Part 3The Heiress's Obsession: A Dangerous Game of Disguise
About 1,992 characters · Part 3 is the last of the three Parts printed here; Part 4 continues in the official app.
I naturally didn't head toward my real home. As soon as I realized I had been reborn, I made up an excuse to send my brother and his fiancée on a trip to Europe, and sent my parents to a quiet house in the countryside to relax.
Now, I was alone, with plenty of time to carefully calculate my next move.
My brother looked like Julian, and since we were twins, my features were a near-perfect copy of his. So, I also carried the shadow of Julian Montgomery.
It was hard for Chloe to find someone who resembled her precious first love. Naturally, she wasn't going to let me go that easily.
She had people following me.
I rented a run-down room in a crumbling apartment building. The moment I walked in, I called out, "Mom."
Then I locked the door, looked through the peephole, and watched the two suspicious guys following me exchange a look. They knocked on the neighbor's door across the hall, asking about me.
The new neighbor was someone I had hired. Following the script I gave her, she put on an emotional, dramatic performance.
"That poor boy, Liam... his dad drank himself to death, and his mom was bedridden for years before passing away just recently. I hear him crying in the middle of the night all the time..."
An orphan with no family, a tragic past, and a face that looked just like her first love. Wasn't this the perfect setup for a brooding male lead in a novel?
Chloe always loved comparing herself to the heroine of a romance novel. She craved a dramatic, earth-shattering love story and unforgettable encounters.
I was lucky she was so obsessed with that trope in my past life. She used to pay people to act as character models for her, forcing wealthy scions she fancied in New York to play roles in the cringe-worthy fanfiction she wrote.
So, I molded myself into the exact archetype she needed: a brooding, affection-starved boy waiting for a heroine to save him.
I went to acting school. Playing a guy wasn't hard at all.
The bait was set. Now I just had to wait for the fish to bite.