The Billionaire Ex-Wife and the Beggar He Became novel Chapter 63

"Nona, the Shepherds have been the deepest wound in your life. Are you sure you want to go?" Mia's voice was heavy with emotion as she looked at Winona.

Sixteen years of calling them Mom and Dad.

Then, one day, a DNA test revealed she wasn't really their daughter. Just like that, she was thrown out of the house.

Mia was always the romantic, addicted to love stories where lost daughters were found and families mended. Lately, those "switched at birth" plots had become all the rage. Usually, the true daughter would endure endless hardships in obscurity, only to be welcomed back to her rightful place—her noble blood shining through no matter how tough life got. Even in the muck, she'd stay pure.

The impostor, meanwhile, might wear designer clothes and live in a mansion, but underneath it all, she was rotten—a fraud with bad genes.

Girls who loved these stories would always side with the real daughter, convinced the impostor had stolen her parents, her life, her place in the world. All the terrible things in the story? Always the impostor's fault.

But in real life, Winona was the so-called impostor.

And what had she ever done wrong?

She'd grown up calling them Mom and Dad, never questioning for a second that she was their child. She was only sixteen—still a kid, not yet old enough to process the world's cruelty. How could anyone expect her to accept that one day, she's her parents' darling, and the next, she's not even allowed to sit at the same dinner table? How do you survive that?

In the end, Winona had slapped Felicity hard enough to leave a mark. Just once. That was all it took for the Shepherds to turn their backs on her.

After that, Winona became a stray—an outcast.

Maybe that's why she clung so fiercely to Julian all these years, even though he never truly loved her. She spent six years working herself to the bone for the Nicholsons, all because she wanted—needed—a place to call home.

A real family of her own. She was tired of being the stray everyone shooed away.

As for the Shepherds—the people she'd called Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa—Winona never wanted to see them again.

But now, for the sake of this project, she had to face the Shepherds?

Winona smiled at Mia, her expression calm and steady. "Why shouldn't I go? It's not like the Shepherds can eat me alive in this day and age. Don't worry about me."

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