The Heiress They Threw Away

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as wearing the white dress my mother

o have something beautiful for my first day of middle school. I was twelve then. I am nineteen now. The dress was too tight, too short, the

pital in Manhattan - the cold white walls, the beeping machines, the way my father, Richard Cole, stood by the window and couldn't look at her because he was alr

ried to keep that pr

drooms, marble floors that echoed. Empty. He worked sixteen hours a day on his real estate company, Cole Properties. He thought mone

hree years after Mom's funeral, he

and her daughter Chloe. They

ght her. Chloe was sixteen, a year older than me, blonde, blue-eyed, five-foot-nine, the kind of pretty that gets you free drinks in SoHo. Everyone at

I shared my bathroom. I let Chloe borrow my mother's pearl necklace - the only real jewelry Mom left me - because Victoria said "it's good fo

old Dad I was being mean

esign - my dream - I had learned to survive by having one

Mor

e years. He said he loved my messy dark wavy hair, my freckles, my dreams of owning my own fashion house one day. He said I was beautiful in a way that was different - not like

hey let me stitch samples. I was exhausted but happy. It was Jake's twenty-first birthday. I had spent my last $80 from my internship s

the one we shared with two other girls but where Jake basically liv

loud - The Weeknd, Jake's playlist for... intimate moments. My stomach drop

the fake plant mat. My hands were s

nd a pair of white high heels I recognized. Chloe's. The Louboutins Dad bought he

open. Just a crack.

ed. Part of me knew.

f him, riding him, completely naked except for my mother's

n't stop. She didn't even look embarrassed.

You weren't supposed to be home early, Bella

rambling for his boxers. "Isabella! Oh my God! It's n

as worse than what it looked like because sh

he floor. Chocolate frosting exploded all over the white dress.

apped herself in MY sheet - my white sheets with lit

ear, her breath hot: "He's always been mine, you stupid bitch. Since

. She ran out of the apartment, half-naked, holding the sheet around her, screaming

thought she was crazy. I didn't realize she w

wenty minutes, unable to move - my father burst into my apartment with Victoria. The

long wool coat, sobbing into

on him with a boy from fashion school! And she went crazy! She tried to se

, that I actually laughed.

self? She's lying! I caught THEM! In

Chloe's nec

e floor. At the messy bed. At my stained,

In two secon

e cold, hard face he used for contr

, crazy, and manipulative. Trying to steal your own si

screamed, tears finally

ors banged on the wall. "Your mother would be ashamed of you! Look

er. "Richard, darling, maybe she's just confused. She always wanted what

he final lie.

ed me to the door. He threw my old battered suitcase at me - the one

. Get out of my family. You are no longe

es. He pushed me into the hallway in that white dress, now wi

loe laugh inside. A clear, happy laugh. And Ja

shaking, freezing, in the dress m

old professor, Madame Dubois, who taught at Parsons and had once said, "Is

n. "Madame Dubois? You said

r beautiful French accent, "Mon petit

g, and a vow so deep it felt like it rewrote my DNA: One day, I will make them choke on that night.

ill loo

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