I stood in that hospital room, my entire body trembling with a rage that had been years in the making. The faces of the people I'd once called family stared back at me with disgust, as if I were nothing but dirt beneath their shoes.
"I won't do it," I said, my voice stronger than I expected. "I won't take the blame for what Fiona did to herself."
The room fell silent for a heartbeat before Genevieve lunged at me, her nails clawing at my face. "You ungrateful little bitch!"
I stumbled backward, pain blooming across my cheek where she'd struck me. Before I could recover, Alistair stepped forward and slapped me so hard my vision blurred.
"How dare you?" he hissed. "You're not even our flesh and blood! You should be grateful we took you in at all!"
Those words—flesh and blood—echoed in my head, striking a chord deeper than any physical blow. All these years, they'd held my supposed illegitimacy over my head like a guillotine.
