6
471words
Nathan stood up, furious. I pushed him back down.
"What's this?"
"Don't want to lose Emily's marriage prospects or offend the Ashtons?"
"So you're persuading me?"
Caught off-guard by my bluntness, my father's face hardened.
"You want us to announce we spent ten years searching for a fraud?"
"Look at you—uneducated, unskilled."
"What makes you seem like a Harper heiress?"
"You could've come back sooner—Why cause trouble on the engagement day?"
"I think you did it on purpose!"
He slammed the table and glared at me.
I smirked, asking," Then let me ask you."
"The Harper estate is remote, heavily guarded."
"How could a kidnapper take such a risk, under so much security, to abduct me without demanding a cent?"
"Was my disappearance really an accident?"
My mother's lips trembled.
Servants nearby lowered their heads, holding their breath.
"Claire," my mother said, tears falling," what are you saying?"
"You think we deliberately lost you and faked searching all these years?"
"If we didn't want you, we could've abandoned you when you were born."
"Why would we raise you so carefully?"
Nathan added," Claire, I didn't protect you well. "
"But this has nothing to do with Mom and Dad."
"They chased every lead about you."
"Once, they heard you were in a remote village. I wanted to go, but they insisted on going. They almost died in a landslide."
"Blame me, Claire."
I pulled away from Nathan, smiling a little.
"You're all missing something."
"I don't blame or hate anyone."
"But I will find out how I got lost."
"And how Emily mimicked me, step by step."
"My master read my fate: A cuckoo in the nest, repaying kindness with betrayal, harbinger of calamity."
Those twelve words shifted everyone's expressions.
Nathan glared at Emily, demanding, You still haven't explained how you pretended to be Claire."
Emily was scared when she thought about the police. She was pale and stuttered,
"I was an orphan. The orphanage was next to a mental hospital."
"The director paid us to clean there."
"A crazy woman there rambled nonsense."
"I learned she was the nanny who took care of the Harper heiress."
"She was fired after the heiress vanished, then driven mad by her abusive husband."
"I got details from her, then found the heirloom at a street stall."
"I got greedy..."
My father sent people to investigate. Coincidentally, my childhood nanny had been at that hospital but died in an accident days ago.
Nathan, alarmed by the prophecy, demanded Emily leave the Harper house.
But my mother, who had gotten used to her over the years, hesitated.
Seeing them make me look like the bad guy, I said.
"I won't live here."
"Money? I have plenty."
"I bought the villa next door."
"Don't bother me unless it's necessary."
