“Ivy!”
Chapter 200
Adkins couldn’t hold back his temper; he was about to explode again, but Rosetta was quicker. She snatched the phone from his hand. “Ivy, sweetheart, it’s Mom and Dad. We’ve come to take you home. Please tell security to let us in, will you?”
Ivy couldn’t help but laugh coldly. What a joke. They hadn’t even bothered to call in advance—just showed up out of the blue, expecting to whisk her home. She wondered where they’d learned to be so shameless.
“Oh, so I have parents now? That’s news to me,” she replied, her voice laced with the kind of biting sarcasm that only she could deliver.
“Ivy, this is all our fault, every bit of it. I’ve thought about you every single day these past years,” Rosetta pleaded, her tone dripping with emotion. “Now that the misunderstanding is cleared up, please come home.” Anyone softer might have given in on the spot.
But Ivy didn’t budge.
She kept her composure. “And if I do go back, what happens to your precious youngest daughter?”
“Emma… She’s being harassed online now. She’s so afraid she won’t even leave the house. Ivy, give it some time. Once things calm down, we’ll help her find someone to settle down with, and after she’s married, she won’t be around much. Would that work?”
Rosetta’s loyalty to Emma was truly impressive. Even now, she was still desperately trying to protect her adopted daughter.
Ivy’s heart felt cold. She thought of everything she’d been through, then compared it to—how her so-called family treated Emma. A bitter, mocking smile appeared on her lips.
“Am I really your biological daughter?” The words slipped out before she could stop herself.
“Of course! You’re our own flesh and blood,” Rosetta insisted.
“And Emma?”
“She’s adopted. We brought her home from an orphanage—you remember that, don’t you?”
Suddenly, something clicked in Ivy’s mind. Back when she’d “kidnapped” Emma, Emma had almost explained why she’d been adopted, but the conversation had been cut short—and they’d never picked it up again.
“Why did you adopt Emma in the first place?” Ivy asked suddenly.
Rosetta hesitated. “Why are you asking about that now?”
“I’m curious.”
There was a pause, then Rosetta sighed. “Well, you’re old enough now… You remember how sickly you were as a child? You were so delicate, always falling ill. Your grandparents were still alive then, and they suggested we consult a priest…”
She took a shaky breath. “The priest read your birth chart and told us you were cursed—that you’d never live to adulthood. We were terrified. We begged him for a solution. He said if we brought home a girl whose fate matched yours and raised her as your sister, she could take on your misfortune, and the curse would be broken. That’s why we adopted Emma. You were both so little—we didn’t want to scare you, so we just said we were giving you a little sister to play with and keep you company.”
As Ivy listened, everything suddenly made sense. Emma’s jealousy and all her twisted feelings—it all traced back to this.
“Emma must have overheard you talking about the real reason you adopted her. That’s why she snapped—why she started hating me and wanted me gone.”
“What? Emma knows?” Rosetta gasped.
Ivy’s feelings grew even more tangled. She wanted nothing more than to hang up. “The resentment between Emma and me can’t be resolved. As long as she’s still living in that house, I will never set foot there again.”
She knew Emma was innocent in some ways. But that wasn’t her fault.
Over all those years growing up together, Ivy had done everything she could for the sister who wasn’t related to her by blood—she’d been patient, forgiving, and kind.
The family had treated Emma well, too. In fact, being adopted by the Windsor family had been Emma’s ticket to a new life, an escape from her old world.
Chapter 201