2
He wasn’t wrong. I’d had plastic surgery. And I’d changed my name.
I used to be Taylor. Taylor Croft.
After I left the Croft family, I found my birth parents. Now, I was Stella Crawford.
No wonder Harris hadn’t reacted when he heard my name. He sat there like an impassive stone statue, letti- ng his assistant fend off the ambitious women who tried to get close, not even sparing me a single glance.
The assistant, however, stared at my face as if he were examining a cheap forgery.
“You’ve had work done, haven’t you, Ms. Crawford?” he sneered. “I studied medicine for a time. I can spot a scalpel’s work from a mile away. But you’ve all made a grave miscalculation. The woman in Mr. Croft’s heart cannot be replaced by some cheap imitation. If she could be, she wouldn’t be his one true love, would she? Mr. Croft doesn’t just avoid playing these pathetic stand-in games; he finds them utterly repulsive. You’ve walked right into a minefield. Now, are you going to leave, or do I have to have you thrown out?”
I felt like I was sitting on a bed of nails. Why did everyone keep calling me his one true love? If only that were
the case.
In his eyes, I was only ever his sister. Nothing more.
The truth is, Harris and I share no blood. We were both victims of child trafficking, and for three hellish years,
we survived by clinging to each other.
When I was beaten, he would wrap his arms around me, taking the sting of the whip on his own small back When he was burning with fever, I would stay up all night, changing the cool, damp cloth on his forehead When we were starving and managed to snatch a single packet of instant noodles, he would tell me to eat
the noodles while he drank the broth.
We lived in a place no better than a pigsty. One night, a snake bit me. Harris didn’t hesitate. He knelt, pressec
his mouth to the wound on my foot, and sucked out the venom.
“Am I going to die, brother?” I’d sobbed.
He held me tight. “I won’t let you.”
Then, his wealthy parents found him. I huddled in a corner, my world collapsing. This was it. We were going to be separated.
But Harris clutched my hand, his knuckles white, and stubbornly told his parents, “I want her to be my sister. I’m going to protect her for the rest of my life.”
His parents were hesitant. So he doubled down.
I
‘Then I’m not going back either. Where she goes, I go. No one is tearing us apart.”
A wave of shock and joy washed over me. And just like that, I became the adopted daughter of the wealthy Croft family.
Harris’s most beloved sister.
And he did spoil me. He was just a boy himself, but he patiently taught me to read and write. Every tutor his family hired for him, he insisted they teach me too. He bought me the most beautiful clothes, the most popu- lar toys. He even learned how to braid my hair.
He transformed me from a dirty, scared little girl into a poised, eighteen-year-old young woman. Everyone in our social circle knew I was the girl Harris Croft held in the palm of his hand.
They whispered behind our backs, “She’s not an adopted daughter; she’s the wife he’s been grooming since
they were kids.”
At the time, those rumors made my heart flutter. I secretly loved them.
Because I was so, so in love with him. I dreamed of marrying him when we grew up, so we could be together
forever.
But when I finally mustered the courage to confess, Harris’s answer was a gentle, but devastating, blow.
“That’s not an option, Taylor. You’re my sister. Always.”
His words were like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing the hope that had burned so brightly in my heart. But I couldn’t extinguish the love. You can’t command your heart to stop feeling.
I couldn’t bear the thought of watching him marry someone else, of another woman spending her life with him. This one-sided love would eventually twist me into someone bitter and ugly. My only choice was to leave. I thought maybe, with distance, I could finally tame the obsessive, all-consuming desire I had for him.
I never imagined that five years later, this is how we would meet again.
Mistaken for a shameless impostor by his own assistant.
