Dead Before They Knew the Truth

Summary

I was born into a wealthy family, yet I lived a life worse than a dog. My mother, Eleanor, believed her child had been swapped with my father’s mistress’s daughter. She tormented me endlessly, while doting on the other girl. My father, Robert, despised Eleanor, calling me a disgusting bastard. He let me be bullied for over a decade, turning a blind eye. The mistress’s daughter, Chloe, flourished under their combined cultivation, becoming a celebrated socialite. And I, battered by my own mother, was married off to Silas, an old bachelor from a rural town, aged fifty.

Later, they discovered I was their only biological child. Both were consumed by regret, scrambling up the mountain that very night to find me. The old monk, beads clutched in his hand, looked at them, bewildered. “Who are you? The young woman, before she passed, said she never had parents.”