Part 1I Gave Up the Throne for Him

I was the fake heir to a wealthy family.

The real heir, meanwhile, had been left deaf because of what my biological parents had done to him. He could only hear the world through hearing aids.

And yet, despite everything, he chose to repay cruelty with kindness. He didn't throw me out or demand that I return the life I'd stolen from him. Instead, when guilt drove me to leave the family home and I found myself with nowhere to go, he took me in.

I felt so guilty that I fussed over him every single day, asking if he'd eaten, if he was tired, if he needed anything. I wanted to make up for everything he'd lost because of me.

Somewhere along the way, though, I forgot that there were boundaries between us.

By the time I realized my mistake, we'd crossed so far past them that there was no going back.

"Didn't you say you wanted to make it up to me?" he asked. "There's only one way I'll accept."

"Huh?"

I watched as he slowly removed the hearing aids from his ears.

"Nowhere left to run."

* * *

"You're really not going back?"

The man standing in front of me casually lifted my suitcase into the trunk of his car. He glanced impatiently at his phone.

"No. I've already moved out. Besides, that was never my home to begin with. It's yours."

"Oliver, how many times do I have to tell you? I don't want to go back to the family, and I don't want to be the heir to the family fortune. If I could, I'd pretend none of this ever happened and let you keep living as the eldest son."

I stared at the man in front of me, my eyes widening in disbelief.

His name was Nathan Reed, and he had a devastatingly handsome face. The longer I looked at him, the more I could see the family resemblance. He had all the distinctive features of the Reed family, while my face shared not a single one of them.

But the most impossible thing to ignore was the hearing aid tucked behind his ear.

Yes. My biological parents had tortured him until he could barely hear anything at all. Now he depended on hearing aids just to catch the sounds of the world around him.

A week ago, I'd discovered that I was the family's adopted-by-mistake son—the fake heir who'd spent his entire life enjoying someone else's place.

That was also when I'd met the man who had endured the suffering that should have been mine.