Ficorpio
Chapter 1
The ICU monitor released a piercing, unbroken tone.
I clutched my mother Claire Hayes’s wasted hand, my nails nearly digging into her flesh. With her final reserve of strength, she screamed, “Chloe, don’t go back to the Hayes family. That place will eat you alive!”
I had known for some time that I was the substitute heiress.
Eighteen years ago, my mother had switched me at birth with the Bennett family’s newborn son. She had gambled everything to save me from being drowned by my grandmother and sent me to grow up amid the Bennett family’s wealth and privilege.
Meanwhile, the boy who should have inherited that fortune had grown up in the Hayes family’s violent, impoverished home, where sons were prized and girls treated as worthless. Richard Hayes, my biological father, had beaten him so brutally he’d broken chair legs over his body. Still, the boy had risked his life to protect the woman he believed was his mother, never knowing she was the one who had stolen his identity.
It wasn’t until Ethan Bennett reunited with his biological parents that he learned the truth: everything he had nearly died protecting had been part of an elaborate deception.
And I was the thief who had stolen eighteen years of his life.
The entire world had the right to condemn my mother as selfish and shameless.
Everyone except me.
Her “selfishness” had saved me from sharing the fate of my uncle’s newborn daughter, whom my grandmother had drowned.
Her “shamelessness” had given me eighteen years of comfort in the Bennett household. Because of her, I hadn’t grown up in the Hayes family’s lightless, crumbling house, enduring my father’s drunken beatings and my grandmother’s contempt.
I held her hand, crowded with needles and IV lines, and tried to warm her icy skin with my own.
Then her eyes flew open.
Madness burned in her bloodshot gaze. She seized my hand with such force that blood backed up into the IV tubing.
“Your uncle’s wife couldn’t give him a son,” she rasped. “The moment her daughter was born, your grandmother shoved that baby into a waste bucket and drowned her. The day I gave birth to you, your father was gambling at a construction site. I signed the forms myself. I delivered you alone. Thank God he wasn’t there. If he’d come, you wouldn’t have survived either.”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“Listen to me. Hold on to the Bennetts. They’re good people. They’ll pay for you to go to college. Tell them whatever they want to hear. Tell them raising a child matters more than giving birth to one. If they start to hate you, blame me with them. Curse me as viciously as you can!”
The frenzy in her eyes left me stunned. I opened my mouth to soothe her, but she suddenly began to thrash.
The needle shifted in her arm. Blood seeped from the puncture site.
I hurried to restrain her hand, but she screamed like a woman possessed.
“That family devours people! You must never go back! Do you hear me?”
The door crashed open.
Chapter 2
Richard Hayes stormed into the room with a crowd of relatives at his back. The moment he saw Claire in the hospital bed, he began to curse.
“You filthy bitch! You think you deserve a hospital this good? You’re coming home with me. If you’re going to die, you’ll die on Hayes land!”
A strange smile spread across my mother’s gaunt face. She looked like a vengeful spirit clawing her way out of hell.
“Your bloodline ends with you,” she said. “The son isn’t yours, and neither is the daughter. You’ll never have an heir, Richard Hayes. Not in this lifetime.”
“You fucking bitch!”
Richard lunged at her like a madman.
His fists and boots rained down on her as obscenities poured from his mouth. But my mother kept laughing. She laughed even as thick clots of blood spilled past her lips and the monitor’s alarm shrieked loudly enough to split my skull.
I threw myself at him, desperate to drag him away, but I might as well have tried to uproot a tree with my bare hands.
Then the boy who had been standing silently in the corner, unnoticed as part of the wall, finally moved.
For eighteen years, the boy had been known as Ethan Hayes. After reuniting with his biological parents, Victor and Eleanor Bennett, he had finally reclaimed his birth name: Ethan Bennett.
His school uniform had faded from countless washes, and his hair was clipped into an ordinary buzz cut, yet there was a quiet light about him. Now, that light hardened into something vicious.
I didn’t even see him move.
One second he stood in the corner; the next, his fist sent Richard Hayes crashing to the floor. Then he was on him, striking and kicking with even greater fury than Richard had unleashed on my mother.
The Hayes relatives swarmed forward, but they only grabbed at Ethan, cursing him as an ungrateful bastard while Richard took advantage of their interference. Ethan showed no fear. A few brutal elbows drove them back, and he lunged at Richard again like a starving wolf, murder blazing in his eyes.
Doctors and nurses crowded the doorway, unable to force their way inside. I seized the chance to help my mother, reaching to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth.
She knocked my hand aside.
The force behind it was impossible for a woman dying of cancer. Her hollow eyes remained fixed on Richard. She spat out another mouthful of blood and rasped, “Richard Hayes, you deserve to die without an heir! May every generation of your family end childless!”
Richard thrashed on the floor like a fish dragged from the water, still trying to charge at her, but Ethan brought his foot down hard on his ankle and pinned him there.
At the sight, my mother threw back her head and laughed.
The line on the heart monitor suddenly went flat.
Her laughter stopped.
A twisted hint of a smile lingered on her face as she closed her eyes forever.
That smile branded itself into my heart.
Chapter 3
I would never forget it for as long as I lived.
“Stop! All of you! She’s dead!” I screamed with every ounce of strength I had.
Everyone froze.
Ethan stood rigid, his brow furrowed and his lips trembling. Tears welled in his eyes, but he didn’t take a single step toward the bed. Instead, he slowly backed away to clear a path for the doctors. His face might as well have been hidden behind a thick mask. Whatever he was truly feeling, none of it showed.
After examining her, the doctor looked between Ethan and me. “Who is the patient’s next of kin? She has no vital signs. Do you want us to attempt resuscitation?”
I was still reeling from the shock of losing my mother when Ethan’s cool voice cut through the room.
“No. Let her go. Staying alive would only mean more suffering.”
Richard Hayes’s face was swollen and bruised from the beating, but he still sneered. “Exactly. Her worthless life is finally over. She wasn’t going to last much longer anyway. And after cursing me to die without an heir? She got what she deserved.”
Ethan let out a cold laugh. “A fatal intentional assault can put you in prison for life. You might want to stop gloating.”
Richard stared at him. “Since when is hitting your own wife a crime like that? She was mine. If I beat her to death, that was my right! What wife hasn’t taken a beating from her husband?”
“So you’re confessing?” Ethan pulled out his phone. “This hospital has security cameras. Every word you just said can be used as evidence.”
“You ungrateful little bastard!” Richard lunged toward him, but Ethan shoved him aside with an icy expression.
Then Ethan turned to me.
“Call the police. You’re her biological daughter. The report should come from you.”
It was the first time he had looked me directly in the eye.
There was no warmth in his gaze, only the detached formality of someone handling a matter that had nothing to do with him.
“I’d like to see anyone here try!” Richard planted his hands on his hips, and the Hayes relatives crowded behind him, voicing their agreement.
An older woman approached me with a syrupy, false smile.
“Chloe, sweetheart, he’s your own father. How could you call the police and have him arrested? Your mother gave you away, but your father has always thought about you. Just a few days ago, he even had someone arrange a wonderful match for you. The Weston family owns the fertilizer factory and earns over a million a year. Marry their son, and you’ll live like a queen.”
The words struck me like lightning.
Ice flooded my veins.
My mother had only just died. Her body was still lying in front of us, and they were already planning to sell me for a bride price.
I was only eighteen, not even old enough to marry legally.
How could they dare?
My mother’s final scream echoed in my ears.
That family will devour you. You must never go back.