he Return of the Discarded Heiress

“For three years, I wasn't a foster child. I was a living, breathing cure. Hidden away in the attic of the Thomas mansion, my sole purpose was to keep their precious daughter alive. Every week, they drained my blood to treat her rare disease, leaving me anemic, scarred, and invisible. I was the "walking blood bag" from the wrong side of the tracks-a stray they'd reluctantly taken in. The day Katharina was finally cured, I overheard the truth. "That walking blood bag has served her purpose," the grandmother hissed. "We are done with her." They threw me out into a freezing rainstorm, tossing a crumpled check at my feet like a tip for a beggar. Payment, they said, for the years I'd "leeched" off their family. Payment for the six thousand milliliters of blood they'd stolen, for the chronic anemia, for the scars. I shredded their charity in front of their faces and walked into the storm. They laughed, screaming that I'd be back, that I'd be begging on the streets by morning. But as I stood alone on that dark road, my world shifted. A sleek, black Rolls-Royce pulled up in silence. The door opened, and my real family stepped out. I wasn't a stray from the slums. I was their lost heiress. And the Thomases are about to learn that the girl they bled dry is now the one holding all the power.”