The whole day had been a disaster. She'd been making a late-night delivery on her motorcycle when a truck blew a red light and slammed into a parked Ferrari. The impact had crumpled the sports car. Windows shattered, flames licked at the rear, and the threat of an explosion grew with every second. The driver was slumped inside, unconscious, his face streaked with blood.
An instinct she didn't understand sent Veronica sprinting toward the wreck. She sliced through the man's seatbelt, hauled him from the seat, and dragged him clear of the fire.
They had barely made it a few yards when a deafening blast shook the entire parking lot. The Ferrari exploded in a roar of flame. A cold dread washed over Veronica. One more second, and she would have burned with him.
The man, barely conscious, suddenly grabbed her wrist with a desperate strength, as if clinging to life itself. "Help me... get me to a hospital... I'll give you one hundred million dollars..."
She froze. A hundred million? Had she just pulled a billionaire back from the brink of death?
When the receptionist at the front desk asked for her name, Veronica opened her mouth to answer, but the woman suddenly looked up at her. Her face lit up, her voice instantly turning syrupy. "Oh my goodness! You're Tiffany Larson, aren't you? Our hospital director's daughter! A doctor will be with you right away, Miss Larson. Please, just wait a moment..."
A bitter smile formed on Veronica's lips. She and Tiffany shared the same face, but their lives couldn't be more different.
Abducted at birth, she was shuffled from one foster home to the next until she was sold to a modest family who, against all odds, raised her with love.
Just last month, a terrible accident had left her adoptive parents in critical condition, burying the family under a mountain of medical debt.
That was when her biological parents-the wealthy Larson family-had reappeared as if out of thin air.
They had agreed to pay the medical bills... in exchange for a bone marrow donation to their younger son, who was battling leukemia.
There was one condition: she was never to show her face, a perfect copy of their precious Tiffany's.
Rachel Zimmerman, her biological mother, had sneered, her voice dripping with contempt. "Tiffy is one of the most admired women in Bloomstead. You are a complete nobody. Our family's reputation will not be tainted by your existence."
To save her adoptive parents, Veronica had swallowed her pride.
Usually, she hid herself under baggy, shapeless clothes and thick, unflattering makeup.
But that night, rushing for work, she hadn't bothered. And so, she'd been forced to use Tiffany's name to cover the five-thousand-dollar ER bill for the man she'd rescued.
Once she got home, exhausted, she took a quick shower. While emptying her pockets, she found a ring set with a single black diamond.
"It must have caught on my shirt when he grabbed me," she murmured, setting it absently on the table.
A moment later, someone pounded on the door.
She had barely opened it when Tiffany, tall and slender, slapped her hard across the face. "Are you out of your mind, Veronica? I told you never to show your face in Bloomstead! Are you trying to get your adoptive parents killed?"
Her cheek burning, Veronica struck back, her own slap landing even harder. She could endure humiliation when she had no other choice, but she refused to cower before Tiffany.
Tiffany let out a muffled cry, pressing a hand to her reddening cheek. "How dare you hit me?"
"And you? Did you think I'd just stand here and take it? I'm not your servant," Veronica said, her voice ice-cold.
Furious, Tiffany jabbed a finger at her. "You brought a stranger to my father's hospital and used my name! If someone had recognized you, can you imagine the humiliation? My father got an anonymous call this morning! Who knows what other trouble you'll cause!"
Veronica let out a short, bitter laugh. The irony was suffocating. She was born with Tiffany's face, yet she didn't even have the right to exist in the light of day.
As they stood in a tense standoff, Tiffany's phone rang. She answered, her body still rigid with anger.
"Mom?"
Rachel's voice buzzed with excitement on the other end. "Tiffy! I just heard! You saved Matthew Kings! The Kings family just sent word. They want you at Mythpoint in a week."
Tiffany's head snapped toward the table. Her eyes locked onto the ring. She'd seen it before. It was the ring Matthew Kings, heir to the most powerful family in the country, was said to wear.
The pieces clicked into place. The truth struck her: it wasn't her, but Veronica, who had pulled Matthew from the fire. And it was her name that Veronica had given at the hospital.
A flicker of greed crossed her face.
"I'll call you back, Mom," she said, hanging up abruptly.
In one swift motion, she snatched the ring from the table and pocketed it. She leaned in close to Veronica, her voice a low threat. "Pull a stunt like this again, and you can say goodbye to your adoptive parents for good."
She slammed the door on her way out.
Exhausted, Veronica tried to get a few hours of sleep before dawn. When she woke, she rushed to the hospital to find the man she had saved.
A hundred million dollars... It was enough to change her entire life.
But the nurse at the desk just gave her a flat look. "He was discharged during the night, after he regained consciousness. He didn't leave anything."
A wave of pure rage washed over her.
"Liar! That absolute jerk!"
She clenched her fists, her whole body trembling. "That five thousand dollars was my budget for two months!"
And as if that weren't enough, the delivery app had fined her over a hundred dollars for the orders she'd missed. Her days off, along with her pay, had just gone up in smoke.
She collapsed onto a bench in the hallway, tears stinging her eyes. She was too young to carry so much hardship.
What a brutal world.
Over the following days, she threw herself into work with a fierce, desperate energy. After her shift at the club, she'd race off to make meal deliveries, then head to the hospital to feed her adoptive parents.
Now, in her security uniform, Veronica slouched in front of the monitors at the Twilight Bar, her mind a million miles away as her coworker chatted beside her.
She grumbled, "If it wasn't for that ungrateful bastard I saved, I could at least afford to eat twice a day. Now I'm starving."
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