The Fake Heiress Was a Sleeping God

1

As the best-tempered of the fake heiresses, I never lost my temper over anything.

When the true heiress, Tabitha Hughes, hurt herself and pinned the blame on me, I didn't argue.

When my fiancé, Max Delgado, knew perfectly well I was innocent and still beat me until my skin split open, I swallowed it in silence.

To help Tabitha slip quickly into high society, Max posted my dirt online with his own hands. Everyone looked at me with disgust, and I didn't get angry.

Even when Max decided that I, the cuckoo who'd stolen another's nest and never known hardship, needed to be sent off to that famous full-time girls' reform academy to learn my place, I agreed without complaint.

The day I came home was also the day Max threw Tabitha her welcome feast. I passed through the hall wrapped in a shirt washed pale, and Tabitha sat looking down at me from the head of the table, laying out three extra rules just for me.

"First, you are never to covet anything that belongs to the Hughes family."

I nodded without hesitation.

"Second, give me back your engagement to Max, and never come within a step of him again."

No problem. I nodded again.

"Last, your spending on food, clothes, and everything else is to be cut down, meals most of all!"

"Carina Sullivan, I've put up with this for a long time. You're a woman, and even setting aside that you eat eight times a day, every single meal is fatty meat and lavish feasts. Do you think the Hughes family's food just blows in on the wind?!"

"From now on it's two meals a day, plain oatmeal and scraps only!"

This time I didn't nod. For the first time, I refused.

What Tabitha didn't know was that although I was the Hughes family's fake heiress, I was also the true god Taotie, the divine beast Old Mr. Hughes had begged onto his knees, three bows and nine kowtows, to protect the Delgado family.

My hide was thick and my flesh tough, so they could beat me all they liked. I had no need for gold or jewels. But there was one thing they could never shortchange me on, and that was food.

Otherwise the consequences were beyond imagining.

1.

Refused in front of everyone, Tabitha went red all the way down to her neck.

That broke Max's heart clean in two. Without a word, he slapped me hard across the face.

"Carina Sullivan, you dare talk back? You've truly lost your mind!"

After ten thousand years as Taotie, my body was iron and diamond. Max's slap didn't even rate as a scratch.

So I still didn't get angry. I simply bargained. "Fine, I won't talk back. Just leave my meals the way they are."

Max shot up as if the floor had burned him.

"You don't know good from bad!"

"Tabby did this for the sake of your reputation!"

"In all the world, never mind women, there isn't even a man who eats the way you do!"

"Besides, Tabby is the true young lady of the Hughes family, and everything is done as she says!"

Max called for the servants and gave the order in a tone that left no room for argument. "Go. Take down Carina Sullivan's private kitchen. Other than plain oatmeal and scraps, she isn't allowed to touch a single thing."

"And if you can't keep watch over her, you can forget about keeping your heads!"

That was when I got a little angry.

I hauled Tabitha up off the head seat and gave her a light toss. She flew a good distance and slammed into the wall, the crash so loud that the whole room froze, nobody daring to move.

I sat down and crossed my legs. "Since everything has to be done as Miss Hughes says, then I won't back down either."

"As long as I'm in the Hughes house, my word is still the one that counts."

That frail little body of Tabitha's really couldn't take anything.

One fall like that, and blood kept trickling from the corner of her mouth.

The tears came even cheaper, falling in that snuffling, hiccupping way that grated on my nerves.

I snapped at her, impatient. "Shut it."

"You framed me all those times, let Max torture me into who knows what state, and I never once cried."

"You take one fall. Don't act like you're at death's door."

I rubbed my legs, sore from standing, and turned to leave.

The servants surged in and hemmed me in on every side.

Max held Tabitha in his arms and looked at me, cold as ice.

"You beat someone and think you can just walk off. Carina Sullivan, you have no respect for my Delgado family at all!"

I gave a faint hum of agreement.

"Never mind you. Even if your great-great-great-grandfather came, I still wouldn't spare him a thought."

"Max Delgado, the reason I'm willing to stay here is the lavish feasts, not you."

"Skinny arms, skinny legs, barely two ounces of meat on you. You don't even catch my eye."

Tabitha had caught me in the act, and she couldn't wait to use it.

"Max, look how arrogant Carina Sullivan is. Five months away at that school and she hasn't changed one bit, she's only gotten worse!"

"How could someone like this be worthy of being your fiancée?"

I slanted a look at Tabitha.

"Whether I'm worthy or not isn't for you to decide."

"You, on the other hand, provoke me one more time and see if I don't throw you straight off the building. Zoey, hit her for me!"

Behind me, Zoey burst into tears in an instant.

"Miss, you finally have some backbone…"

Zoey wasn't being dramatic.

When everyone else looked at me with disgust, she was the one who went with me to that school.

She knew every wrong I'd suffered, every torment I'd endured, and she'd long wanted to fight back on my behalf.

But every time, I put on that weak, easily bullied face and stopped her from taking it up.

She'd held that breath in far too long.

Zoey rolled up her sleeves and put her whole strength into it, and Tabitha went white in her little face.

Max clamped his brows together and blocked the way, snarling at Zoey. "You actually mean to strike her? Do you even know where you are? Don't you want to live?!"

As much as Zoey hated her, she was a girl in the end, and she didn't dare raise a hand against Max so easily.

She glanced at me, hesitant.

I gave her a firm nod.

"Old Mr. Hughes once promised in front of everyone that no matter when, I would always be the young lady of the Hughes family!"

"Today, either Tabitha agrees to my demands, or everyone shuts up and stops holding me back from teaching her how to be a Hughes."

"Zoey, hit her. I'll take all the blame."

Hearing that, Zoey put everything she had into the swing.

The crisp crack of the slap came together with Tabitha's wailing, a sound painful enough to make a person wince.

Max's eyes went red in a flash. He grabbed a chair, leveled it at me, and spat out viciously,

"Carina Sullivan, don't push me into laying hands on you!"

Worried for me, Zoey quickly stopped.

I didn't so much as change expression.

"Max Delgado, before you lay a hand on me, you'd best go ask my father whether he agrees."