Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
By the sixth year after I was brought back to the Sterling family, every one of them had grown thoroughly disappointed in me.
My parents thought I was socially embarrassing, nothing like their adopted daughter, who was always so poised and graceful she could light up a room just by walking into it.
My brothers made no effort to hide how much they disliked me, their biological sister. They were always on guard, afraid I might lash out at the other sister they loved.
And as for the girl who had occupied my place for so many years, she claimed I had plagiarized her fashion sketches.
In the end, the whole family agreed to send me abroad. Out of sight, out of mind.
They had given up on me.
And I was about to give up on them too.
When the sketches I had prepared for a competition turned into artwork Lillian Sterling had posted on social media the day before, I suddenly felt exhausted down to my bones.
Public opinion online spread fast. Maybe someone was pushing it behind the scenes, maybe not. Either way, before long, plenty of people knew that an up-and-coming fashion designer named Chloe Sterling had plagiarized the work of the Sterling family’s precious daughter.
I opened Lillian’s account and saw it there in plain sight.
The night before I was supposed to submit my entry, she had uploaded the sketches.
Her caption read:
“Had a little burst of inspiration lately. I’m thinking of starting a fashion brand. Girls, what do you think of these designs?”
Lillian loved sharing her life online. Every casual little glimpse of her wealthy-girl routine drew waves of attention, and her followers praised her as the definition of a pampered heiress.
In some ways, they weren’t wrong.
Lillian had grown up wrapped in luxury.
I scrolled back through the timeline. The sketches had indeed been posted the night before my submission deadline.
At the time, the comments had all been praise, people asking when the finished pieces would be available.
Now they were full of outrage on her behalf.
“Hilarious. Did that thief seriously think our Lillian was some nobody? She has hundreds of thousands of followers. How dare she?”
“They’re both Sterlings, so how can the difference between them be this huge?”
“Stop clout-chasing. Whoever this Chloe Sterling is, she’s not even worth one of Lillian’s fingers.”
“Does that thief have an account? I’m seriously too mad to let this go.”
“…”
The competition organizers had already returned my submission. Their message was perfectly clear: plagiarized work would not be accepted.
If I hadn’t drawn those sketches with my own hands, I might have believed I was the thief too.
“Chloe Sterling, haven’t you embarrassed us enough?”
Blake Sterling had just walked in, fury written all over his face.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
“For years you’ve gone after Lillian at every turn. And this time you outright stole her designs. How does our family have someone as morally rotten as you?”
Blake Sterling.
My second brother, if we were only speaking in terms of blood.
He had always been closest to Lillian. From the very first day I came back, he had stood firmly by his other sister’s side.
He was afraid my return would make her uncomfortable.
Afraid she would feel burdened.
Lillian reached out as if to stop him, the gesture purely symbolic, and said softly, “Second brother, let it go. Chloe probably just had a moment of bad judgment. If I’d known she wanted to use those sketches for the competition, I wouldn’t have posted them online. Now so many people are attacking her because of me.”
That was what she said.
But in all the days since the scandal blew up, she had never deleted that post.
As she spoke, her eyes reddened. Then she pressed a hand to her chest and started breathing unevenly.
Blake panicked at once and helped her sit down. When he turned back to me, his glare looked like it wanted to tear me apart.
“Lillian is still thinking about you even now. You know perfectly well she isn’t healthy. Did you do this on purpose to upset her? How can you be this vicious?”
I watched the whole display of sibling devotion without the slightest reaction.
How could I not know Lillian was in poor health?
It was because she’d been born with a serious congenital heart condition that she had taken my place for all those years.
More than twenty years ago, her biological parents had deliberately switched us at the hospital because they knew the family giving birth that same day was wealthy.
So much time had passed that it was almost impossible to trace exactly how it had been done.
I still didn’t know how Lillian Sterling’s birth parents—my adoptive parents—had managed to exchange the babies in the hospital. But before I was brought back to the Sterling family, there had been an aunt on my adoptive side who used to work there as a nurse. She quit years ago and married far away. I hadn’t seen her in a very long time.
My adoptive mother had always been in poor health. From the time I was little, I learned to take care of her. She complained often.
“If I hadn’t gone through hell giving birth to you, I wouldn’t be left with all these health problems. And after all that, you weren’t even a boy.”
Back then, I had no idea I wasn’t really their daughter. I only tried harder—caring for her, doing the housework, studying as hard as I could, hoping I could get into a good university.
My adoptive father had always wanted a son. His wife was too sick to have another child, so he kept another woman on the side. By the time I was finishing high school, he was already pushing me to get a job and help raise the little brother he expected to have.
Maybe fate really does have a cruel sense of order. He died in a car accident. The driver who hit him paid out a settlement.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Then the other woman showed up at our door, heavily pregnant, demanding her share of the money. My adoptive mother, sick as she was, still found enough fire to drive her off in a screaming fight. Not long after, that woman had an abortion and disappeared.
After that, my adoptive mother seemed to collapse in spirit. Her health worsened. I took her to the hospital, left school to care for her, and stayed with her for six months.
She still died.
On the night she passed, she could no longer speak.
I sat by her bed, keeping watch, when suddenly her lips moved. Murky tears slid from her eyes.
Only much later did I understand what that final mouth shape had been.
I’m sorry.
At sixteen, I became an orphan and used the money I inherited to continue my education.
At seventeen, a polished, elegant couple came to find me and told me they were my real parents.
A DNA test was the clearest proof possible.
It turned the first seventeen years of my life—the poverty, the misery, the son preference, everything—into a joke.
Especially the moment I walked into the Sterling estate and saw Lillian standing there, protected behind my two brothers.
My mother said, “Lillian’s biological parents are dead. She’s lived with us for years, and there’s no point pursuing what happened now. She’s innocent too. From now on, you’ll treat each other as sisters.”
My father said, “Since you’re back, your surname should be changed back as well. But this matter shouldn’t be made public. To the outside world, we’ll say you’re our adopted daughter.”
At first, they did feel guilty toward me.
But as time passed, the difference between me and the daughter they had loved and cherished from childhood became impossible to ignore.
And on top of that, Lillian had a congenital heart condition. They were used to putting her first in everything.
Adrian Sterling came back then, dressed in a tailored suit, coldness clinging to him like a second skin.
He was my eldest brother. By blood, anyway.
There was someone behind him too—Damian Ashford, Lillian’s fiancé.
Damian went straight to her, his face tight with concern. “Lillian, what happened?”
“Adrian, Chloe wouldn’t apologize, and she upset Lillian so badly she’s in this state now!” Blake was the first to complain.
Damian had already disliked me because of everything Lillian had told him. Hearing that, he looked at me even more coldly.
“What exactly is wrong with your family?” he said. “You let an adopted daughter bully your real daughter? Is this what playing the saint looks like—letting an outsider walk all over you?”
Adrian glanced at me and said flatly, “Chloe. Apologize.”
Several pairs of eyes fixed on me.
I met Adrian’s gaze, my expression calm. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not apologizing.”