Loading promotion info...
My Family Faked Their Deaths to Give My Fiancé to My Sister
Novelix
Completed
"The night Alaric Vale proposed to me, my younger sister, Rosalie Mercer, slit her wrists. Mom took her to Switzerland for treatment. A month later, word came that they had both died in a car accident. Alaric went to identify the bodies. The ferry he took was caught in a storm, and he was lost at sea. Dad and my brother, Tristan, went to Switzerland to handle the arrangements. Their plane crashed on the way home. In just three months, I lost everyone I loved. I thought they had died because I refused to give Alaric up for Rosalie. I sold the home we had bought for our marriage and had five empty graves built for them. After resigning from the architecture firm, I was diagnosed with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Every night, I dreamed of them standing beside my bed covered in blood, demanding to know why I would rather let Rosalie die than give Alaric up for her. For three years, I didn't celebrate my birthday or dare begin a new life. On every anniversary, I would send a message to the family WhatsApp group, where I was the only one who ever spoke anymore: “I'm sorry. I've come to see you all.” On the third anniversary of their deaths, a wedding invitation suddenly appeared in the group. Groom: Alaric Vale. Bride: Rosalie Mercer. When I reached the wedding hotel, Mom was tearfully adjusting Rosalie's veil. Then Dad walked her down an aisle covered in white roses, while Tristan waited at the altar with the rings. Not one of the people I had mourned for three years was dead. Mom stopped me outside the reception hall, her eyes red as she explained, “Rosalie would die without Alaric, but you refused to let him go.” “The only way was to let us die one after another in front of you. Then you would blame yourself for all our deaths and never dare go looking for Alaric again.” She took my hand, almost pleading. “You survived losing your entire family, but Rosalie can't live without him.” “Just pretend we're really dead. Please leave us alone.” All this time, they had been alive and well. I was the only one who had spent three years grieving for people who were never dead."
Chapters (3)
第1章
The night Alaric Vale proposed to me, my younger sister, Rosalie Mercer, slit her wrists.
Mom took her to Switzerland for treatment. A month later, word came that they had both died in a car accident.
Alaric went to identify the bodies. The ferry he took was caught in a storm, and he was lost at sea.
Dad and my brother, Tristan, went to Switzerland to handle the arrangements. Their plane crashed on the way home.
In just three months, I lost everyone I loved.
I thought they had died because I refused to give Alaric up for Rosalie.
I sold the home we had bought for our marriage and had five empty graves built for them.
After resigning from the architecture firm, I was diagnosed with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Every night, I dreamed of them standing beside my bed covered in blood, demanding to know why I would rather let Rosalie die than give Alaric up for her.
For three years, I didn't celebrate my birthday or dare begin a new life.
On every anniversary, I would send a message to the family WhatsApp group, where I was the only one who ever spoke anymore:
“I'm sorry. I've come to see you all.”
On the third anniversary of their deaths, a wedding invitation suddenly appeared in the group.
Groom: Alaric Vale.
Bride: Rosalie Mercer.
When I reached the wedding hotel, Mom was tearfully adjusting Rosalie's veil.
Then Dad walked her down an aisle covered in white roses, while Tristan waited at the altar with the rings.
Not one of the people I had mourned for three years was dead.
Mom stopped me outside the reception hall, her eyes red as she explained,
“Rosalie would die without Alaric, but you refused to let him go.”
“The only way was to let us die one after another in front of you. Then you would blame yourself for all our deaths and never dare go looking for Alaric again.”
She took my hand, almost pleading. “You survived losing your entire family, but Rosalie can't live without him.”
“Just pretend we're really dead. Please leave us alone.”
All this time, they had been alive and well.
I was the only one who had spent three years grieving for people who were never dead.
...
At the reception, they instinctively shielded Rosalie behind them, as if I were some dangerous intruder.
I walked up to Alaric.
“What about the ring from three years ago? The home we bought? All your promises of forever? What did any of it mean?”
“I buried your engagement ring beneath your headstone. For three years, I brought flowers to a man who was still alive.”
“You didn't have to keep loving me. But why couldn't you tell me once that we were over?”
The guests around us gradually fell silent.
Some recognized me as Rosalie's sister.
Others began whispering.
“Isn't that Lenora? I thought the groom used to be engaged to the bride's older sister.”
“So the younger sister stole her sister's man? Is she his mistress?”
The moment the word “mistress” was spoken, Rosalie's breathing quickened.
She clawed at the old scar on her wrist as tears streamed down her face.
“Call off the wedding right now.”
“As long as Lenora isn't angry anymore, I'll give up anything.”
She said she would give him up, but her other hand remained locked around Alaric's arm.
Everyone immediately crowded around her.
Alaric pulled her into his arms.
Tristan frantically called for her medication.
Dad stopped the officiant.
Mom seized my arm and dragged me toward the exit.
“You know Rosalie has severe depression! Why would you corner her at her own wedding?”
In the struggle, my sleeve slipped down.
It exposed the layers of scars left on my wrist over the past three years.
Alaric saw them. His expression visibly froze.
Mom saw them too.
But instead of showing any concern, she quickly pulled down my sleeve and warned under her breath,
“Cover them! Rosalie will be triggered if she sees.”
One old scar on Rosalie's wrist was enough to make my family stop the wedding and gather around her.
But when they saw the scars covering my arm, all they cared about was whether Rosalie might be upset.
I looked at Mom.
“Rosalie gets sick, and every one of you rushes to comfort her.”
“But you lied to me for three years and left me like this, and you're still only worried about upsetting her?”
Mom was silent for a moment.
“You're different. You've always been stronger than her.”
To silence the guests, she took the microphone and announced,
“Three years ago, we accompanied Rosalie to Switzerland for treatment, so we were away from Lenora for a long time.”
“She became jealous because we were constantly with Rosalie. She grew increasingly unstable, was eventually diagnosed with severe depression, and developed serious cognitive impairment.”
“She even began hallucinating that we had died and erected five empty memorial graves for us without permission.”
Dad stepped onto the stage as well.
“We're sorry. We failed to care properly for Lenora while she was ill, and that's why she came here today to ruin Rosalie's wedding.”
I stared at them in disbelief.
I hurriedly pulled up the police notices, case numbers, and supposed personal effects on my phone to prove what had happened.
But Tristan spoke coldly.
“None of those documents was ever officially verified.”
“After you became ill, you couldn't accept that Alaric didn't love you. You interpreted our leaving as our deaths.”
They had first driven me into severe depression with five staged deaths.
Now they were using that diagnosis to paint me as a madwoman.
At last, I looked at Alaric.
“Are you going to say the same thing?”
He avoided my eyes.
After a long silence, he finally spoke in a low voice.
“I did propose to you three years ago.”
“But it was only an act. You were already emotionally unstable, and I did it to calm you down.”
“Rosalie and I were together from the beginning. You mistook my concern for love and convinced yourself that you and I were engaged.”
I stared at him in shock.
I could hardly believe that he had dismissed the love we had genuinely shared as one of my delusions.
To hide his betrayal, he was willing to deny everything that had ever existed between us.
While I stood there stunned, security pushed me away from the aisle.
Rosalie put her veil back on.
Dad took her hand a second time. Tristan offered the rings again. Mom smoothed her train.
Everyone returned to their proper place.
Everyone except me.
Together, they had excluded me from both the family and reality itself.
The officiant asked again,
“Alaric Vale, do you take Rosalie Mercer to be your wife?”
Alaric looked at me through the crowd.
“I do.”
第2章
After the wedding, Mom took me into a private lounge.
She rummaged through my bag, took out the antidepressants I carried with me, and placed them in front of me.
“Take your medication. We'll talk when you've calmed down.”
I didn't touch it.
“Who sent that wedding invitation?”
Mom avoided my eyes.
“A staff member sent it by mistake.”
At that moment, her phone lit up on the table.
The message was from Tristan.
The WhatsApp group was named “The Real Mercer Family.”
“Should we delete the old family group? Otherwise, she'll keep sending messages there and bothering us.”
I picked up Mom's unlocked phone.
Her face changed, and she reached for it.
I stepped back and opened the chat.
It had been created on the same day news arrived that Mom and Rosalie had died in the car accident.
Its members were Dad, Mom, Tristan, Alaric, and Rosalie.
I was the only one who wasn't in the group.
For three years, Mom had screenshotted every message I sent in the old family group and forwarded it to this new one.
On the first anniversary, I knelt in the rain before the five graves and wrote in the old group,
“I sold the house. I found you all a home.”
“Don't worry about me. I'll stay alive.”
The rain was so heavy that day that the memorial park staff feared for my safety and contacted Mom using the information on file.
Mom replied in the new group,
“I had the staff call her a car. Whatever happens, don't let her know I'm alive.”
Alaric wrote,
“If even one of us appears, she'll investigate the others. Everything we've done will have been for nothing.”
They had also known the day I quit my job and was diagnosed with severe depression.
Tristan had written only,
“She doesn't have the energy to bother us now. Rosalie can finally focus on getting better.”
On the second anniversary, I sat beside Alaric's grave and messaged them that I had dreamed about them again.
After reading the screenshot, Dad warned everyone,
“No one can give in.”
“She blames herself for all our deaths now. Hold out a little longer, and she'll eventually let Alaric go.”
That same day, they were in Switzerland celebrating Rosalie's recovery.
In the photographs, Mom was cutting her cake.
Dad and Tristan had piled the table with gifts.
Alaric stood behind her, placing an engagement ring on her finger with his own hands.
I begged forgiveness before five empty graves.
They gathered around another table, celebrating the new family they had finally formed without me.
Before the third anniversary, Rosalie suggested sending me the wedding invitation.
Mom tried to stop her.
“She's in terrible shape. It's better to keep hiding it.”
Dad agreed.
“We'll decide how to handle this after the wedding.”
But Rosalie replied,
“I don't want to spend my marriage hiding from her like a dead woman.”
“And I don't want her visiting Alaric's grave as his fiancée.”
“I want her to watch us get married and admit that Alaric belongs to me now.”
In the end, Alaric answered with only two words.
“Send it.”
The invitation had never been a staff mistake.
After taking my fiancé and the love of my parents and brother, Rosalie used it to drive me out one last time.
Mom finally snatched her phone back.
But I had already sent the crucial messages to my email.
I looked at the five living people in front of me.
“You saw every message I sent to that group for the past three years, didn't you?”
No one answered.
I looked at Alaric.
After a moment of silence, he admitted,
“I never deleted the old group.”
“I read every message you sent.”
I stared at him, hatred surging through my chest.
“So you watched me mourn at your grave for three years. You watched all of you torment me until I became this, and you still thought I deserved it?”
“Every one of you disgusts me.”
第3章
Guests had filmed the confrontation at the wedding.
Before long, videos of me causing a scene at Rosalie's wedding spread across the internet.
Some accused her of stealing her sister's fiancé. Others demanded to know how the five “dead” people were all still alive.
My family neither apologized to me nor planned to reveal the truth.
They only wanted me to record a statement clearing their names.
Tristan had even written the script for me.
I was to admit that severe depression had caused me to hallucinate three years ago. I had imagined not only that my family had died, but also that Alaric was my fiancé.
In reality, Alaric had never proposed to me. He and Rosalie had always been together.
Mom pushed the script toward me.
“Once you admit to all of it, the controversy will end.”
I refused.
The next day, the memorial park called.
The five people who should have been lying beneath the headstones were demanding that their empty graves be removed.
But the plots and headstones were registered in my name. Without my signature, no one could touch them.
Tristan handed me the documents to terminate the plots.
“Sign these and record the video. We'll arrange treatment at the best hospital available.”
“Afterward, we'll still be a family.”
I didn't take them.
The flowers I had replaced on the third anniversary were still in front of the graves.
Beneath each headstone, I had buried the last “personal effect” they had supposedly left me.
Mom's prescription bottle and farewell letter.
The belongings supposedly recovered after the plane carrying Dad and Tristan crashed.
And the ring Alaric had placed on my finger when he proposed.
I had survived three years by clinging to those things.
Now I knew they were all props prepared to deceive me.
Mom took the farewell letter from her memorial box and tore it in half in front of me.
“It was fake to begin with. What's the point of keeping it?”
Scraps of paper fell in front of her own headstone.
In the letter, she had said the greatest regret of her life was failing to protect both her daughters.
I had blamed myself for those words for three years.
But to her, the letter was only a fake piece of paper she could tear apart without a thought.
Alaric took out the engagement ring and placed it back in my palm.
“Let yourself move on. And stop harassing me.”
Rosalie stood beside him, tears streaming down her face.
“Lenora, I never meant to take anything from you.”
“But I truly can't live without Alaric.”
She covered the old scar on her wrist and looked at me through her tears.
“You've always been stronger than me. Even without him, you can start over.”
“I can't.”
It had always been this way. As long as she appeared fragile enough, everyone forced me to surrender everything to her.
Mom pressed the pen into my hand again.
They all waited for me to give in.
I didn't sign. I only picked up the prepared statement.
“Fine.”
“At the post-wedding reception, I'll make everything clear.”
