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-”

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

what my mother had

the slamming of the front door, and I paused from talking into the phone.

call you back,” I said, before hanging up. I turned in my seat as Ashton stumbled his way

I growled, crossing

a slight slur to his words. He moved toward me but lost his balance and grabbed my table to straighten himself up. The hair dryer crashed to the floor along with

feet and

yelled, collapsing back onto the bed

you?” I huffed. “I practically had to

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

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

this,” he said

Chapter 30

in his

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

Not a nice drunk. Not

pulled the towel away from my hair, picking up my hair

way I had planned. Even if I was taking

prince, but I was realizing that everything he said and did was fake. He

for long periods at night, without telling me where he’d been or why. I could barely say

himself together. I never imagined Damon was the best of the two of them. But Ashton was proving that to be true.

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

rather interested in texting someone lately. I knew he was probably cheating on me. Our relationship meant nothing to either one. of us, after all. But I would like to know where he’d been.

real relationship,

at his phone once more.

opportunity was too good

feet, careful not to make a sound with my bare feet on the carpet. I crept slowly over to the bed and

up in a blue glow,

bothered to change it

Chapter 30

however, the phone locked out-a

over at the limp form of Ashton. What he

pressed his thumb on the screen’s surface.

and began to scroll. First through