When the affair of the right-hand man and the mistress came to light, My father, the feared patriarch of the Sterling family, summoned all thirteen of his wives and all of us children into the grand hall of the estate. He cracked his heavy leather belt against the marble floor: "Speak! Which one of you put these horns on my head?!" Chloe Sterling, my half-sister, spoke up, her tone perfectly mild: "Well, in this whole house, only Harper doesn't look much like you, Dad..." "And it seems like her family birthmark isn't very visible, either." The ninth wife, Chloe’s mother, never missed a chance to fan the flames. "Number Eight's hair is already turning gray, but she still acts like a harlot every day." "Who's to say if her daughter actually has Sterling blood?" In my past life, my mother and I couldn't defend ourselves. Even when I bared my back to show the ancestral birthmark, my paranoid father still whipped us both out of the house. Later, my mother froze to death in an alleyway, and I was sold to a nightclub, dying a miserable death under the neon lights. Now, surrounded by the glaring eyes of the entire family, I suddenly remembered something. The birthmark on Chloe's collarbone... Whenever she sweated, it always faded, looking more like a layer of smeared makeup. So, I discreetly ordered a maid to fetch me a rough exfoliating towel... 1 Chloe gently supported the ninth wife, speaking softly: "Dad, please don't get so angry, it's bad for your health." "Harper has always been so quiet, unlike the rest of us. We all inherited at least a little bit of your fiery temper." She paused, acting as if she had just realized she said too much, and quickly lowered her head. My father raised his dark, stormy eyes. "Chloe, explain exactly what you mean by that." Chloe's shoulders trembled delicately. "Dad, I'm not saying anything bad about Harper." "It's just... I've just always felt that Harper never really looked like you, even when we were kids." "And the birthmark on her back... I think I saw it once when we were little, but I haven't seen it since." "But I'm sure she's a true Sterling. The eighth wife would never do anything to betray you." Every child born into the Sterling family possessed a distinct, reddish-brown birthmark, though the location varied. Chloe's was right above her collarbone, easily visible in a low-cut dress. Mine was on my spine, usually hidden beneath my clothes. Because of this, in my past life, those few sentences from Chloe were enough to push my mother and me onto the executioner's block. My mother, Eleanor, went deathly pale and scrambled forward to her knees. "Arthur, I swear I didn't." "I barely even leave my own wing of the house..." My father cracked his belt against the floor tiles again, making my mother flinch in terror. He turned his cold gaze to me. "Harper Sterling." "What do you have to say for yourself?" I spoke softly: "Dad, if you're investigating an affair, you can't just base your judgment on whoever cries the hardest." The ninth wife, Vivian, changed color. "What is that supposed to mean? Are you accusing Chloe of setting you up?!" I looked right at her. "Why are you so anxious, Vivian? I didn't mention your name." The fake smile on Vivian's face froze. "These earrings? All thirteen wives have a pair." "The embroidered handkerchief only has the letter 'E' on it. My mother's name is Eleanor, yes. But the third wife's name is Evelyn, and there's even a maid in your wing named Eliza." "To accuse my mother based solely on these generic items is a bit too convenient." Chloe spoke up, her voice gentle and soothing. "Harper, don't be angry." "Everyone just wants to get to the truth." "But Mr. Davies has been running over to the eighth wife's wing quite frequently lately. I'm not the only one who noticed." My mother's eyes grew red with panic. "Every time he came, the maids were present! I have never been alone with him!" Vivian scoffed. "Whether you were alone or not, who really knows?" "The staff in your wing are obviously going to lie for you." My eyes turned to ice, and I grabbed Vivian's wrist in a vice grip. Gasps echoed throughout the grand hall. My father stared at me, as if he were looking at a complete stranger. Chloe rushed forward to support Vivian. "Harper! How could you assault my mother? She's just anxious for the truth!" I shoved Vivian's arm away. "Is she anxious, or is she feeling guilty?" Vivian's face went stark white, but she quickly recovered, shrieking: "Arthur, listen to her! She's a junior, yet she dares to disrespect me like this! Who knows what kind of manners the eighth wife has been teaching her!" The fury in my father's eyes boiled over. "Enough." He stood up abruptly. "Bring Mr. Henderson out here." 2 Mr. Henderson, the head butler, quickly entered the hall. "Sir, over the past two weeks, Mr. Davies has indeed visited the eighth wife's residence, the West Wing, multiple times." "A few of those visits were late at night." The hall instantly erupted in whispers. Vivian immediately started fake-crying. "Arthur, did you hear that?! Late at night!" "What possible reason could your right-hand man have for visiting a wife's quarters late at night?!" My mother swayed, almost collapsing. "No, he came at night because you ordered him to deliver my medicine! My chronic cough flared up those few days..." Mr. Henderson's voice remained steady and unhurried. "The medicinal herbs were indeed delivered." "But why would a simple delivery require Mr. Davies to stay for over an hour?" My mother froze. "There was a discrepancy in the household ledger that day. I asked my maid, Clara, to find the record book, and he waited on the porch." Vivian laughed mockingly. "The ledger? He delivers medicine and ends up helping you audit the books?" "Eleanor, if you're going to lie, at least make it believable." Tears welled up in Chloe's eyes, and she let out a soft, tragic sigh. "Harper, if the eighth wife really was lonely, we could all beg Dad for leniency together." "Stop trying to defend the indefensible." I turned to my father. "Dad, Mr. Henderson claims Mr. Davies visited the West Wing multiple times. Who actually saw this with their own eyes?" My father didn't answer; he just looked at Mr. Henderson. Mr. Henderson replied, "The night patrol guards, Gary and Luke, both saw him." "Bring them in." Vivian immediately interjected: "Arthur, isn't the testimony of two staff members enough? Do we really need to parade this scandal in front of the entire estate?" My father raised his hand to silence her. Shortly after, the two guards were brought in. I walked up to Luke. "You claim you saw Mr. Davies going to the West Wing at night?" Luke nodded. "Yes, miss." "Which days?" "The 6th, the 9th, and the 12th." "What time?" "Around 10:00 PM." I asked another question: "Which path did he take?" "The back corridor." "And what does the back corridor pass by?" Luke hesitated for a second. "It passes by... it passes by the ninth wife's residence, the East Wing. And further north is the eighth wife's West Wing." Vivian's face instantly lost all color. "You're lying!" I turned to my father. "If you don't believe me, Dad, you can send someone to check right now." "Right outside the back window of the East Wing, there's a large crabapple tree. The branches reach right up to the window ledge. It's the perfect spot to secretly hand things off." Chloe interjected, her voice dripping with sweet concern: "Harper, how do you know the layout of my mother's wing so well?" "Were you planning on framing someone else all along just to save your own mother?" What a brilliant attempt to flip the script. I stared at her and spoke slowly: "Because I live in the West Wing. We see each other every single day. It would be impossible not to know." My father glared at me. "You've said a lot, but where is the proof?" I walked over to the coffee table and picked up the bottle of perfume. "This specific brand of perfume... Vivian is the only one in the entire estate who uses it." Vivian immediately fired back: "So what if I use it? Anyone with money can buy it!" I nodded. "True." "But the bottom of this specific bottle has the letter 'V' custom-engraved into the glass." My father's eyes turned terrifyingly cold. Vivian dropped to her knees. "Arthur! Someone stole my perfume to frame me!" Chloe quickly knelt beside her. "Dad, the maids are always in and out of the rooms. A bottle of perfume doesn't prove anything." "Besides... no one has even verified if Harper actually has the family birthmark yet." 3 Chloe kept her eyes cast downward. She knew perfectly well I had the birthmark on my back. But she also knew that in a grand hall like this, forcing an unmarried young woman to expose her bare back in front of everyone was tantamount to destroying her reputation entirely. I laughed coldly in my head. "If Dad wants to see it, I will gladly show him." As soon as the words left my mouth, all the women in the hall froze in shock. My mother grabbed my sleeve, tears instantly spilling over. "Harper, no. You can't." I squeezed her freezing hand. "Mom, reputation is only useful if you're alive." A flicker of panic flashed through Chloe's eyes, but she quickly suppressed it. "Harper, don't be rash." "We all know you feel wronged, but if you strip in front of everyone, how will you ever find a respectable husband?" Vivian immediately chimed in: "Exactly! The eldest daughter shouldn't abandon all her modesty just to avoid punishment." "If all these men see a young lady's bare skin, her purity is ruined!" I looked up at her. "When you were accusing my mother of sleeping around, you didn't seem to care much about purity." My father frowned impatiently. "If you're going to show it, show it. Stop wasting time." I didn't reach for my buttons. Instead, I looked at the male staff standing behind my father. "Dad, I won't stop you from verifying the Sterling bloodline." "But this hall is full of men. If I take off my top today, can you control what their eyes see, and what rumors their mouths spread tomorrow?" My father's face darkened. I continued: "If I'm not a Sterling, then naturally, you don't need to care if I live or die." "But what if I am?" "If you force your own biological daughter to be publicly humiliated, whose reputation is truly being dragged through the mud when the word gets out?" Those words struck his absolute deepest nerve. Arthur Sterling valued his pride and public image above all else. More than he cared about his daughters, he terrified of the Sterling family becoming the laughingstock of the city's high society, or worse, someone recording it on their phone and posting it online. He gripped his belt tightly and ordered coldly: "All men, get out." The security guards and male staff immediately retreated out the doors. My brothers looked displeased, but none dared defy him. The heavy oak doors were pulled shut. Chloe walked up to me, her voice soft: "Harper, do you really have to do this?" I suddenly reached out and brushed my fingers against the reddish-brown birthmark above her collarbone. She recoiled violently, as if she had been burned. "Harper!" Vivian instantly rushed over to block her. "Why are you touching Chloe?!" I replied flatly: "I just suddenly noticed something strange." "The Sterling family birthmarks are naturally stable in color." "But how come Chloe’s birthmark seems to be dark sometimes, and faded other times?" Vivian's voice spiked in pitch: "You're talking absolute nonsense!" "Chloe's birthmark has been right there since the day she was born! The midwives all saw it!" My father stared at Chloe's collarbone, a flicker of doubt in his eyes. "Chloe, come here." Chloe bit her lip and walked over to my father looking incredibly wronged, pulling her collar down slightly. The birthmark looked perfectly real. My father inspected it for a few seconds, then looked back at me. "Harper Sterling, who else are you going to try and frame?" I looked at my personal maid, Clara, standing behind me. She discreetly slipped a soaking wet, rough exfoliating towel into my palm. I gripped the towel tightly. "Since Dad is so suspicious of my birthmark, why don't we take a closer look at yours first?" Vivian lunged forward to stop me. "Don't you dare!" I backhanded her out of the way. Chloe started screaming. "Dad! Harper has lost her mind!" My father didn't immediately intervene. I didn't let her finish her sentence. I pressed the soaking wet, rough towel hard against her collarbone. 4 Chloe trembled in pain as I scrubbed the delicate skin of her collarbone raw, leaving bright red streaks. But a second later, my hand froze. The reddish-brown mark remained stubbornly embedded in her skin. The tiny sliver of doubt that had just sparked in my father's eyes instantly morphed into explosive, volcanic rage. "Harper Sterling!" My mother threw herself over me, shielding me. "Arthur! Harper didn't mean it!" "She's just terrified! She doesn't have any malicious intent!" Vivian scrambled up from the floor, throwing her arms around a sobbing Chloe. "Did you see that, Arthur?!" "This mother and daughter are pure evil!" "Their affair gets exposed, so they try to destroy my daughter's birthmark!" "If you weren't here to witness it, Chloe’s life would have been ruined by her!" Chloe leaned into Vivian's embrace. With the skin around her collarbone scrubbed raw and bleeding slightly, the birthmark looked even more stark, making her appear tragically victimized. My mother's eyes were bloodshot. Her frail body stood firmly between me and my father. "I can endure being humiliated, but no one is allowed to call my daughter a bastard." "When she was born, you saw the birthmark on her back with your own eyes!" My father said coldly: "I have too many children. Do you really expect me to perfectly remember something from twenty years ago?" The last trace of color vanished from my mother's face. I took a deep breath. "Since Dad doesn't remember, I will let you see it again today." I reached up and began unfastening the buttons of my blouse. I stopped looking at her, turning instead to address the women in the hall. "Ladies, didn't you all want a show?" "Then look closely." "Look closely and see if Harper Sterling carries the Sterling bloodline." I turned my back and unfastened the top buttons. Even though outside these walls there were skyscrapers and electric cars navigating the modern city, inside the Sterling estate, archaic rules still reigned supreme. A young woman's bare shoulders and back were never meant to be casually exposed. A few of my younger half-sisters gasped and covered their mouths. The third wife whispered, "This poor girl, she's really been pushed to the edge." The seventh wife fanned herself gently, a trace of pity in her eyes. "Eleanor, stop trying to stop her." "In this world, if a woman isn't ruthless enough to protect herself, she'll just be torn to pieces by others." My mother's grip slowly loosened. She wept silently. I slipped off my blouse, leaving only a thin camisole, and pulled the fabric down, exposing my shoulder blades. The cold AC air hit my bare back. I heard a collective gasp ripple through the hall. "It's there!" "There really is a birthmark!" "Right under her left shoulder blade." I straightened my spine. That reddish-brown mark had been on my back since the day I took my first breath. My father narrowed his eyes and slowly walked closer. He pressed his thumb against my back. His skin was rough and freezing cold. I swallowed my disgust and didn't pull away. He examined it for a long time, his rigid expression finally seeming to crack. Vivian's face looked sickly. Suddenly, Chloe spoke up softly: "Dad." "Doesn't the color of Harper's birthmark look a little too... fresh?" My spine instantly went rigid. Wiping her tears, Chloe's voice was cautious and fragile. "I'm not doubting Harper." "It's just... a few weeks ago, Harper left the estate for the day. When she came back, she claimed she was sick and locked herself in her room, refusing to see anyone for days." "Nowadays, there are all these new cosmetic tattoo parlors in the city. They can inject pigment straight into the skin, and it won't fade for years."
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