I Begged The Real Heiress To Take My Life Away Chapter 15

I Begged The Real Heiress To Take My Life Away Chapter 15

The day of the press conference, I wore a new dress Peggy had bought me.

Not couture.

Twelve dollars and eighty cents.

Little floral print, plain cotton, comfortable as anything.

Josie did my hair.

Her hands were clumsy at it, and she yanked hard enough to make my scalp hurt.

“Sis, easy.”

“Hold still.”

“Is this payback?”

“Yes.”

She talked tough, but in the end she clipped in a tiny strawberry hair clip for me.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

Didn’t look like an heiress.

Didn’t look like a fake one either.

Looked like an ordinary girl who could finally breathe.

Pretty great, honestly.

The venue was packed with press.

Eleanor went up first, walking everyone through the birth swap, the hospital’s negligence, the arrangement

between the two families.

Roland sat in the crowd, playing devastated.

“Now, Eleanor, don’t take this the wrong way.”

“Something this big, the Sterlings owe the public a real explanation.”

“Whether the adopted girl was mistreated, whether the real heiress got shortchanged, we shouldn’t just take

your word for it.”

The second he finished, a reporter jumped in.

“Miss Sterling, did you have a good eighteen years in that house?”

Miss Sterling. Vague on purpose.

Josie and I stood up at the exact same time.

The reporter froze.

I pointed at Josie.

“Which one are you asking?”

The whole room went still.

Josie said, deadpan:

“Might want to use names next time. Easy to hit the wrong target otherwise.”

The live chat was already flooding with laughing emojis.

The reporter had no choice.

“Miss Daisy Sterling.”

I sat down in front of the mic.

“Good. And not good.”

The room went dead silent.

A flicker of excitement crossed Roland’s face.

I continued.

“The good part is, I had food to eat, an education, nice clothes to wear.”

“The not-good part is, I felt like garbage every single day.”

“Because everyone else in that house was just too good at everything.”

“My mom reads contracts the way other people chop vegetables.”

“My dad does R&D the way other people breathe.”

“My brother made a board member cry at sixteen years old, in an actual meeting.”

“I couldn’t tell my left foot from my right until I was seven.”

The reporters bit back laughter.

I said, dead serious:

“So you asked if I was mistreated.”

“I was.”

“Not the kind with hitting, or screaming, or being locked in a room.”

“The kind where everyone expects you to grow into a swan, and you look in the mirror and see a duck

instead.”

“They gave me the most expensive lessons money could buy.”

“Nobody ever asked if I wanted to learn any of it.”

“They gave me every resource in the world.”

“Nobody noticed I was going hungry.”

“They weren’t cruel enough to call it abuse.”

“They also weren’t kind enough to actually understand me.”

The room slowly went quiet.

I looked over at Eleanor.

Her eyes had gone a little red.

Then I looked at Josie.

“As for Josie.”

“Her life at the Doyle house was hard, but Frank and Peggy love her.”

“Getting up at four a.m. to knead dough, that’s real.”

“Her hands cracking open every winter, that’s real.”

“Making it to the top of her class all on her own, that’s real too.”

“But if any of you are trying to paint the Doyles as villains who abused her, I’m the first person who’s going to

disagree.”

“They couldn’t afford designer labels, but they gave her eighteen years of hot biscuits.”

“A hot biscuit beats a cold black card any day.”

Frank and Peggy sat in the audience, completely dissolved into tears.

Josie kept her head down, shoulders trembling slightly.

Roland’s expression soured.

He hadn’t expected me to skip the sob story he’d been counting on.

He jumped in fast.

“Daisy, sweetheart, you’re still so naive.”

“How do you know the Doyles weren’t just being nice to you for the money?”

I blinked.

“Uncle Roland, you make a fair point.”

Roland’s face lit up.

I pulled a sheet of paper out of my bag.

“So I did the math.”

“Since moving back to the Doyles’, I’ve personally eaten thirty-seven sausage biscuits, twenty-two glazed donuts, forty-one bowls of grits, six servings of pot roast, fried chicken twice, and twelve milkshakes.”

“At market price, the Doyle family has taken a net loss of eight hundred sixty-three dollars and fifty cents on

me.”

“So if they’re only in this for the money, I’d recommend they kick this walking appetite out of the house

immediately.”

The whole room burst out laughing.