmed with frantic red.

"I ran a background check on you. You went to high school in the midwest, but everything before that is wiped clean. You look exactly like my mother did twenty years ago. There is no way you're anyone else"

"Mr. Song," I cut him off, my voice slicing through his panic like a scalpel. "You have the wrong person."

"I do not!" His voice cracked, echoing off the concrete and drawing stares from the valet stand. "Your name is Sloan! You used to tell me when we were kids"

"Mr. Song," I interrupted again, stripping every ounce of warmth from my tone. "My last name is not Song. I grew up in the backwoods, raised by an old couple."

"I have no parents. I have no brother. Whatever delusion you're spinning has nothing to do with me."

He froze. The color drained from his face. "Impossible that's impossible"

"Your five minutes are up. Remember, Mr. Song, my time is a charity you can no longer afford." I slid my dark sunglasses onto my face. My bodyguard immediately stepped forward, yanking open the heavy, bulletproof door of the Maybach.

The V12 engine roared to life. As the massive tires rolled forward, they crushed through a puddle, sending a vicious spray of muddy water splattering up against the fabric of his expensive suit pants.

Chapter 5

I thought back to the jagged edge of the cliff years ago, to the raw scream tearing from his throat.

"Sloan, let go!" He was the one who let go. I shoved him to safety and took the plunge myself. Now he was standing here, choking on the word sister.

What an absolute joke.

The following days settled into a sterile, predictable rhythm. Board meetings, client dinners, corporate acquisitions. Silas tried to ambush the lobby a few times; my security detail threw him out before he even reached the reception desk. Reid made his plays toosending ridiculous bouquets, dropping dinner invitations.

I tossed them all straight into the shredder.

That unbroken peace lasted until I walked out of the corporate lobby one afternoon and someone blocked the glass doors. A woman.

The second she spotted me, she lunged forward. "Sloan!"

I stopped and let my eyes sweep over her. Late twenties. Head-to-toe designer labels, but her manicured nails were bitten down to the quick, and a frantic, exhausted panic leaked out of her eyes. Zero recognition.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

She flinched, a bitter, defensive smirk twisting her mouth. "You don't remember me? I'm Vivienne. Your parents'"

She choked on the word, swallowing hard before pivoting. "I'm the one living in your house."

The puzzle snapped together. That girl. The imposter sitting in my chair, wearing my clothes, her fingers laced with my mother's.

"What do you want?" I asked, my voice flat.

She gripped the strap of her Birkin bag so hard her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated as she stared at the sudden end of her pampered life. She shoved a hand into her bag, whipped out a check, and thrust it toward me. "I'm begging you!"

"I'll give you five hundred thousand dollars! Just don't go back to the Song family! Don't steal everything I have right now!"

I stared at the pathetic piece of paper trembling in her hand. Five hundred thousand. I could drop that on a Tuesday afternoon without blinking. She was practically hyperventilating.

"I've been in that house for ten years. They are my parents now. I'm their daughter! If you come back, it's all gone!"

"I'm not going back," I stated.

The panic in her eyes hit a brick wall. She froze. "What?"

"I said, I'm not going back." I locked eyes with her, dissecting her desperate expression. "Ten years ago, I lay in a hospital bed and watched them fawn all over you. That was the exact second that family became dead to me."

"I'm here for a corporate buyout, not a family reunion. You can keep the trash you're so terrified of losing."

Her jaw dropped. Not a single sound came out of her throat. It took a full minute for her brain to reboot.

When she finally spoke, her voice was a dry rasp. "You really you don't hate me?"

I let the silence stretch. Hate her? Not really. Ten years ago, she was just another stray kid.

Slipping into a vacant spot wasn't her crime. The real criminals were the ones who stopped looking for me.

"I don't care enough to hate you," I said coldly. "Get out of my sight."

The tears finally spilled over her designer makeup. She hunched her shoulders, gave a pathetic, trembling bow, and whispered, "I'm sorry."

Then she turned and bolted down the sidewalk. I watched her retreat, a sudden, heavy exhaustion pulling at my bones.

Back in my penthouse office, I collapsed onto the Italian leather sofa. The silence of the room wrapped around me, heavy and suffocating. My brain was a mess of static, processing everything and absolutely nothing all at once.

My phone buzzed on the glass coffee table. A FaceTime call from the old man. I forced myself up, pasting a smile on my face before answering.

"How's my girl holding up?" he grumbled through the screen.

"Killing it, as usual. How about you?"

"Can't complain. Just miss you."

The old woman's face shoved into the frame, pushing his shoulder out of the way. "Did you lose weight? Are you eating decent food out there?"

I looked at the two of them. The familiar ache hit the back of my throat, raw and sudden.

"Grandpa. Grandma," I said, my voice cracking just a fraction. "I miss you guys."

The old man blinked, clearly caught off guard by the emotion, before barking out a laugh. "Stop being so dramatic! If you miss us, book a flight and get back here!"

"I will," I promised.

Chapter 6

I ended the video call and sat in the dead silence of my office. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sky bruised purple before fading to black, and the city skyline lit up in a sprawling grid of neon.

A fragmented memory suddenly surfaced. When I was very little, my mother used to hold me tight. Back then, she would kiss the top of my head and say, "Sloan is mommy's little sweet pea."

Back then, I actually believed she loved me.

Then I learned better.

Things accelerated faster than I anticipated. Song Enterprises was bleeding out, begging for capital injections anywhere they could. They knocked on our firm's door.

When their proposal landed on my mahogany desk, I stared at it for a long time. The project director stood next to me, sweating through his collar, trying to read the deadpan expression on my face.

"Ms. Sloan, what are your thoughts on this"

"Set up a meeting with their executives," I ordered.

He blinked, caught off guard, then nodded frantically. "Yes, right away. I'll arrange it."

Three days later. The glass-walled conference room. Silas walked in, and someone else followed right behind him. My biological mother.

She had aged. Half her hair was gray, deep lines carved into her face, and the spark in her eyes had completely burned out. The second she saw me, her entire body locked up.

"You"

I stood up and extended a sterile, polite hand. "Mrs. Song. Hello. I am Sloan."

She didn't take my hand. She just stared at my face. Tears spilled over her lower lashes and tracked down her cheeks.

"Sloan" she whispered.

I pulled my hand back and sank into my leather executive chair. "Mrs. Song, let's get down to business."

The meeting lasted two hours. My assistant systematically slammed the disastrous financial audits of Song Enterprises onto the glass table, exposing every bleeding hole in their sinking ship. Silas's face turned the color of chalk. He choked on his spit, stuttering through his pathetic pitch.

Mrs. Song's shoulders trembled the entire time. Her eyes were locked onto my facea face that mirrored her ownas her tears splattered onto the expensive carpet.

When it wrapped, I walked them out. By the elevator banks, Mrs. Song suddenly lunged and grabbed my hand.

"Sloan, Mom knows it's you. I know"

I looked down at her grip. Her fingers were bony, the blue veins bulging against her fragile, aging skin. I smoothly slid my hand out of her grasp.

"Mrs. Song, you have the wrong person."

The elevator doors chimed and slid open. I stepped inside, turned around, and faced them. As the steel doors closed, I watched Mrs. Song muffle her sobs with her hands. Silas held her up, his face twisted in pure agony