A new semester. A new beginning. My roommate, with her fabricated royal pedigree, had her eyes set on the Maybach my brother used to drop me off. That very night, she splurged, renting out the penthouse restaurant of an eight-star hotel to confess her feelings to him. The next morning, she had changed all her social media handles to "Mrs. Boothe." And she vowed to spend our years as roommates teaching me "proper etiquette" according to her "royal standards." What she didn't know was that my "brother" was just a boy from an orphanage my parents had sponsored since he was little. And I was the true heir to the entire Boothe fortune. 1 It was for my brother, Enver's, birthday. I’d gifted him a limited-edition Maybach sports car. To show his gratitude, he insisted on driving me to campus in it on the first day of the semester. That night, my roommate, the self-proclaimed royal descendant, Tina, didn't come back to the dorm. She finally reappeared three days later, strutting in with an armful of luxury shopping bags, her nose in the air. She found me in our room, reading a product development report, and unceremoniously dumped the bags beside me. "Get these organized. Hang them in the closet. And be gentle. This stuff bruises easier than you do." Her tone was that of a feudal lady tossing scraps to a scullery maid. When I didn't move, her impatience flared. She shoved me hard, her gaudy, diamond-encrusted nails scratching a red line across my shoulder. "Mia Boothe, don't you dare pull your little princess act with me!" she snapped. "Haven't you heard? From now on, you live by the skin of my teeth." She leaned in, her voice dripping with venom. "I tell you to study, you study. I tell you who to marry, you marry him. And if I say you don't get a penny for a dowry, you'll be out on your knees, begging on the street!" I couldn't help the smirk that touched my lips as I watched her unhinged performance. "Don't tell me you've finally found a way to get your ancestors back on the throne? You can have my family banished with a single word now?" I remembered her from freshman orientation last year. The first thing she’d said when introducing herself to the class was, "I am the thirty-ninth direct descendant of Prince von Hess. A hundred years ago, you would have had to kneel before me. But in these... special times, I grant you permission to use my name and be my classmate." At first, some of the kids, fresh out of high school, were actually half-convinced by her vintage clothes and the jade pin in her hair. But it didn't take long to learn the truth. Tina’s parents were prop masters for film sets. All her "heirlooms" were just repurposed costumes from historical dramas, all part of a grand scheme to package herself as high-born nobility. Her goal? To snag a wealthy husband and leapfrog into the upper class. And in this school, she hated me most of all. She was merely lost in a self-constructed fantasy of aristocracy, while I was, in fact, born into wealth. My sarcastic jab earned me a haughty eye-roll. She triumphantly whipped out her phone and shoved her social media feed in my face. "As of yesterday, your brother has officially asked me to be his girlfriend," she declared. "From this moment on, I am the lady of the Boothe Corporation. Your dear sister-in-law. I've promised your brother I’ll give him at least three sons, so the Boothe family assets rightfully belong to my husband and my boys." She paused, as if granting me a great favor. "But don't you worry. I'll take these next few years to train you properly, teach you the royal etiquette you so desperately need. When it's time for you to marry for the family's benefit, I'll try my best to find you a man on his first wife." "You'd better be cooperative," she added, her eyes narrowing. "Because if I give birth to a daughter first, you won't even have that marriage alliance to fall back on!" I burst out laughing. It’s true what they say—sometimes a situation is so utterly absurd, all you can do is laugh. I couldn't believe that in the year 2024, someone's mindset could be so stuck in the last century. Besides, the man kissing her in the photo at that eight-star hotel wasn't my real brother. He was just a charity case my parents had taken in from an orphanage years ago. 2 I had no time to waste on someone so clearly delusional. Grabbing my laptop and research materials, I buried myself in the lab. If everything went according to plan, by the end of this semester, the new product I was developing would lead my family's company to ring the bell on Nasdaq. I returned to the dorm late that evening. The moment I opened the door, Tina's hand cracked across my face. "You brainless idiot!" she shrieked. "Didn't I tell you to ask my professors and the academic advisor for a leave of absence for me? Why do all my classes show me as absent! Why are my participation grades gone!" Without a second thought, I slapped her back. Twice. Hard. "Who's the brainless one here?!" I shot back. "The university has a strict policy against unexcused absences at the start of the semester. Who told you to skip the first day of class?" Tina was stunned into silence, her eyes welling up with tears of theatrical indignation. She immediately dialed Enver's number and put him on speaker. "Darling," she sobbed, "I'm so sorry. I just can't manage Mia. She was out all day, and I was just worried about her. I only asked where she'd been, and she hit me." Her voice trembled with false piety. "It's not that I mind her hitting me... but a woman must uphold her feminine virtues to be blessed. If Mia keeps being so willful, she's going to ruin all her future blessings!" I stood by, arms crossed, unimpressed by her pathetic, twisted narrative. But then, she thrust the phone in my face, and I heard my brother's voice, shaking with rage. "Mia Boothe! Who the hell taught you to be so arrogant and willful?!" "Apologize to Tina right now! Or don't blame me for disowning you as my sister!" 3 Enver's reaction shocked me. Was this really the same boy who had cried in the orphanage, begging my parents to take him home? The same boy who had held my hand and promised to protect me for the rest of his life? For all these years, without my family’s support, he wouldn't have even made it through middle school. We had always treated him as one of our own, never breathing a word to anyone about his adoption. We'd never been stingy with money or resources. The very sports car he was driving was a birthday gift from me. And now, for a girl he had been dating for all of three days, he was pointing fingers at me without even asking what happened. I guess it was true. No matter how genuine your kindness is, it becomes worthless once the other person takes it for granted. Pushing down my shock, I asked in a calm, level voice, "Enver, are you saying you'd really disown me as your sister?" "Mia, you know I'm just doing this for your own good... You need to listen... or Mom and Dad will worry..." His tone softened immediately, his slight tremor betraying his guilt. He knew perfectly well that at the age of thirteen, I had been officially named the sole heir to the Boothe family. The only reason I was even attending this university was because I saw potential in its student body. A team I built myself would be a team I could truly trust. 4 Right after I hung up, an apology text from Enver arrived. He claimed he had only been so harsh because he was afraid I was going down the wrong path. In his heart, I was his most important sister. At the end of the message, he specifically told me not to reveal his true identity to Tina. He was afraid that Tina, with her "noble" background, would look down on him. If this had been the old me, I would have immediately exposed Tina's charade to him. But now? I didn't care anymore. To me, an ungrateful outsider was no longer worth my time or effort. In the following days, I poured all my energy into the final stages of product development. I was out of the dorm at dawn and back late at night, successfully avoiding any more run-ins with Tina. She tried several times to make me recite a "manual of female virtues" she had written, but I ignored her completely. I had made up my mind: as soon as the new product launched, I was moving out. Then came the mid-autumn holiday weekend. I had just finished the last bit of work on the project and returned to the dorm to pack my bags. Suddenly, the door burst open. Tina and a strange man pinned me to the bed. I struggled frantically, terror coursing through me. "Let me go! Get off me! I'm calling the police!" Tina pulled the pin from her hair and jabbed it into me, again and again. "Go ahead! Call them!" she sneered. "Before they get here, my cousin will be done with you! You'll be damaged goods nobody will ever want to marry!" I trembled in pain, glaring at her. "Tina, what the hell do you want?!" "What do I want?" Her eyes gleamed with a crazed triumph as she pulled a long, crudely made strip of white cloth from her dress. "I'm going to teach you a lesson. A permanent one!" "This is a treasure from my ancestors! Since you refuse to learn your place and keep trying to run around," she hissed, "I'll make sure you stay home. Permanently!" With that, she clenched the long cloth between her teeth, grabbed my foot, and began to twist it, forcing my sole to bend at an unnatural, sickening angle.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "393412", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel