The day my billionaire parents brought me home, my new sister asked me to sleep on the floor because she hadn’t finished cleaning out a bedroom. I told her I’d slept beside pigs for three winters, and at least the pigs had never pretended to be sorry. My mother dropped her coffee cup, and my father stared at me as though he’d just discovered something terrible.
Chapter 1
That’s the trouble with my mouth. Somebody says something stupid, and before I can stop myself, the truth comes flying out like a brick through a window.
For eighteen years, I’d lived on a rundown farm in rural Kentucky with Martha and Earl Granger. They called themselves my parents, although affection wasn’t something either of them understood. At six, I was cooking breakfast for five people. By nine, I could mend fences, slaughter chickens, and work twelve hours without complaining.
Complaining earned punishment. Talking back earned worse.
Then, two months after my eighteenth birthday, a lawyer arrived with a woman whose expensive perfume lingered in our kitchen long after she’d gone. A hospital investigation had uncovered a newborn switch. I was Chloe Harrington, the biological daughter of Robert and Eleanor Harrington, whose real estate empire stretched across half the country.
The girl raised in my place was Ashley.
When I arrived at the Harrington mansion outside Greenwich, Connecticut, Ashley greeted me with a magnificent dinner. She’d arranged flowers, ordered the kitchen staff to prepare my favorite dishes, and even tied a pink ribbon around my chair.
“She’s worked herself to exhaustion making you feel welcome,” Eleanor said warmly. “You should thank her.”
I looked at Ashley’s perfect manicure and the housekeeper standing behind her.
“Exhaustion? I started cooking for a whole household when I was six. If setting a table wears her out, somebody ought to check her batteries.”
Robert’s smile disappeared. Eleanor glanced at my hands, thick with calluses and old burn marks. Ashley lowered her eyes, looking appropriately wounded.
That evening, she announced that every guest bedroom was crowded with her belongings.
“You wouldn’t mind sleeping on a mattress in the sitting room, would you?” she asked sweetly. “Just until I finish organizing.”
“Lady, I’ve slept in a barn with a broken window in January. But if this house has twelve bedrooms and you can’t spare one, maybe your organizing skills need professional help.”
My younger brother, Leo, scowled.
“You don’t have to be so rude.”
“And you don’t have to act like the family watchdog, but here we are.”
Eleanor noticed the pale scars around my wrists. When she asked what had happened, I shrugged.
“Earl tied me to a radiator once because I misplaced his truck keys. Could’ve been worse. At least the radiator was warm.”
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
I took the largest available bedroom. Ashley cried when I cleared her stuffed animals and designer shopping bags from the closets, insisting I’d destroyed her precious memories.
“Precious memories?” I said. “Try having your leg broken because you spilled a bucket of feed. You’ll remember that forever.”
Robert looked down at my crooked left shin.
“Chloe,” he whispered, “was your leg really broken?”
“Sure was. Earl said doctors were expensive, so Martha wrapped it in newspaper and tape. Anything else you want to know before breakfast?”
My parents looked devastated. Ashley looked furious.
The next morning, she accused me of putting flower pollen into her makeup, knowing she had a severe allergy. Leo immediately took her side, insisting he’d seen me near her bedroom.
“I knocked because sleeping until noon would’ve gotten me dragged out by my hair back home,” I said. “Didn’t touch her makeup.”
Ashley rushed toward me, waving her powder compact. A little dust drifted onto my face, and within moments, itchy red welts spread across my cheeks and neck.
Eleanor grabbed my shoulders.
“Robert, she’s having an allergic reaction!”
“That what you call it?” I muttered. “Martha used to lock me in the shed whenever I broke out like this. Said nobody wanted to look at an ugly child.”
At the emergency room, Robert insisted Ashley apologize. She did, though she looked ready to bite through her tongue.
I thought that would settle things.
I was wrong.
Two days later, Ashley fell from the second-floor balcony and claimed I’d pushed her. Leo had been standing in the garden and heard her scream. By the time I reached the lawn, everyone had decided I was guilty.
“How could you hurt your sister?” Eleanor cried.
I studied Ashley’s twisted ankle.
“Funny thing about falling,” I said. “When somebody shoves you unexpectedly, you don’t usually land with both hands protecting your face. That’s how people land when they’re prepared.”
Leo scoffed.
“What would you know about being pushed off a roof?”
“Enough. Earl shoved me off the hayloft when I was eleven. Broke two fingers and cracked a rib. Want to see how they healed?”
Robert went white.
Ashley stopped crying.
And for the first time since I’d entered that mansion, my father looked at the girl he’d raised for eighteen years and asked a question she couldn’t answer.
“Ashley, did you jump?”
