The Abandoned True Heiress

The office was so quiet during lunch break that all you could hear was the air conditioner, when Amy, who sat next to me, suddenly shoved her phone in front of my face: "Fiona Lynn, look at this! It's exploding online!" I rubbed my pounding temples, and the moment I glanced at the screen, my heart suddenly tightened—"I'm a fake heiress, and I killed the real heiress." "People these days have no limits when chasing attention; and they even wrote it so convincingly—with kidnappings and ransom—it's spine-chilling," Amy kept muttering while scrolling through the screen. I stared at those words, my fingertips trembling uncontrollably. "The kidnapper demanded five million. My parents said the money needs to be saved for my studying abroad, so they told them to wait." "She was crying in the warehouse, while my older brother and I were watching fireworks at the amusement park." "The day she jumped into the sea, I had just received my acceptance letter from a foreign university." Every sentence felt like a rusty knife, piercing straight into an old wound. "Fiona Lynn? Why do you look so pale?" Amy's voice drifted off into the distance. I snapped back to reality, grabbed a cup of water, and took a big gulp of cold water, but I still couldn't shake the suffocating feeling in my chest. "I'm fine, probably just low blood sugar." I forced out a smile and never dared to look at that phone again. Amy reluctantly took back the phone: "Then hurry up and eat something to fill your stomach." The office was silent again, but my mind was exploding. The warehouse's musty smell, the scraping of chains, the kidnapper's screams, and my parents' cold words over the phone — 'The money is for Mindy' — all flashed through my mind one by one. My name is Fiona Lynn, but that's not my real name. Twenty years ago, I was actually Lisa Scott, the real daughter of the Scott Family. The "fake heiress" in those posts was Mindy Scott, the one who was switched at birth. When I was seven, just starting first grade, two men covered my mouth and dragged me into a van on my way home from school. The kidnappers demanded five million ransom. On the phone, Mom sobbed, "Mindy has a piano competition coming up, and the registration fee alone is tens of thousands. We don't have that kind of cash on hand." Dad's voice was colder: "Ask them to give us a few more days, we'll scrape the money together." That scraping together stretched into two whole weeks. During those two weeks, I was locked in a dark, damp warehouse with only a dry, hard steamed bun and half a bowl of cold water each day. The kidnappers went from negotiation to rage. The Scarface grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the wall, shouting, "The Scott Family doesn't care about you at all! They won't even spare five million. You might as well be dead!" I cried out for Mom and Dad, but on the other end of the line there was either a busy signal or Mindy Scott's sweet, delicate voice: "Why isn't Sister back yet? My birthday party is about to start." Later, the kidnapper lost patience and left me on the rocky shore by the sea. The waves crashed against the rocks, and I stared at the blurry coastline before plunging into the icy sea. Luckily, a passing fisherman rescued me. From then on, the Scott Family's real heiress, Lisa Scott, was declared dead, while the one who survived was Fiona Lynn — a seven-year-old with only that memory left and covered in wounds. The end-of-shift bell suddenly rang. While packing up, Amy casually said, "The post says the fake heiress is living it up now, while the real heiress hasn't even had her body found. What a tragedy." I picked up my coat, my fingers brushed the fabric, and suddenly I remembered Mindy Scott's pink princess dress—that dress was bought with the money that was supposed to save me. Walking out of the office building, the evening breeze stung my eyes. It's been twenty years. The pain I thought I'd forgotten was just buried deep in my heart, and a mere touch makes it hurt so badly I can't breathe.