When I was seven, my father’s gambling addiction ruined us. He lost everything and dragged me onto the streets to beg for scraps. We were cornered and abused by ruthless local loan sharks, but I managed to escape the chaos. Julian brought me to his grandfather’s ranch, and we promised we would never be parted. But behind his back, I secretly begged the social worker to find me a foster family far away. I was desperate for a new life. The day I left, he stood behind a flock of sheep, his eyes red with tears, watching me go until I vanished past the horizon. Years later, we met again. But he was no longer that poor ranch boy—he had become the insanely powerful heir to the Sterling empire. Desperate for career opportunities, I approached him with an agenda. But his borderline pathological possessiveness terrified me, and I tried to run. Later, he pinned me by my waist, his cold eyes burning into mine as he whispered hoarsely, "Chloe, you’re the one who broke the promise first. You have no heart."
I didn’t know how long or how far I ran. I just kept going, from the pitch-black night until the sky turned pale with dawn. I ended up in a remote, unfamiliar valley town. The morning air was crisp, and the wild grass at the entrance of the town was damp with dew. In the distance, I could hear faint voices. The terror that had briefly subsided came rushing back. I gritted my teeth and forced my tired legs to keep moving. I stumbled straight into a flock of sheep slowly heading down the dirt road. The sheep panicked, scattering in all directions. Exhaustion made me lose my head. I was terrified that the noise would attract attention. I was terrified of being caught. I dodged past the fluffy white bodies, desperate to find a place to hide. In my blind panic, I crashed headfirst into a boy who was slightly shorter than me. He lost his footing and tumbled backward, his head striking a jagged old tree stump. Fresh, bright red blood immediately began to seep from his forehead. "Ouch! Ahhh—" He burst into tears from the sharp pain. My heart leaped into my throat. The sound of his crying paralyzed me with fear. What if those bad men heard him? I didn't even try to help him up. I scrambled to my feet, my only instinct to run away. But before I could take a step, he grabbed my arm with an iron grip. No matter how hard I thrashed, I couldn’t shake him off. "Jules! Jules, what happened?!" An elderly man with thinning white hair rushed over, quickly scooping the crying boy into his arms. Only then did I snap out of my panic. The voices I had heard earlier belonged to this old man. I looked at the boy, feeling a pang of guilt. I reached out, wanting to wipe his tears. He angrily turned his head away, but his small hand still gripped my sleeve tightly. The old man led him, the boy dragged me, and just like that, I was pulled along to their small ranch house. Once inside, the old man wrapped the boy’s head in thick gauze until he looked like a little mummy. Only then did the old man turn his attention to me. I was a complete mess. Having lived on the streets for so long, I smelled terrible. My clothes were ripped to shreds by tree branches, my face and body were caked in sweat and dirt, and my bare feet were cut and bleeding. The boy called the old man "Grandpa." So, I quietly followed suit and called him Grandpa, too. Grandpa Thomas didn't ask questions right away. He helped me wash up, found some of the boy's oversized clothes for me to wear, and handed me a warm bowl of oatmeal. Feeling their genuine kindness, I devoured the food like a wild animal. It had been so long since I sat at a proper table and had a real meal.
Not long ago, I was a girl with a happy home. My dad ran a successful tech startup. But for some reason, he got hooked on gambling. Overnight, he lost everything. Our house and cars were foreclosed, and he owed an unimaginable amount of money to dangerous people. At seven years old, I didn't understand what bankruptcy meant. I just watched our live-in nanny pack her bags and leave in the middle of the night. In the blink of an eye, my dad and I became homeless. He dragged me from one neighborhood to another, carrying different pieces of cardboard with fabricated stories written on them. Sometimes the cardboard said I was terminally ill. Sometimes it said my mother was dying. Sometimes it was about him. But the truth was, I didn't even have a mother. I had never met her. He forced me to cry while begging, telling me that tears were the only way to get people to open their wallets. Some days we got enough money for a decent meal. Other days, we got absolutely nothing, and he would drag me to the dumpsters behind supermarkets to look for expired food. My young mind couldn't comprehend how long this nightmare would last. Whenever I cried at night, begging him to take me home, he would always whisper, "Soon, sweetie, very soon." Until that fateful night. A group of terrifying, muscular men cornered us in an abandoned warehouse. My dad fell to his knees, trembling and begging them to let me go. "Mr. Hayes, did you really think you could hide from us forever? A debt is a debt. You can't run." Right before my eyes, they cut off one of my dad's fingers. His agonizing screams pierced the night. I screamed and cried until my voice went hoarse, but no one came to save us. Eventually, I fainted from hyperventilating. When I woke up in the middle of the night, the warehouse was dead silent. The guards were gone. I looked at my unconscious father. I felt no lingering attachment, only pure survival instinct. I crawled out through a loose metal sheet at the bottom of the wall. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I heard dogs barking in the distance, and saw headlights scanning the dark hills. I didn't look back. I knew this was my only chance to live.
"Sweetheart, where did you come from? Where is your family?" Once I had finished the food, Grandpa Thomas asked me gently. I didn't dare tell him the truth. I was terrified he would send me back. Besides, I didn't even know if my dad was still alive. "I don't have a family. I've been living on the streets," I lied, completely erasing my father from my story. As I spoke, tears finally spilled over. The terror of the previous night finally caught up to me, suffocating me. "Don't cry. Grandpa will wrap you up, and it won't hurt anymore," the boy chimed in from the side, trying to comfort me in his own childlike way. Grandpa Thomas told me the boy was two years younger than me, and his name was Jules. "How long have you been on your own, little girl?" "I don't know... a very long time," I sobbed. "Shh, don't cry, sweetheart. Tell you what, you stay here with us for now. We have plenty of food and clothes." Grandpa Thomas gently wiped my tears with his rough, calloused thumb. This warmth, which I hadn't felt in so long, moved me deeply. Ever since we started running, my dad’s only focus was how to use me to get sympathy and cash. When I cried, he no longer held me like he used to. I couldn't understand what I had done wrong for my life to turn upside down so suddenly. Compared to the terrifying days on the streets, life at Grandpa Thomas's ranch was heaven. But whenever Jules and Grandpa went out to herd the sheep, I refused to go with them. I didn't know where we were, or how far we were from that horrific warehouse. My survival instinct told me to stay hidden inside the house. Only there did I feel somewhat safe.
Jules was a sweet boy, and he quickly became attached to me, following me around like a shadow. Back when I had a home, I had read a lot of storybooks, so I could make up all kinds of tales to entertain him. He loved it. But he had a bizarre quirk—he insisted on hearing scary stories before bed. Sometimes, out of mischief, I would intentionally add terrifying details just to scare him so he would cling to me. "I'm scared, Chloe," he would whimper. He loved to sleep with his arms and legs tangled around me. At first, I hated the lack of personal space. But over time, I got used to it. In fact, if he wasn't next to me, I found myself lying awake in fear. "Chloe, will you stay here forever?" His chubby face turned to me, his big, bright eyes shining in the dim light. "Of course I will, Jules. Now go to sleep." I lulled him to sleep, gently tracing the scar on his forehead. But even as I promised him I would stay forever, I knew I couldn't. I had been here for almost two months. A social worker, Officer Miller, had visited the ranch earlier. She told me that if I wanted, she could help Grandpa Thomas legally adopt me. But if I didn't want to stay, she could arrange for me to go to a foster agency in the city. They didn't know my real name. Back home, my name was Maya, but I was terrified the loan sharks would find me if I used it. So, I lied and told them my name was Chloe—the name of a popular girl from my old preschool. I secretly went to see Officer Miller on my own. I intentionally made myself look as miserable and pathetic as possible, making it clear that I wanted to be adopted by a wealthy family in a big city. My old home was in Seattle. Officer Miller told me that this ranch was over three hundred miles away from there. She spread out a map on her desk to show me the distance. I pointed to Chicago, which was in the opposite direction and even further away. The further I was from Seattle, the harder it would be for those dangerous men to track me down. "I want to go there. Can you help me?" Officer Miller was taken aback by my calculating request, but she eventually nodded and promised to look into it. A few weeks later, she came back to the ranch to find me. "Chloe, I reached out to an agency in Chicago. There's a very wealthy, respectable couple looking to adopt a seven-year-old girl. Would you like to meet them?" Without a single second of hesitation, I replied, "Yes. Take me there."
Officer Miller arranged for a local volunteer to drive me to the city. We scheduled the departure for a morning when Jules wouldn't know. Grandpa Thomas, wanting to spare the boy the heartbreak, took Jules out to the far pastures early that morning. Grandpa, Jules, and the local townspeople had been nothing but kind to me. So why was I so determined to leave? Because even after all this time, the memory of my father's finger being severed still haunted my dreams. I didn't know how far I had run, but I felt like staying here was a ticking time bomb. If those loan sharks ever looked for me, a small town like this would be the easiest place to corner me and kill me. Moreover, though I had lived like a gutter rat recently, I remembered my old life. I used to go to a high-end private school. My old home was luxurious. I didn't want to grow up on a dusty ranch, turning into a farm girl. Even though I had lost my biological father and my home, if I had a chance to be adopted, I wanted to be rich again. Perhaps living with a desperate, single father had made me cynical, but even at seven, my mind was entirely focused on survival and status. And I didn't think there was anything wrong with that. Sitting in the back of the pickup truck, I watched the ranch fade into the distance. The valleys, the pastures, the big oak tree where I first met Jules, and Grandpa's flock of sheep... And then, I saw him. Jules was running behind the sheep, his eyes red with tears, silently watching the truck drive away until he became a tiny speck on the horizon. The bumping of the truck made my throat tight. But I didn't cry. I shouldn't cry. I was finally leaving the dirt behind to start a new, better life. Did I feel bad for leaving Jules? A little. But he was just a ranch boy. If things went as expected, he would probably spend his entire life in that dusty valley. We belonged to different worlds now.
The day after I arrived at the Chicago adoption agency, Mr. and Mrs. Hayes came to visit. The agency director told me they were looking for a girl around seven years old. The only other seven-year-old girl at the agency had a difficult temperament and refused to speak to anyone. So when Officer Miller called about me, the director brought me in, hoping for a match. The next morning, the couple arrived. Richard Hayes liked me the moment he saw me, and his wife, Eleanor, seemed pleased as well. "Eleanor, look at her," Richard whispered, gently lifting my chin. "Her eyes... they look so much like Lily's." I nervously clutched the hem of my dress, having no idea who Lily was. Eleanor’s eyes welled with tears as she nodded in agreement. I found out later that Lily was their biological daughter, who would have been my age. She had passed away from leukemia just a few months prior. Eleanor’s health was too fragile to conceive again, which was why they decided to adopt. I had to thank my lucky stars for my pretty face, which allowed them to see their late daughter's ghost in me. When they heard my name was Chloe, they took it as a sign from heaven. "Sweetheart, we don't want to change your name if you don't want us to. Would you like to keep 'Chloe'?" Eleanor asked softly. I nodded meekly. And so, Chloe Hayes became my official identity. "Perfect. Chloe means blooming and full of life. It’s a beautiful name," Richard smiled warmly. A fresh start, blooming with life. It was indeed a perfect name. It was the best gift I could have given myself. The adoption went through smoothly. I became the sole heiress of the Hayes family and moved into their massive estate. Just as I had hoped, our car pulled into a gated community and stopped in front of a stunning, multi-million-dollar mansion. They were incredibly wealthy, even richer than my biological father had been. And best of all, I had a mother again. From Eleanor, I received the gentle, unconditional maternal love I had never known. I thanked God every day for my luck. They treated me like royalty, decorating my room like a princess's castle. "Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad. Thank you for bringing me home," I cried, throwing my arms around them. Part of it was a performance to secure my place, but a large part of it was genuine. Only I knew how hard I had fought to get here. It was luck, and it was destiny. I was more than willing to play the part of their perfect, resurrected daughter.
Eighteen years went by in a flash. I had long since adapted to my life as a wealthy socialite. With my adoptive father’s connections and funding, I had successfully broken into the entertainment industry as a rising starlet. However, the competition was fierce. There were several other young actresses debuting at the same time, and my agency's resources were limited. Without a massive breakout hit, my popularity remained mediocre. My current project, a drama called *Hear You*, was a villainous supporting role that I had to practically beg the producers for. Even though Richard had poured a lot of money into my career, there was always a bigger fish in the sea. I knew that to truly solidify my place in Hollywood, talent wasn’t enough. I needed to network with the real power players. At the wrap party for *Hear You*, my agent, Serena, pulled me aside and whispered that the youngest heir of the Sterling family would be attending. The Sterling Group was the primary investor in our film. They possessed unimaginable wealth and controlled half of the distribution networks in the country. I had always been ambitious. I knew Julian Sterling was a brilliant, incredibly handsome billionaire, and a rare catch. Throughout the entire party, my mind was racing, trying to figure out how to make a graceful, memorable impression on him without looking desperate. Of course, I wasn't the only one. Dozens of other starlets were lingering around, hoping for a chance to catch his eye. But as the night dragged on and the party neared its end, the VIP guest of honor had yet to show up. Most of the guests assumed he wasn't coming and began to leave. I was about to head to the dressing room to change out of my gown when a sudden commotion echoed from the entrance. A large entourage walked in, surrounding a tall, striking young man in the center.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "NovelMaster" app ? search for "448287", and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster