Chapter 1
“Noelle, it’s all your fault! Why don’t you just go
die!”
On our wedding night, I stood in a hospital room, my wedding dress still on, watching my husband curse me for the sake of my sister.
“Kevin, is everything really my fault?”
I couldn’t hold back the tears as I choked out:
“It was Yolanda who wanted to go abroad. She insisted on leaving. The person who killed her
wasn’t me, it was that drunk driver.”
“Why are you blaming me for everything?”
“I’m your wife.”
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But Kevin only shouted louder, his voice filled with fury:
“If I hadn’t married you, would Yoli have gone
abroad?”
“You’re not my wife. My love is Yoli, only her.”
Tears streamed down his face, his eyes filled with sorrow and despair, and there was even a glimmer of hate.
I was at a loss.
“Noelle, you have to atone.”
Atone for what? What sin have I committed?
On my wedding night, I stood by my husband as we dealt with the aftermath of the person I despised.
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I hadn’t even changed out of my wedding dress, spending the night with Kevin at the hospital.
Sitting in the lobby, I closed my eyes, forcing myself to ignore the strange looks from others, but my mind couldn’t help but replay the absurd years I’d lived.
I envied Yolanda–envied her to the point of madness.
Yolanda, she was our family’s adopted daughter, my so–called sister.
Yet, she had everything I ever wanted,
everything I could never have.
When I was ten, I was kidnapped by human traffickers while playing at the amusement park with my brother.
In their sorrow, my parents adopted a little girl
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from the orphanage.
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They didn’t look for me, no one cared that I had been lost by my brother. They were too busy celebrating the arrival of another girl.
As their biological daughter, I was forgotten in
less than a month.
Only Grandpa. For over a decade, he searched tirelessly for me.
Finally, when I turned eighteen, I met him.
But I was too ashamed. When Grandpa found
me, I was cutting grass and feeding the cows.
My leg was crippled, each step was a struggle, and that’s when Grandpa appeared.
When his voice called out from behind me, the same voice I had heard in countless midnight
dreams I turned around in dicholiof
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dreams, I turned around in disbelief.
There he was, standing there, tears shining in
his eyes.
“Is it Noe?”
Grandpa no longer look as young as I remembered him, His once–dark hair had long since turned gray, and his face was marked with
more wrinkles than I had ever noticed before.
I could hardly control myself. I hobbled toward him, my legs shaking, and couldn’t stop crying.
“I missed you so much. Why did you take so long to come?”
When I was taken, my leg had been broken as punishment for disobedience.
It’s been eight years now.
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During those eight years, I never went to school,
never had a phone.
I was like their slave, trapped in a remote
mountain with no way out.
Later, I went back home with Grandpa.
But was it still my home?
I felt lost, my entire being seemed disconnected
from that villa.
No one was expecting me, yet they all stood at
the door to welcome me.
Mom and Dad were strangers now, and my brother looked at me with nothing but disdain.
How strange. I was his sister.
Why had he looked at me like that?
