apter 10
+25 BONUS
I hadn’t expected to catch Fiona wandering through my room that day. I wasn’t there, and she didn’t have the patience to wait. Instead, she plucked a few strands of her own hair and left.
When I first watched that footage, I had no idea what she was doing.
Now, with the evidence in hand, I had it delivered to them. Dad watched, his face twisting in shock. Mom snatched the papers.
“What is this?” she asked.
Her expression darkened as she read. Then, without hesitation, she grabbed Fiona by the arm. “Fiona, what is the meaning of this?”
Everything spiraled into chaos.
Dad looked more shaken than I’d ever seen him. “I’ve been raising someone else’s child for over ten years?”
His reaction was too intense. Mom sensed something was off. She turned to him, suspicious. “You knew something, didn’t you?”
Their argument erupted, voices rising, accusations flying. Then, in the heat of it all, Dad let slip the truth.
So that’s how it was.
Fiona was the daughter of Dad’s mistress. Back then, he and that woman conspired to swap my real sister for the mistress’s child, placing her in our home because we had better resources.
But fate had other plans. Not long after, the mistress died in a car accident. The baby–my real sister–died with her.
Dad had always known Fiona wasn’t Mom’s biological daughter. But to him, it didn’t matter. No matter which woman gave birth, the child still carried his blood. That was enough.
When they received my paternity test results, he had been puzzled, assuming there had been a mix–up at the hospital. He never suspected the real reason.
Because the truth was, Fiona wasn’t even his daughter.
She was the child of that mistress and her ex–husband.
*
So, after all these years, Dad had been happily raising another man’s child.
Mom had been doting on the daughter of the woman who betrayed her.
