I Was the Mistress at My Own Wedding Chapter 08

I Was the Mistress at My Own Wedding Chapter 08

Three years later, I started my own company.

I launched a program to support women entrepreneurs, especially women who had lost opportunities

because of family, marriage, or social prejudice and wanted a chance to rebuild their lives.

On the day the company opened, a lot of people came to celebrate with me.

There were former clients, colleagues who had been with me along the way, and women I’d helped start over.

I stood onstage and cut the ribbon with a smile.

The room erupted in applause.

A reporter raised a microphone.

“Ms. Bennett, after everything it took to get here, who would you most like to thank?”

I held the microphone and paused for a few seconds.

“The version of me who never gave up.”

“And I’d thank myself for never quitting.”

The audience applauded again.

In a corner of the room, Ethan sat quietly.

He didn’t come over.

He didn’t send flowers.

He simply watched me.

He watched the girl who had once made him the center of her world become someone no one could control

anymore.

After the event ended, I walked out of the hall.

Two people were waiting by the entrance.

Richard and Eleanor.

The moment they saw me, their eyes lit up.

Eleanor looked at me carefully, her eyes shining with tears, but she didn’t dare come any closer.

I looked at their graying hair and let out a quiet sigh.

I had hated Ethan.

I had resented Adrian.

But deep down, I knew Richard and Eleanor had known nothing about the baby switch.

They had never intentionally hurt me.

Still, I couldn’t treat them like my parents.

It was too late.

When I had needed someone to protect me, they hadn’t been there.

And now, I no longer needed them.

Lily could do just fine on her own.

In the end, Richard called out to me.

“Lily…”

“Is that really you?”

He stood slightly hunched, looking down at the old photos in his hands with a distant, nostalgic expression.

“I got these back from your adoptive parents.”

“You looked so much like your mother when you were little.”

My eyes dropped to the photos.

I remembered them.

My adoptive parents had thrown them into the trash a long time ago.

I never expected Richard to find them.

They were photos of me from the time I was one year old all the way through eighteen.

Before the wedding, my adoptive parents had actually treated me well.

They had never neglected my basic needs.

They had never denied me an education.

I had grown up like any ordinary child.

If Claire hadn’t been so confident and told me the truth herself, I might never have known that the kindness my adoptive parents showed me had always been mixed with guilt.

They wanted the Sterling family’s money.

So when Claire was born weak and sickly, they switched us at birth and let Claire live more than twenty years

of the life that should have been mine.

When the truth finally came out, Richard and Eleanor personally had them sent to prison.

I chose not to see them one last time.

I was afraid I’d soften.

Even after everything they’d done to me, I still knew one thing.

Their love for me had been real.

Their protection had been real.

The years they spent raising me had been real too.

I wasn’t strong enough to sever every emotional tie with my own hands.

So I let the law judge them.

Then I cut them out of my life completely.

Whether they regretted what they’d done or not didn’t matter to me anymore.

From that point on, nothing would hold Lily back again.

I said goodbye to Richard and Eleanor.

Outside the window, the sunlight was warm and bright.

My assistant walked over.

“Ms. Bennett, are you going to the Sterling family banquet tonight?”

I shook my head.

“No.”

She hesitated for a moment.

Then she asked, “What about the package Ethan had someone send over?”

She handed me an elegant box

Inside was the ring Ethan had once ripped from my finger

He had gone to great lengths to recover it through the channels that had handled the evidence back then.

There was also a card inside.

[I’m sorry. I hope life treats you well.]

I looked at it once, then closed the box.

“Donate it.”

“Let it do some good for someone who actually needs it.”

I didn’t look back.

After dinner that night, a news alert suddenly appeared on my phone.

“Son of a billionaire involved in late-night street racing crash, leaving one dead and one injured…”

“Before the accident, the billionaire’s son left a will granting eighty percent of his estate to Ms. Bennett and donating the remaining twenty percent to charity…”

The photo on the screen showed Ethan and Adrian.

My breath caught for a moment.

Then I looked away.

Whatever happened to them had nothing to do with me anymore.

The wedding.

The lies.

The pain.

The loss.

They had all become the deepest scar of my life.

But a scar wasn’t a chain.

It only reminded me that I had suffered.

That I had once lost all hope.

And that I had survived anyway.

From then on, I was no longer anyone’s fiancée.

No longer anyone’s stand-in.

No longer someone else’s regret they wished they could reclaim.

I was simply Lily.