I Slapped My Fiancé—Then Married His Billionaire Nemesis

‘I always wondered why my parents hated me so much. It wouldn’t have stung so badly if they were awful to everyone, but no, Franklin doted on Preston, his brother’s kid. Caroline smothered Catherine, and after Catherine left, she started lavishing all her affection on Serenna. Her niece. Not me.’

I smiled bitterly. ‘For a while in middle school, I actually wondered if I wasn’t their child. Maybe I was adopted. Like in those old telly dramas.’

Ashton nodded silently.

‘But Jace told me something that finally made it make sense. I wasn’t the swapped baby; Catherine was. Caroline didn’t know she’d given birth to a stillborn. She didn’t know Catherine wasn’t hers. But... maybe on some level, she sensed it. A few years later, she started having nightmares—babies crying, babies turning into monsters. Coincidentally, the dreams started after I was born.’

I stood up and started pacing, unable to keep still.

‘And I think she looked at me and felt it. Knew it, somehow. That I wasn’t hers. She must’ve done a DNA test at some point, confirmed I was Franklin’s, so I stayed. But that seed of doubt never left her. It haunted her. And every time she looked at me, she couldn’t love me. Not properly. Because she thought I didn’t belong to her. The facts may say one thing, but her heart’s telling her another.’

Ashton reached out and gave my hand a quiet, steadying pat.

‘I’m not sad,’ I said. ‘It’s just... nice to finally understand.’

‘Jace heard all this from Catherine?’

I curled up next to him and nodded. ‘Yeah. Catherine had her suspicions for years, even before her birth mother reached out. She overheard Caroline talking to Franklin once, voicing her doubts. So Catherine did what Catherine does—she stole hairs from their brushes, paid for a DNA test, and when the results came back... she kept them to herself. That’s why she was so ready to believe Jace’s mother when she turned up. She already knew.’

‘Franklin and Caroline made a mistake,’ Ashton said.

‘They did. They thought I was the swapped baby, but it was Catherine all along.’