Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
After my mom remarried, Ethan Sterling and I became mortal enemies.
He sneered that my mother was nothing but a mistress.
I shot back that his father was a disgusting old cheat.
The friends who knew the truth tried to smooth things over. “Come on. Former lovers turning into step-siblings… that’s a kind of fate, isn’t it?”
Ethan’s face went cold. “What fate? Who’d want any kind of fate with someone who looks half-dead?”
My heart sank.
He was right.
I really was running out of time.
By the time Ethan got engaged, I had just come back from abroad.
There was only one reason for it.
I couldn’t keep living like that.
For four straight years, no one cared what happened to me. Even working part-time in restaurants overseas, I got shoved aside and picked on. There were long stretches when I never ate enough. Sometimes I slept on the street.
My mother called me for the first time in two years.
At the time, I was eating half of a cheap baked flatbread I’d pulled out of a trash can in Chinatown.
“Ethan Sterling is getting married,” she said. “Come back. While you’re here, you can look around at the wedding and see if there’s anyone suitable for you.”
The flatbread lodged in my throat.
“Don’t tell me you still haven’t gotten over him,” she went on. “Chloe, after suffering out there for so long, you still don’t understand? As long as I’m here, you and him will never be possible.”
When my head cleared, I grabbed my water and forced down a gulp.
I coughed so hard my chest hurt. “I know.”
“I’m not being delusional.”
“I don’t have any money. Buy me a plane ticket.”
Dragging along my ragged life in a few battered bags, I finally got on the flight home.
More than ten hours later, I landed.
My mother transferred me a little money and told me to clean myself up and go straight to the Sterling estate.
“Make yourself look presentable. There’s a party at the house tonight.”
Presentable?
I hadn’t had a full meal in God knew how long.
I went straight to a mall, found a restaurant, and ordered like someone trying to make up for the last four years in one sitting—noodles, rice, hot pot, barbecue. I ate until my stomach felt painfully full.
After I let out one deeply satisfying belch, I was about to call the server over for the check when I realized my phone had died.
So I had to leave it charging at the front desk for a while.
The phone I used now was already several years old. Ethan had given it to me before I left the country.
By now it lagged so badly it was almost unusable.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
When it finally turned on, I saw the missed calls from my mother, along with several text messages full of insults.
I gave the server an awkward smile, paid fast, and headed for the Sterling estate.
Everything I passed on the way there looked unfamiliar.
Four years had gone by. The city had changed. The streets had changed.
And so had I.
I was awake now, in a way I hadn’t been before.
The driveway outside the Sterling estate was packed with expensive cars. I drew in a deep breath, hauled my oversized bags inside, and the moment I stepped in, conversation seemed to falter.
Maybe it was because I looked so badly out of place.
For a second, everyone just stared at me and then at each other.
I’d grown a thick enough skin not to care.
Ignoring the disdain in their eyes, I spotted my mother in the crowd and walked toward her.
“Mom, I’m back.”
A sharp little wave of surprise rippled through the room.
“That’s Mrs. Sterling’s daughter?”
My mother tamped down the fury on her face and forced a smile as she came toward me.
“Didn’t I tell you to fix yourself up before coming here?” she hissed. “Are you doing this to humiliate me?”
The look on her face made me want to laugh.
This
My head went blank with a dull roar, and the hand I’d reached out with curled back in on itself.
“Ethan, your sister doesn’t have any money,” my mother said smoothly. “I was just helping her out.”
Helping her own daughter. She actually had the nerve to say it like that.
Fighting down the panic rising in my chest, I snatched the bank card from her hand.
I had barely grabbed my luggage and turned to leave when a group of bodyguards, summoned by a snap of Ethan’s fingers, stepped in and blocked my way.
He let out a cold laugh.
“My sister?”
Then he started down the staircase, one step at a time.
There was no attempt to hide the mockery in his voice. “Unless I remember wrong, she’s also my ex-girlfriend.”
A collective gasp rippled through the room.
Mother and daughter. Father and son. Loving across the same two families.
I dug my nails into my palm and listened to his footsteps drawing closer and closer.
“Oh, right,” he went on, each word sharper than the last. “Or maybe she got close to me on purpose so her mother could marry into the Sterling family. Used herself as bait. Seduced me to get what they wanted.”
The words were so blunt I jerked my head up and stared at him.
By then, he had stopped right in front of me. He lifted my chin with one hand.
“Long time no see, Chloe.”
I looked into Ethan’s dark, icy eyes, and a chill climbed up from the soles of my feet.
At this point, no one in the room could pretend they didn’t understand what was happening.
“I-it’s been a long—”
I didn’t even finish the sentence before his grip tightened on my jaw.
“I heard Mrs. Sterling wants to set you up with someone.”
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
His mouth curved in something almost like a smile.
“What do you think of me?”
The next second, a vase came flying at him.
It hit with a heavy thud, then shattered across the floor in a burst of sharp, brittle sound.
“Who gave you the right to say something so disgraceful at an occasion like this?”
Richard Sterling strode in, furious.
The vase had struck Ethan across the back. His clothes had spared him from broken skin, but even so, the spot would probably bruise.
Some things never changed.
He and his father were still like oil and fire.
At the sound of his father’s voice, Ethan pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, but he didn’t even bother looking at him.
He just kept his eyes on me and asked again, “Well? What do you think?”
I turned to my mother for help.
Elaine Bennett looked at me with naked resentment.
“I… I…”
Just as I felt myself about to break, Ethan let go of my chin. His tone turned teasing, almost lazy.
“Even if you still want to seduce me, you’ve missed your chance. I’m getting married.”
The shift in his expression came so fast no one had time to react.
When he saw me frozen in place, one brow lifted. Something amused flashed through his eyes.
“Don’t tell me,” he said, “you’re seriously still hung up on me.”
I kept my nails dug into my palm and forced a polite smile onto my face.
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I came back. To wish you a happy marriage.”
Then I picked up my luggage and walked out of the Sterling estate without looking back.
I used to date Ethan Sterling.
We broke up the day my mother married his father.
On the day of her wedding, I called him, close to tears. “Ethan… my mom doesn’t want me anymore.”
No matter how badly my mother treated me, I had still clung to one thing: I was her only daughter. Every now and then, that bought me scraps of tenderness.
But once she remarried, once she had a new family, even that would be gone.
Things were a mess on Ethan’s side too, but he still found time to comfort me. “What happened? Hey, don’t be scared—”
Then someone shouted on the other end, “Get your damn hands off my mother’s things!”
Something crashed. Glass, maybe porcelain—one sharp burst of destruction.
Ethan was breathing hard when he came back on the line, but his voice softened for me. “Baby, something happened at my house too. I’ll come see you tonight, okay? Don’t be scared, Chloe.”
A second before the call cut off, a full-blown shouting match erupted in the background.
I understood. I even felt sorry for him.