The Widow’s Fate They Chose Was My Escape Plan Chapter 02
The memorial room went dead silent.
The next second, Hayden, who had been standing to one side, crushed the card under his heel without a second thought.
“The candle’s lit. Let’s go.”
His voice was tight. Only then did I realize he’d been in on it, too.
In my previous life, after my reputation was ruined, Hayden had come to see me.
His expression had been complicated. “Lena, I never imagined you’d do something like this.”
“My family would never allow me to marry a woman with a tarnished reputation.”
I had tried desperately to explain, swearing I hadn’t cheated, but he remained cold and distant.
Ethan had sneered beside him.
“What do you expect? A girl raised in a criminal den learns to lie and cheat early on.”
“Wasn’t she playing the victim the day we brought her back, just to win our sympathy?”
The cruelty of their words had left me reeling.
So that was how they saw me. In their eyes, I was that despicable. That vile.
When I was five, my brothers took me to the winter lights festival. The crowd was a thick, surging mass, and in the chaos, we were separated.
I was abducted by traffickers. I survived hell before I managed to escape and, at twelve, made my way back to New York, relying on memory alone to find my family.
The Sterlings were one of New York’s most prominent families, their townhouse a fortress on the Upper East Side.
No ordinary person could get past the private security gates—let alone a ragged, filthy child.
Gritting my teeth, I cut my own arm and dragged myself into the nearest NYPD precinct, leaving a trail of blood behind me.
“You’re saying you’re the Sterling daughter who went missing years ago? That you were held by a trafficking ring and just escaped?”
The desk sergeant looked at me with a complicated expression. After I nodded, he said, “Contact the three Sterling brothers. Have them come in for DNA collection and identity verification.”
My brothers rushed over. Their eyes went red the moment they saw the state I was in.
Later, I learned that after I disappeared, someone claimed to have seen a trafficker taking me toward southern Manhattan.
My parents had driven out in a panic to search for me, only to be killed in a landslide in the Hudson Valley during a storm.
Everything—the family and Sterling Holdings—had fallen onto Adrian’s shoulders.
To stabilize the company and maintain the shareholder alliance with the Grant family, they had adopted an orphan and passed her off as the missing heiress. From then on, Ivy Sterling was the Sterling family’s daughter.
If my injuries hadn’t been so severe, and if my face hadn’t matched the old missing-person file, the police probably would have assumed I was just another grifter trying to claim a connection to a wealthy family and detained me.
That day, Adrian had gently smoothed my hair, his eyes soft with a tenderness I hadn’t seen in years.
“We’ve been looking for you. Thank God you came back safe.”
“Don’t worry. Your brothers will never let you suffer again.”
But the day I was brought home, Ivy slammed her head into a wall in front of everyone.
Blood streamed down her face as she cried that she would be homeless now, that she would rather die than be left alone.
My brothers panicked. I tugged gently at their sleeves. “Let her stay.”
“She’s still the Sterling family’s daughter. She’s my sister, too.”
After years of drifting, I knew better than anyone how hard it was for a girl to survive alone. I also didn’t want my brothers to be branded as heartless.
Everyone was relieved that I accepted Ivy.
Everyone except Hayden.
He had known me since childhood. When the Grant and Sterling families first signed their shareholder alliance, he was the only one who had objected to sealing it with a marriage.
“I only recognize Lena! I’ll stay single forever before I marry this impostor!”
At the time, gratitude had washed over me.
What I never imagined was that he’d known the truth all along.
The candlelight wavered. I lowered my eyes, blinking back the tears threatening to fall.
“Lena?”
My silence must have stretched too long, because Ivy suddenly stepped forward and tugged at Hayden’s sleeve.
“Hayden, maybe… maybe I should be the one to marry Sebastian.”
“Lena is the true Sterling daughter and the beneficiary of the trust. I’m just an orphan you were all kind enough to adopt. If I can take her place, it would be the least I could do to repay the Sterlings for their kindness.”
“That’s out of the question.” Adrian was the first to object. “Whether by birth or adoption, you are both Sterling daughters. This has to be fair.”
“If she can marry well, so can you.”
One by one, they rallied to her side, their support a solid wall around her.
Even with a second chance, even after I had resolved to live only for myself, a bitter ache still tightened in my chest.
I clenched my fists. “There’s no need to argue,” I said softly. “I’ll marry him.”
“As long as you sign this.”
I carefully withdrew the family settlement agreement and trust-rights waiver I’d kept tucked against my skin.
Drafting it had been an ordeal. At first, my handwriting shook so badly that tears blurred the ink. I went through draft after draft before I finally finished it.
The document opened with words of mourning for my parents and gratitude to the Sterling family. The last page contained the legal terms: once a single co-trustee signed the acknowledgment of receipt, the document would be considered legally delivered. Under the substitution clause in my parents’ trust, I would irrevocably waive my inheritance and sever all financial ties with the Sterling family.
Ethan snatched the papers from me. He glanced at the first page and sneered. “Playing the victim again? You think bringing Mom and Dad into this will make us go soft?”
“Even if they were alive, they’d make you go through with this marriage.”
Then, shoving past Adrian, he grabbed a pen. Without even looking at the final page, he scrawled his name in the co-trustee acknowledgment box.
“Ethan! What are you signing? Let me see that.”
“It’s fine, Adrian. It’s just another one of Lena’s pathetic little tricks. Now that the marriage is settled, hurry up and get Ivy out of here. It’s cold.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than Ivy started coughing.
Adrian immediately put an arm around her. “Is your old illness acting up again? Come on, I’ll take you outside.”
Just like that, the memorial room emptied, leaving me in the sudden quiet.
I stepped forward, pinched the signed page between my fingers, and carefully tucked it into its folder.
The Sterlings moved quickly. The next day, they delivered the signed prenup to the Quinn family’s lawyers and scheduled the marriage license appointment at the City Clerk’s office.
On the third day, a motorcade pulled up outside the house.
“Mr. Sterling! The Quinns are here! They’re asking specifically for Miss Lena!”