Secret Billionaire’s Contract Bride: Marrying My Enemy’s Lover

Chapter 30

“This is your sister,” my father had declared one sunny afternoon. It had been a three-hour drive to get to the huge mansion that loomed behind him, his shadow falling over me and my mother.

The little girl clutching my father’s hand smiled brightly at me, wearing a pretty violet dress that probably cost more than my mom’s apartment.

“I’m Adelaide!” my new sister cried. With her bright eyes and sweet smile, I could almost believe that she was welcoming us, even that she was excited to see me.

But my mother’s nails digging into my palm reminded me of the truth.

“It’s their fault,” my mother would always say on nights when her glass bottles lined the floors. On days when she’d cry herself to sleep, calling out my father’s name between sobs.

When I meant nothing to her.

I always knew I had a sister. My mother never let me forget as she’d tell me the story over and over. How my father married the witch and left us with nothing.

It was their fault that my father could only visit us for a few minutes once a month. Their fault we had to live in an apartment that was falling apart. It was her fault I couldn’t wear a pretty dress like her but one my mom had fixed up from a donation box.

It was all Maelyn McNair’s fault. And her daughter.

Adelaide.

She was the reason I didn’t have a father to come home to. Why the other kids teased me about my clothes being mismatched, why I didn’t have pretty dresses and a garden full of flowers.

All the things that should’ve been mine were hers.

She had taken everything from me my entire life.

If the witch hadn’t died, we still would’ve been in that dirty place, outcasts despite being a daughter of the Hildebrands, too. And she dared to smile at me, like everything we went through wasn’t her fault.

Chapter 30

So that day, standing in front of my new house and my new sister, I made a silent vow.

I would take everything away from her. Just like she’d done to me. We’d see how she liked being the forgotten one. The outcast.

“–And the florist is arriving at eight in the morning with the centerpieces, but they wanted an extra fee to set them all up,” I complained loudly into the phone. “I know, it’s so unfair-”

the vanity stared back at me as I plugged in the hair dryer. My wet hair pulled up into a towel to dry and dressed only in a bathrobe, I looked more like a drowned poodle than the actress Corinna

was what my

door, and I paused

in my seat as Ashton stumbled his way into the room,

crossing

and grabbed my table to straighten himself up. The hair dryer crashed to the floor

shouted, getting to my feet and ignoring the destruction he’d just caused. “May I remind you that we

back onto the bed with a sigh.

I huffed. “I practically had to plan this wedding

my money!” Ashton roared at me, his eyes bloodshot as he bared his teeth

a moment, I thought he might hit me, but instead, he sighed, rubbing a hand down

he said bitterly and then

Chapter 30

still in his suit.

my seat at the vanity. It was better to just let him sleep off the alcohol.

a good drunk. Not a nice drunk. Not

the towel away from my hair, picking up my hair dryer off the floor. I glanced

going the way I had planned. Even

that everything he said and did was fake. He wasn’t perfect in the

I tried to speak to him and leaving for long periods at night, without telling me where he’d been or why. I could barely say a word to him before he’d start screaming at me

together. I never

glanced at the phone he’d left on the bed. He let out. a shuddering snore, curling, face-down in the

Our relationship meant nothing to either one. of us, after all. But I would

Even if we weren’t in a real

glanced at his phone once more.

was too

on the carpet. I

lit up in a blue glow, showcasing the standard background. How predictable.

change it from the default.

Chapter 30

I swiped up, however, the

limp form of Ashton. What

up, and softly pressed

now open, I snatched it up and began to scroll.