St. Aria Hotel, VIP suite.

"Mom... my sister never agreed to this marriage. Aren’t we going too far, tying her up and bringing her here like this?" The young woman held the older woman’s arm, her pretty face full of hesitation.

"What’s so over the line about it? We’re doing this for her own good. If we didn’t, how would she ever agree to marry Young Master Zhang?" The woman glanced at the unconscious girl on the bed, and there wasn’t a trace of motherly warmth in her eyes.

"But... when she wakes up, won’t she hate us?" The young woman bit her lip, still clearly wavering.

"After some time, she’ll understand our good intentions." The woman patted her hand and spoke like everything she said was perfectly justified. "She grew up in the slums. If the Sinclair family hadn’t taken her back, forget marrying into money—she wouldn’t even have the right to touch high society. The Zhang family is well-known in Haicheng. Once she marries in, she won’t have to worry about the rest of her life. Aren’t we helping her?"

She paused, then continued in a firm, righteous tone, "Besides, if she doesn’t get married, then what about you and Alden Hawthorne? The Hawthorne family is huge. If your sister married into that kind of household, she wouldn’t know a single rule. She’s clumsy, awkward, and if she caused trouble, the one getting dragged down would be our Sinclair family."

"You’re the real lady I raised with my own hands. You’re way more suitable for marrying Alden than your sister is. Didn’t Alden say before that the one he liked was you? Don’t tell me you don’t want to marry him."

Aurora Sinclair had only just woken up, and the first thing she heard was this conversation—her mother, Vivian Sinclair, and her sister, Annabelle Sinclair, calmly plotting her life like she was some disposable prop.

In that instant, her heart clenched so hard it felt like someone had driven a blade straight through it.

Then it dropped, hard, like she had fallen into a bottomless pit.

Why?

Why were they doing this to her?

Just because she wasn’t as polished, as dazzling, as "good" as Annabelle?

At birth, by some cruel twist of fate, she and Annabelle had been switched.

Since childhood, Aurora had grown up in a filthy, chaotic slum, scraping by with barely enough food, getting beaten by her adoptive father whenever he felt like it. Meanwhile, Annabelle had lived under all the light and privilege that should have belonged to Aurora in the first place.

It wasn’t until she was sixteen that she was finally brought back to the Sinclair family.

She had thought that from then on, maybe—just maybe—she would finally have a real home, a normal family, something warm.

What a joke.

That had been nothing but her own delusion.

Her parents had never truly treated her as their biological daughter. If anything, they favored Annabelle at every turn, even though Annabelle had no blood relation to them at all.

Why?

Because Annabelle had been raised as a socialite since childhood. She was more refined, more capable, more useful—better suited to catch a rich husband and bring the Sinclair family more glory, more status, more benefits.

Even so, Aurora had never hated them.

Not once.

She had never fought with Annabelle over anything, never tried to snatch back what was hers, never made a scene.

And still, they weren’t satisfied.

Even knowing she already had a boyfriend, they still knocked her out, dragged her to the hotel, and tried to force her into marrying that useless playboy Young Master Zhang—just so she would give up on Alden completely and clear the way for him and Annabelle.

How ridiculous.

No.

More than ridiculous.

It was a total slap in the face.

Tears slid down from the corners of her eyes.

Aurora Sinclair had never felt fear and helplessness hit this hard before.

She struggled to push herself up, every movement painfully slow, and only then realized her wrists and ankles were tied tight with rope. Even her mouth had been sealed with tape.

At some point, they had even changed her into a wedding dress.

So this was it. They were dead set on forcing her to marry that Young Master Zhang today.

No. No way was she going to let them have their way.

Footsteps came from outside the door. Annabelle Sinclair and Vivian Sinclair stopped talking, and the two of them walked out of the room.

The next second, the heavy door was shoved open, and Young Master Zhang—the guy with that stupid piggish face—swaggered in.