Jasmine's Pov

“BRING TISSUE PAPERS AND WIPES FOR ME AT THE VISITOR’S ROOM ON THE THIRD FLOOR. DON’T MAKE ME WAIT!”

The message glared back at me from my phone screen and I scuffed inwardly.

She was at it again. My sister.

No, wrong word. Sister wasn’t the right term, not when blood had nothing to do with us.

Still, I closed the message and headed into my bathroom. I grabbed a tissue roll and a pack of wipes, then stepped out of my room, moving towards the stairs that spiraled up to the third floor.

Halfway up, my thoughts were interrupted when I collided with one of the housemaids, a girl barely out of her teenage years.

“Can’t you see?” she snapped with a biting tone. Her eyes raked over me with disdain. “Has being called the chairman’s daughter made you forget that you came from the same gutter as me?”

Her words struck sharp, but I said nothing. I simply stared at her for a second, my lips pressed tight and let her walk away.

The insult stung. I was twenty-three, five or maybe six years older than her yet she tossed her disrespect at me like I was nothing. And maybe she was right. Because no matter how much it burned, part of her words were the truth.

I wasn’t the chairman’s daughter. Not really. I was just a discarded child he plucked from an orphanage after my mother, the only family I had died.

The media called me lucky. They painted a fairytale of a poor orphan girl welcomed into wealth and luxury. But the reality? Only I, living in this mansion, knew the truth and they was that there was nothing to be happy about here.

He didn’t adopt me for love but publicity. For his reputation. For the cameras flashing in his face whenever he paraded me around as his “charitable act.” Once the applause faded, so did his affection. Whatever chance I thought I had at being part of a family ended.

Since then, I’ve been little more than a glorified servant in his house. Just like now, running errands for his daughter, Lisa, the real heiress.

I reached the third floor and stopped in front of the third door to the left. I didn’t need anyone to tell me where she was. Lisa had made this her routine. She always summoned me here and always for the same degrading reason.

But this time, I froze.

Disgust crawled up my skin.

The sounds reached me before the sight did, sharp moans, heavy breathing and the wet rhythm of skin slapping skin. The door, left half-ajar, gave me a clear view.

Lisa lay sprawled across the bed, her legs hooked over a man’s shoulders, her manicured fingers digging into his back. His face was turned away, his body moving into her in powerful, rhythmic thrusts.

Each time he buried deeper, her voice climbed higher, like she was clawing her way towards ecstasy.

I had never been touched before. A virgin, yes but not naïve. I had read enough, seen enough movies to understand what I was witnessing. Yet nothing could have prepared me for this. For being summoned like a servant and then forced to stand in the shadows while she shamelessly indulged herself with the door wide open.

Why?

Why hadn’t she waited until she was done? Why hadn’t she, like all the other times, texted me afterwards to clean up the mess of sweat and fluids left behind?

Why this time… did she leave the door ajar?

The anger bubbled hot in my chest. My hands trembled with the urge to slam the door shut and demand even a shred of dignity. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

What power did I have?

Nothing.

I was, as Lisa so often reminded me, a leech feeding off her father’s “kindness.” I owed them since i lived under their roof, ate their food and breathed in their wealth like borrowed air.

The least I could do, in their eyes, was obey.

So, I swallowed my rage. And I stood there, rooted to the ground, holding the tissues and wipes that were never truly for me.

A few minutes passed before Lisa finally reached her orgasm, a high-pitched moan tore from her throat as she trembled in satisfaction. Only then did I allow myself to step in, just as the man with his back still turned to me, was dressing up and preparing to leave.

Lisa, however, made no attempt to cover herself. She didn’t reach for the dress on the bed, nor did she make even the slightest effort to hide her nakedness. The twin piercings on her nipples dangled shamelessly as she reached for her phone resting on the nightstand.

“Took you long enough to answer my call, huh?” she sneered, eyes glued to her screen.

I stayed silent. What was there to say? She had left me standing outside all that time, forced to listen, forced to wait and maybe even forced to watch. I knew better than to reply.

“Why are you still standing there like a cow?” she snapped again, her tone sharp as a whip. “Get to work, Jasmine! Be useful in this house for once. Do something worthy of the family you’re leeching off!”

Her words pierced, but I didn’t argue. I clutched the tissue roll and wipes tighter against my chest, then crouched to begin cleaning the mess she and her new lover had left behind.

The stench of sweat and sex clung to the air, thick and suffocating. A used condom, carelessly ripped off mid-act, lay discarded on the floor. That explained the thick drops of semen staining the rug.

Disgust turned my stomach. Lisa was reckless and wild. She had never hidden her appetite for men, dragging them into her bed or cars as wherever she deemed fit, like they were nothing but toys to her. Did she not fear disease? Did she not even think about the risks she took every single time? Or was her arrogance so great she believed herself untouchable?

“I told you, men can’t resist me, Jasmine,” her smug voice cut through my thoughts as I scrubbed at the floor. “They act like they hate me, but their bodies never lie. No man can escape me.”

I clenched my jaw and kept cleaning, refusing to let her see that I was listening.

“I am every man’s dream,” she continued, her voice dripping with pride. “They might fight it, but in the end, they always fall. Always.”

Her boasting made bile rise in my throat, but I held my silence. I had learned long ago that to speak back to Lisa was to invite more cruelty. Instead, I let my thoughts drift to Landon—my fiancé. He wasn’t like the men Lisa bragged about.

He was different. Just like he was mine alone.

I thought of our future together, the promises he made, the life I was clinging to. I thought of the marriage to him my adoptive father had promised me after Lisa’s wedding in three days’ time. Soon, I told myself. Soon I would leave this house and be with him. I will leave this humiliation behind when I become his plus one.

I reached for a wipe, picked up the used condom with trembling fingers and carried it towards the trash bin near the door.

That was when I collided with the man who was her recent conquest.

“Sorry,” I murmured quickly, bowing my head as the wipe slipped from my grip. The condom fell with a soft plop onto the floor.

I looked up to meet th gaze of the shameless man who followed a lady home to fuck her in one of the rooms of her father's house but I froze right after.

The familiar green eyes that stared back at me, the face I had kissed countless times, the man I had given my heart to without hesitation.

Landon. My Landon.

The air fled from my lungs. My fingers trembled violently at my sides, the world spinning as the truth slammed into me. Lisa’s boasting hadn’t been some random performance this time. She hadn’t been bragging about just any man. She had been boasting about my fiancé.

My body went cold, as though my veins had been drained of blood.

I had just stood there, watching my own fiancé inside another woman. Inside her. The sister he claimed to despise. The woman he swore he couldn’t stand. The woman he warned me never to emulate.

The open door should have been my first warning. How could I have been so blind?

“Why, Landon? Why?” I tried to whisper the question through the sob clawing up my throat but the words broke apart before they could leave my lips.

Why had he done this?

Hadn’t I been good to him? Loyal? Hadn’t I given everything? I washed his clothes, scrubbed his floors and cooked his meals with my bare hands. I worked myself to the bone to prove I was worthy of his surname, his commitment and love. I turned down my own opportunities so I could build his.

And this—this was what my sacrifice was worth? To be reduced to nothing more than another tally on Lisa’s body count? Proof of how irresistible she was?

My vision blurred as hot tears pooled, threatening to spill.

Landon avoided my gaze. He adjusted his collar, smoothed his shirt and turned towards the door.

“Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?” I choked out finally, forcing the words past the lump in my throat.

But he didn’t answer.

He brushed past me as though I were invisible, his silence louder than any insult, his indifference more painful than the betrayal itself.

I stood rooted in place, my chest heaving as the silence swallowed me whole.

“It’s not a big deal, sis.” Lisa’s lazy drawl cut through the silence.

“I just took care of him for you since he told me you were too boring to keep him satisfied.”

My knees buckled but I refused to collapse in front of her. She only smirked, still lounging naked on the bed, her eyes glittering with sadistic amusement as she watched the ruins of my world burn.