Hearing the real heiress was coming home today, I skipped classes and rushed back. The drive was a blur of panic, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I didn't even let the butler open the door—I burst into the living room myself.

Three people turned to look at me. My father stood by the fireplace, his expression grim. My mother was on the settee, and a third figure—a girl with her back partly to me—sat across from her. I didn’t get a clear look at her face. Like a startled deer, I dove straight for Mom, collapsing into her arms. She stiffened, startled by the sudden, desperate weight of me.

Emotion surged, a tidal wave I’d been holding back my whole life. Tears poured out, quickly soaking a small, dark patch into the shoulder of her expensive silk dress. “Are you going to kick me out, Mom?” I whimpered, the words muffled against her neck. “Don’t abandon me. I’ll be good, I promise. From now on, I’ll be perfect.”

My body trembled with violent, convincing sobs. While crying, I secretly drove my nails into the soft flesh of my own thigh, pinching hard. A sharp, bright pain lanced through me, and a fresh, genuine wave of tears spilled over. My whimpers grew more pitiful. “You’re all I have. I’ve lived in this house since I was little. Where would I even go?” I was perfectly portraying the pampered daughter, terrified and dependent, a performance honed over a lifetime of fear.

Mom’s hands came up, patting my back awkwardly. “Izzy, don’t cry like this. No one said we don’t want you anymore.” Her voice had softened, trying to gentle the scene.

Just then, a calm, clear female voice cut through the sticky melodrama.

“Stop crying.”

Those two words were like an ice pick, sudden and sharp, stabbing right into the heart of my performance. My crying stopped abruptly, choked off into a ragged hiccup. My blood ran cold. "Why does that voice sound so familiar?"

I stiffly raised my head from my mother’s shoulder, my tear-streaked face turning toward the source.

And I met the true heiress’s gaze.

My brain short-circuited. A high-pitched, silent buzz filled my ears, drowning out every other sound in the room. The face looking back at me—the cool, composed face of the stranger who held my future in her hands—was impossible. It was a face I knew in the dark. The arch of a brow I’d traced with my fingertips. The lips that had whispered promises I paid for.

It was the exact face of the lover I’d been keeping for the past six months.

My sugar baby.