The Fake Heiress & Her Toxic Savior

Start Reading

I was the fake heiress.

For twenty years I was the most spoiled girl in the house. Sickly since birth, kept like glass, loved by everyone.

Then the real daughter came home.

Her name was Vesper, and she was everything I wasn't. Healthy. Bright. Whole.

My fianc took one look at my pale, breakable wrists and called off the engagement.

My parents decided the cuckoo in their nest wasn't worth the medical bills anymore.

So I packed my things. Quietly. The way you put away something that was never really yours.

I didn't hear her come in.

"Poor thing," Vesper said from the doorway, smiling. "They've all thrown you away. You can't even afford your own medicine now."

I shoved her, hard.

The next second my back hit the wall, and her arm was around my waist, and her mouth was at my ear.

"Don't run, Evie."

"Just kiss me," she whispered, "and I'll pay for the cure. Doesn't that sound nice?"

Chapter 1

The day the real daughter came home, I watched her from the upstairs window and started counting the exits.

Rain came down fine and gray over the Upper East Side. She stepped out of the car in a clean white dress, dark hair loose to her waist, and took the umbrella from the housekeeper with one long, pale hand. Polite. Not too grateful, not too proud.

She looked soft. Harmless.

Girls who looked that harmless were never the harmless ones. I would know. I'd been doing it longer.

My fingers found the hem of my sleeve and twisted it.

For twenty years the Vance house had been a display case of beautiful, expensive things, and I had been the finest piece in it. The most delicate. The best kept.

Nobody had ever guessed the prettiest piece was a fake.

My father changed first.

Garrett Vance had once closed off an entire stretch of coastline so I would have somewhere quiet to spend my summers. When my brother went tearing across the grounds with the dogs, Garrett would ruffle my hair and tell me not to mind it. Some of us were built for quiet afternoons instead.

Now he wouldn't see me. I knocked on his study door more than once and got nothing. When we passed in the hall, his eyes went through me like I wasn't there.

I was crying before I knew it. Diana caught it first.

My mother was a hard woman. Sharp-eyed, exacting, the kind who taught you which fork to use before she taught you anything else. But that day she wiped my face and sighed.

"He isn't angry at you," she said. "He's angry at where you came from."

"Years ago he had a friend. Someone he'd been through hell with. They fell out. I never knew how. Whatever happened, that man switched two babies at the hospital out of spite. That man is your father."

My nails bit into my palms.

She let out a long breath and pulled me in.

"None of this is your fault," she said. "Let them say what they want. I am not handing over the girl I raised for twenty years. Especially not back to a house like that."

My birth father, Earl Doyle, was rotten all the way through. Drank, gambled, brawled. In and out of holding cells. He lived in the worst part of the city, in one low room barely taller than a packing crate, where even the stools were stacks of empty beer bottles.

My father took me to see him once.

We didn't speak the whole way.

No one answered the door. When Garrett pushed it, it wasn't even locked.

He let out a short, ugly laugh. Then his face went dark.

Earl was on the floor behind the door. He reeked of liquor, eyes half open, grinning up at us like we had made his week.

"Well. If it isn't Mr. Vance," he slurred. "Long time."

He squinted at me. Found my face. Laughed like it delighted him.

"And my own little girl. How's the rich life treating you, sweetheart? You can thank your daddy for that"

Garrett's shoe came down on his hand and ground his fingers into the floor.

"You're insane, Doyle."

I stood behind my father and didn't move.

The gift I'd carried slipped out of my arms. I bent for it.

The two of them had already trampled it underfoot, somewhere in the scuffle.

Nothing in me had a name for what that was. Only that the world had gone strange and far away.

My birth mother, Lorna, was already dead. Some illness she'd handed down to me, along with the bad heart.

And Vesper.

Vesper was the one who had grown up in all of that and clawed her way into the best university in the country anyway.

A sunflower that came up clean through the gutter.

Sunflowers like that don't forget who kept them in the dark.

Chapter 2

The little bell over the door chimed.

Vesper tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and looked up, straight into the spot where I'd been watching her.

She had Diana's eyes. The same cool line to them. Even the same small dark mark under one eye, like a teardrop that had never fallen. Clear as anything, through all the rain on the glass.

Then she tilted her head and winked at me. Smiling.

Something pulled tight under my ribs.

I yanked the curtain shut.

Dinner was quiet.

Maybe it was the awkwardness. Maybe it was the burn scars on Vesper's arms, pale and old, next to my thin wrist and the heirloom diamonds I'd worn so long I had stopped feeling them.

She'll hate me. Of course she will.

I had had her life for twenty years. While Earl was breaking her, I'd been playing chess with my father in a house on the water. While she lost her mother and had no one, her real mother was braiding my hair.

Everyone at that table was running their own math.

Vesper just sat there, scars bare, sawing at her steak like she had never held the knife before. The blade screeched on the plate.

My brother winced.

She ducked her head. "Sorry. Sorry, I'mI'm not very good with this."

Diana's eyes had gone bright the moment she saw the scars. That small, careful apology was what broke her. The tears she'd held all night spilled over.

She crossed the room and pulled Vesper into her arms.

"Sweetheart," she said into her hair. "Sweetheart. You've had so much taken from you."

My father stood too. Came around the table and set a hand near them.

"No more of this distance," he said. "Call us your parents. We're your family now."

Then, "And"

His eyes flicked to me. His voice cooled a few degrees.

"And that is your sister. And your brother."

Was I fit to be Vesper's sister?

Was I even fit to stay in this house?

I pushed the question down, shaped my face into something like a smile, and held out the gift I'd wrapped for her.

Whatever I had been given, I would give back. The bracelet was only the start. Upstairs, in the room they'd made up for her, the rest of it sat in neat, careful stacks.

It still wasn't enough.

It would never be paid off.

"Thank you," Vesper said, lifting her chin, smiling at me, clear and bright. She took the bracelet.

No disgust. None of the rejection I'd braced for.

The breath I'd been holding eased out of me. Tonight I would go back to my room and read more of those real-daughter-fake-daughter threads on Reddit, the way I had every night since she came. Anything to keep the fake from getting on people's nerves.

The room was just starting to thaw when a chair scraped, hard.

Finn dropped his knife and fork, wiped his mouth, and stood. He wore that smirk like a dare.

"Sorry," he said. "This whole touching little scene is making me kind of sick. I'm out."

Our parents' faces tightened.

He didn't care. He lifted his chin at Vesper, all that easy arrogance.

"I don't care whose blood is whose," he said. "I've got one sister. Her name's Evie."

Then he was gone. Up the stairs, past our father barking his name, past all of it.

Diana turned to Vesper, quick to smooth it over. He's young, she said, it's just a phase, give it a little time.

Garrett's voice cut in under hers, cold.

"He's a year younger than her. Some phase." A pause. "We'll fix that mouth of his."

Finn was the only one at that table who had claimed me.

And they were already deciding how to break it out of him.

Chapter 3

Garrett was throwing a gala to give my whole life to someone else.

Old money only, every name family in the city on the list. My fianc, Easton Pierce, among them.

The point was to stand up in front of all of them and name bright, healthy Vesper the true Vance daughter. To make Finn say it out loud, call her his sister.

As for me.

He'd rather I didn't show my face at that kind of gathering. Keeping the fake under his roof at all was generous enough.

He told my mother, "Don't let Evie out anymore. It's embarrassing."

The father I'd once worshipped couldn't stand the sight of me. Because I had Earl Doyle's blood in me. That was the original sin. Nothing else needed saying.

Garrett hired a coach to drill Vesper on etiquette, all the rules. My mother wanted me to make friends with her, so she had me sit in.

Vesper was sharp. She'd finish a full day of classes and come straight to the house to practice, and never once looked tired or put out. I'd left school over my health years ago. My days were books and drawing, nothing else.

She picked up everything a society girl was supposed to know, fast. Next to her I was just extra.

Still. After a while, the two of us did get close.

Her dancing was rough, so in the evenings I practiced with her. Sometimes I played piano for her. Sometimes, like that night, I was the one she held on to.

She was taller than me. Leading her felt clumsy, my hand at the small of her back, hers swallowing mine. We were close enough that I felt her breath catch when she laughed.

She caught the strain in me before I could hide it.

"Go rest."

She laced her fingers through mine and squeezed, slow. Her eyes dropped to my mouth, stayed a beat too long, and lifted away.

"Thank you. For staying."

I should have let go of her hand. I didn't. Not right away.

She hid it so well back then. Not one crack of the dark underneath. Long enough that I let myself believe she didn't hate me.

Until the night before the gala.

I was half asleep when cold fingertips traced down my cheek.

Her voice came at my ear, soft and amused and ice all the way through.

"How long do you think you can keep playing the saint?"

"You, sitting there so comfortable, wearing everything that should have been mine. I can't wait to see your face when it's all gone."

"My dear Evie."

My eyes snapped open. She was already gone.

Just the quiet, and a thin, cold moon at the window.

A nightmare, I told myself. Nerves. Hours before, she'd been laughing against my shoulder, sweet as sugar, begging me to come to the gala on her arm.

Everyone kept forgetting where she'd come from. A father who drank and used his fists. A mother who got sick and died. A home with men pounding the door for gambling money.

No girl walks out of that as a sweet little flower who forgives and forgets.

I knew the sound of that voice. The cold underneath the sugar. I'd worn a softer version of it myself for twenty years.

So I kept my breathing slow and even, and let her think the saint was still asleep.

Chapter 4

The night of the gala, my mother was glowing. Vesper and I had been getting along so well. One daughter she'd raised for twenty years, one she'd just gotten back, clever and gentle and impossible not to ache for. She couldn't stand to hurt either of us. At least we hadn't gone for each other's throats. That would have made it so much worse for her.

No. The one who worried her was Finn.

All teeth and rebellion, never a kind look for Vesper. They even went to the same university, Vesper a year ahead of him, and still the air between them stayed frozen.

Halfway through the night he pulled me into a corner, sulking.

"I've got reasons for going after her, you know."

"Before they brought her back, she was kind of famous on campus. Prettiest girl there, all those titles. And some uglier stories."

My eyes went wide, and the defense was out of me before I'd thought about it. "Finn. Don't go repeating gossip."

Because Vesper had told us once. When Earl couldn't pay his gambling debts, he'd gone to ground, and the men he owed went after her instead. Faked some compromising photos, spread filth about her, swore they'd burn her name down if the money didn't come.

Finn just rolled his eyes. "Those were fake. I know that."

He looked toward the door, where a polished young man had just walked in, and his mouth curled.

"I'm talking about after. When she still couldn't pay, she took up with a sugar daddy. And look. He's got the nerve to show his face here in broad daylight."

"I saw her go into a private room with Roman Lennox. With my own eyes."

Roman Lennox. One of the richest, most untouchable boys in the old-money set. Good face, broad shoulders, long legs. Eyes that should have been warm and never were.

Finn hated him. Roman had taken his girlfriend once.

"So yeah. I think she's filthy, and she doesn't get to be my sister. Dad wants to walk someone like that in and bump you out? Not a chance."

"I don't care about making a scene. I'll tell this whole room what those two got up to. Believe it or don't, I don't care. I just want to watch them squirm."

I went still.

Finn was wild and he was rude. But he didn't lie, and he never stooped to making things up.

My heart gave a thin, painful stutter.

I caught his arm before he could go announce it to the world, and held on tight.

"She isn't filthy," I said.

"If the swap had never happened, none of that would have touched her. None of it. She earned none of it."

He frowned. I looked up and gave it to him plainly, one word at a time.

"Finn. She didn't push me out. I was never supposed to be here in the first place."

"She's your real sister."

"She's the one you should be standing up for."

He didn't know, couldn't know, that I meant every word, and that meaning it also happened to be the smartest move I had. The girl no one defends is the girl with no allies. I had never been able to afford carelessness.

Twenty years without a worry, and I'd never once asked myself how I would live if the Vances let me go.

My future had been a fixed track, laid out and heaped with expensive flowers and jewels. All I had to do was ride the gold carriage, dress myself up just so, and walk toward the prince they'd chosen for me.

Easton Pierce was a good match. We'd gone to high school together. He'd always been attentive, always took care of me.

And now he was bending down with that same warmth to ask Vesper to dance.

She stepped on his foot and ducked her head, embarrassed. He only laughed and told her not to worry.

I stood alone at the far edge of the room and watched them smile at each other.

Of course. The prince only ever marries the princess who's useful to him.

And Vesper was something to look at. A junior, and Garrett already had her interning at the company. In his announcement he'd glowed about her, couldn't stop.

"What did I tell you. A real diamond shines even when it's raised in the gutter."

"Right? And then there's the fake. Sickly little thing. You can just tell she's got no luck in her."

I kept my eyes on the floor, every inch the girl who had lost.

Let them. A girl everyone has already written off is a girl nobody bothers to watch.

And I had always moved best when no one was looking.

Chapter 5

"The Pierces are already talking to the Vances. Easton's going to marry Vesper now."

"Wait, what about Evie? Haven't those two been together two years?"

"Done, obviously."

The whispers went around behind cupped hands.

A fake with no claim to the family, cut loose, and a bad body on top of it. Of course Easton would drop her. I understood the math. I'd run it myself.

Vesper glanced over and caught the sting in my eyes before I could hide it.

I dropped my head fast, before she could see the rest.

Pathetic, I thought. The kind of thing that wears people out.

Fine. If the track was gone, I'd find a road of my own.

Lights, noise, too many people. I gathered my skirt and slipped out of the crowd, up the stairs to the empty second floor.

And walked straight into Roman Lennox, leaning against the wall.

He looked like he was waiting for someone. His eyes found me, and his brows went up a little.

Mine too. The second floor was closed to guests.

He didn't explain. Just gave me that cold nothing of a look and moved to pass me.

He'd been waiting for Vesper. I was almost sure of it.

I don't know what made me do it. "Mr. Lennox."

He turned, cold.

I kept my eyes down. "What are you to my sister, exactly?"

In the dim light his mouth tipped up, something unreadable behind his eyes.

He didn't answer me. He asked me something instead.

"Miss Vance. I don't think you understand your own situation."

I frowned.

He smiled, thin and cool. "That sister of yours is going to eat a sweet little fool like you down to the bone."

The words had barely landed when heels came up the stairs.

Vesper drifted toward us and slid her arm through mine, easy, familiar.

She smiled at Roman's blank face, and nothing on either of them gave a thing away.

"Mr. Lennox. Lost, are you?"

"Finn's downstairs telling everyone the whole tragic saga of the two of you. Don't you want to go listen?"

It surprised me. Roman said nothing at all. He turned and left.

Vesper went quiet too. She drew me into the music room and pushed a window open without a word.

Night air poured in.

Moonlight caught the side of her face, and that bright, sweet look of hers was nowhere in it. Just cold.

I leaned against the door and watched her take a cigarette out of her clutch.

She lit it like she'd done it a thousand times, leaned back against the window, and held my eyes through the dark.

The ember flared and dimmed. Smoke unspooled between us.

I couldn't read her face. But I thought she was smiling at me.

"You look so cute right now," she said at last. "Surprised I smoke?"

I nodded, slow. The smell caught in my throat and I bent into a few quiet coughs.

She put it out.

Then she braced her hands behind her, lifted her chin, and looked me over, slow. Like a snake coiled up high, watching the thing it means to take.

"So. Are you going to tell our mom and dad?"

"I've got better things to do," I said softly. "It's your business."

She started to laugh.

Like she couldn't quite breathe around it.

Chapter 6

I looked at her for a long, long time.

Something clicked into place, quiet and final. So this was the real Vesper.

Not sweet. Not good. And somehow more beautiful for it, all that recklessness off its leash.

So the soft act, the leaning, the sugar. Had all of that been for show too?

She laughed herself out at last. Tucked her hair back, and the diamond on her finger caught the light. She sighed.

"A gift," she said. "From your ex. Easton. Just now."

"I took your man. Your family. Everyone's favorite. And you still stood there and defended me."

She watched me, burning. "When I heard what you said to Finn, there was one second where I almost wanted to forgive you."

"But."

She came toward me, step by step.

"Your kindness. How simple you are. How stupid. It reminds me all over again what a perfect little tower they kept you locked safe inside."

I dropped back onto the piano bench, and then her arms came down on either side of me, the keys biting into my spine.

She was close. Close enough to feel the heat coming off her, close enough that her breath broke against my mouth when she spoke. Nowhere left to go, and she knew it.

Her chest rose and fell. Those sharp, cold-pretty eyes were wide open, and what poured out of them scalded.

Her tears hit my knees, hard.

"That's why I hate you even more, Evie."

Then why are you crying.

Vesper.

I lifted a hand to her cheek and looked into all that hate and couldn't move.

Clouds swallowed the moon.

Neither of us gave an inch in the dark.

Until the thunder cracked.

Rain spat against the glass.

And Vesper buried her face in my neck.

I stroked the line of her back, slow, while she shook. I knew this about her by now. She was afraid of nights like this.

It was the rainy season, and the storms kept coming, so I'd started going to her on these nights so she could sleep.

Like this. Holding her, nothing that needed saying.

This anxious child always wound her arms tight around my waist.

Other nights she'd murmur it, soft. Thank you, Evie.

Tonight she only said the same thing, over and over, hoarse. "I hate you. I hate you, Evie."

She said it, hate you.

And held on tighter with every word.

I watched the rain and said nothing.

After a long while I asked her, gentle.

"Vesper."

"You're starting to love me. Aren't you?"

The first night Vesper came home, she'd knocked on my door long after midnight.

That had been a storm night too.

I let her in, shaking, and we lay facing each other on the same bed. She curled herself into a ball, hugging the stuffed rabbit I'd given her, lashes trembling, small and pitiful.

In the moonlight I watched her, my eyes open, saying nothing.

Somewhere in there, it changed.

She still held the rabbit. But I had my arms around her.

She went stiff.

I rubbed her back, slow, and that was how I learned the scars ran across it too. Thin crossing lines, the kind broken glass leaves.

The rain came down soft.

Then she leaned in and held on to me.

"Will you hate me?" she asked, hoarse.

"How could I?"

The truth was, from the first time I saw her, I'd known. Bright, warm, alive. They'd handed her to me as a sister. And I was going to love her anyway. Just not the way they meant.

She kept her head down so I couldn't see her face.

After a moment, low, she asked, "Do you hold Finn this gently too?"

Chapter 7

I went quiet for a second. Then I thought about it, honestly.

"It isn't really the same," I said. "Finn's a year younger, but for as long as either of us could think, he's looked after me. Half the time I'm more like his little sister."

Bringing him up, I apologized to her again. "Though, you know, I'm half convinced his brain never finished growing. Don't take what he said at dinner to heart."

The girl in my arms must have smiled. She made a small sound and went quiet.

But I wanted to keep talking to her.

"What if we go shopping tomorrow? What kind of clothes do you like?"

"Anything I can wear."

"I thought the white dress you had on today looked lovely."

"Dad gave me that one." She caught herself, and the word came out careful. "Do you like it?"

"I don't mind it." Vesper paused, then added, "It suits you better."

She said it low. "I don't wear white much. White socks, white shoes, white dresses, pale coats. Things that don't survive a stain. For me those were luxuries."

The room had just gotten warm. It went still again.

I said nothing and held her tighter.

A few days later I took her shopping.

Bags, shoes, dresses, jewelry. The way I'd dressed up a favorite doll when I was small, I made her lovelier and lovelier. Not that she needed it. She outshone every society daughter I'd ever met without trying.

But partway through, trying on shoes, Vesper sighed and kicked off the diamond-studded heels.

She hooked her arm through mine and leaned her head on my shoulder, going soft and coaxing. "Can we do something else?"

"Like what?"

I took out the black card and put it in her hand.

She turned it over once, dropped it back in my bag, and laced her fingers through mine, her eyes curving. "Let's go to the amusement park. I want to ride every single thing there, all in one day. I've wanted to for the longest time."

So Vesper changed into a tank top and shorts and got on the roller coaster, screaming and laughing in the sun.

I sat quiet on the bench underneath, head tipped back, watching her bright face and every strand of hair flying loose.

Then I looked down, opened my pill case, and swallowed one. Bitter on my tongue.

She was really happy that day. I knew it.

And I wanted to be there for it.

After the next ride she came back laughing, flipping through the photos I'd taken of her. She pulled me in by the shoulder and set one of the two of us as her phone wallpaper.

Mine was a photo of Easton.

Her smile stalled.

A second later I changed it, easy, to a picture of her.

Vesper was better to look at than Easton anyway. Those long legs, the slim neck, the little teardrop mark under her eye.

I watched her walk off to buy ice cream and lost myself in it.

I didn't even notice someone sit down next to me.

When Easton spoke, my heart stalled.

He smiled, easy and warm. "Evie. Is that her? Vesper?"

I paused, then nodded, slow.

Chapter 8

Easton's eyes moved over her. The long legs, the slim neck. The bare skin.

Something in me went prickly and hot.

I took his hand and pulled his gaze off her, smiling gently. "Easton. What are you doing here?"

His eyes came back to my face. I knew what he saw. Pale. Worn thin.

"Your uncle mentioned you were out. I thought I'd come find you."

He brushed the hair off my forehead and wiped the faint sweat at my temple, gentle.

My fingers tightened. I looked down. "Did you need something?"

I could guess. The Pierces had heard. He'd come to end it.

I was ready for that.

But there, in the blazing sun, Easton pulled me into his arms instead and laughed low against my ear. "Do I need a reason to come see my own girlfriend?"

"It's simple. I missed you."

I froze.

A strange dizziness rolled through my head. Maybe it was the heat.

Or maybe it was the way Vesper was looking at us from across the crowd.

She stood there, ice cream in her hand, dead still, staring.

Easton said something else. I lost it.

All I kept was the ice cream she'd waited in line to buy me, going soft and shapeless in that vicious sun.

Then somebody dropped it in the trash.

When Vesper turned back around, the bright smile was on her face again.

She came over and greeted Easton, warm.

Took his number, warm.

Sat down beside him, warm.

The smooth bare line of her thigh just barely against his wrist.

That night she slipped into my room again and curled into me.

Then she looked up at me and asked, quiet. "No matter what I do, you'll take my side. You'll understand. Won't you?"

I said it.

"Yes."

I owe you that, Vesper. Take whatever you want. Everything I have was always yours to begin with.

In that dim music room, I had held her hands and danced with her more times than I could count.

Now the only sound in the still air was her breath catching on a sob.

I held her. And still she wouldn't answer me. Stubborn to the last.

I took her hand and looked at the ring Easton had given her.

"It's beautiful," I said. The Pierces did mean it, at least.

The words had barely left me when Vesper threw my hand off and stood.

I stared.

She pulled the ring from her finger, no hesitation at all, and flung it out the window. It dropped into the rain without a sound.

She turned back. Her eyes were rimmed red.

Then she held her hand out to me, rain running down her open palm, a strange little smile on her mouth.

"Let's leave, Evie. Tonight. Walk out of every bit of it and come with me."

"Burn the whole thing down behind us. Every name, every wall. Just you. Just me."

"You're out of your mind, Vesper," I managed.

She didn't lower her hand. Soaked to the skin, red skirt clinging dark, she looked like she would stand there and wait for me even if the whole house burned down around her.

Soft, almost a murmur, she asked me one more time.

"No matter what I do, you'll take my side. You'll understand me. Won't you?"

I wanted to say yes again.

But a crash of sound came up from downstairs, and the word died in my throat.

Someone crying out. Someone sobbing. Someone smashing a glass in a rage.

Vesper just kept smiling.

Like she'd known all along the grand gala was going to fall.

Like maybe she was the one who'd brought it down.

Chapter 9