Drinking Oblivion To Forget Your Love

On my eighteenth birthday, my parents suddenly brought a strange girl into the house.

"Haven, you are not our biological daughter," my mother announced coldly. "Claire is."

My father threw a $1.2 million invoice for my upbringing in my face. "This is the cost of everything you've enjoyed in this house. You will pay it back down to the exact cent."

My fiancé, Cooper Holland, looked at me with deep disgust and threw our engagement ring at my feet.

"You stole Claire's life for eighteen years," Cooper sneered, his eyes filled with contempt. "Our engagement is over. This is what you owe her, and you will pay it back even if you have to sell your blood."

I didn't scream or beg. To pay off the debt, I tore up my Ivy League acceptance letter with my own hands.

For three full years, I worked twelve-hour shifts delivering food in freezing blizzards, and spent my nights scrubbing grease traps in a filthy dive bar until my knuckles cracked and bled.

I bit my tongue and paid them back. The night the final payment was transferred, my hands were trembling so hard I could barely hold a pen.

The moment the balance dropped to zero, I felt completely detached from this world.

With my last few coins, I bought a cheap bottle of sweet peach soda and a bottle of lethal agricultural herbicide, thinking the sweetness could take away the bitterness.

The moment I swallowed it, my phone screen lit up.

It was a text from my mother.

"Haven, the test is over. You actually are our biological daughter, too. It's just that Claire was lost as a child and suffered a lot. We did this to teach you humility, afraid that you might bully her."

"We will refund all the money tomorrow. Come home, and put your sister first from now on."

Cooper called right after, his tone full of arrogant charity. "Have you thrown enough tantrums? Come to the banquet tonight, kneel down and publicly apologize to Claire. Then, I might consider taking you back."

I stared at the glowing screen, dark blood welling up in my throat.

It turned out that everything I had done was nothing but a sick prank in their eyes, yet I had paid a devastating price for it.

At this moment, I suddenly realized that no one cared about my life anymore.

Chapter 1

Haven Bennett POV

I stared fixedly at the glowing words on the screen.

A sudden, violent burn tore through my throat and chest.

My phone began to vibrate frantically.

The caller ID displayed Cooper Holland's name.

With trembling, numb fingers, I swiped the green button and pressed the phone against my ear.

"Haven," Cooper's arrogant voice boomed through the speaker. "Your mother told you the truth, didn't she? Stop throwing your pathetic tantrum. Tonight is Claire's formal high-society debut at the country club. Put on something decent and get over here immediately. You need to kneel down and publicly apologize for your past attitude toward her. If you behave well, I might consider taking you back."

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

The highly toxic chemical was frantically corroding my esophagus and stomach lining.

A thick gush of dark blood welled up in my throat, spilling past my lips and splattering across my worn, faded jeans.

"Claire specifically begged your father for this," Cooper paused, his tone dripping with arrogant charity. "She said as long as you are willing to kneel down and apologize to her in front of all the guests tonight, the Bennett family will still allow you to step through their doors."

"Your mother even had the maids keep your old guest room for you."

He continued impatiently, "This is your last chance, Haven. Stop clinging to your ridiculous pride. It's been three years. Haven't you thrown enough of a tantrum?"

A trickle of dark, blackish-red blood spilled from the corner of my mouth.

A tantrum?

Three years ago, on that freezing, torrential rainy night, Colin Bennett threw a stack of itemized invoices in my face, declaring that I owed the family $1.2 million.

It was Cooper who personally drove me away and dumped me under a dark, leaking overpass in the deepest part of the slums without a single penny to my name.

That night, he rolled down his window and looked at me as if I were a pile of rotting garbage.

"Haven Bennett, from today on, do not ever parade around claiming to be my fiancée," he spat coldly. "You occupied Claire's life for far too long. This is your karma."

It was late autumn. I was wearing nothing but thin pajamas, shivering uncontrollably in the biting cold wind under that overpass.

Back then, I thought their cruelty was just the natural hatred directed at a fake daughter. I truly believed I was a predator who stole someone else's life, so I accepted my fate and worked myself to the bone to pay back a debt I could never afford.

But now, my mother texted me to say I was their biological daughter all along.

They orchestrated this entire living hell just to teach me to "put my sister first."

I tried to pull my lips into a smile, but my internal organs felt as if they were being ground into paste by a meat grinder. I violently coughed up a massive mouthful of dark, foul blood.

On the other end of the line, Cooper's voice turned icy when he didn't hear a response.

"Haven, are you playing dead again?"

"Every time I mention Claire, you use this pathetic silent treatment to protest. Do you still think you're the untouchable heiress of the Bennett family?"

"If Claire wasn't so kindhearted, pitying you for the hardships you've suffered working these past three years, do you really think I would condescend to call you?"

I used every ounce of strength left in my broken body, desperately trying to press the red 'end call' button on the screen.

But the daily friction of scouring metal pans over the past three years had long worn the skin on my fingertips smooth, erasing any trace of my old fingerprints.

The touchscreen failed to register my touch.

"Eight o'clock tonight at the Bennett estate." Cooper delivered his ultimatum, entirely oblivious to my dying struggle. "If you don't show up, your father will directly donate the $1.2 million refund to charity."

"You love money more than anything else, don't you? You threw away your dignity to scrub filthy floors for a few bucks. You wouldn't bear to lose a million dollars, would you?"

With those final words, he hung up directly.

The dial tone echoed through the empty, damp basement. Beep... Beep... Beep...

I looked at the darkened screen. Tears finally spilled from my eyes, mixing with the blood as they smashed onto the mold-covered bedsheets.

Cooper didn't know.

I only washed glasses at that dive bar because the owner was willing to pay me in cash daily.

I didn't even dare take the slightly better-paying job of serving plates. Because I only slept three hours a day, my hands shook so badly that I was terrified of dropping a customer's glass. I simply couldn't afford to pay for it.

That $1.2 million...

It was my drained blood, my extracted bone marrow, and the money I saved cent by cent riding a rusty bicycle through blinding blizzards.

Now they wanted to give it back to me. What was the point?

My stomach felt like it was filled with boiling sulfuric acid. The searing agony frantically climbed up my nerve endings.

There is no antidote for this kind of herbicide.

The most sadistic part of this poison is that it gives you ample time. It forces you to remain perfectly, absolutely conscious as you truly feel your internal organs slowly rotting and melting away.

I tilted my head back, staring at the dim, flickering yellow bulb on the ceiling.

My vision began to blur into a dark, grainy haze.

Suddenly, my phone screen lit up again.

It was a notification from the "Bennett Family Chat" group.

I had been kicked out three years ago, and just tonight, my mother, Inga, had pulled me back in.

The chat was incredibly lively.

Voice messages popped up on the screen, one after another in rapid succession.

With a violently trembling, bloodstained hand, I tapped the auto-play button.