Chapter IV: The First Suspicion of an Heiress, Part 1:

Ailan.

"What have you done?" I asked him after he took me from my penthouse to one of the Miller Group hotels, where the event was being held, and left me there with Roy's assistant, Gordon.

In the presidential suite, Roy was waiting for me. After one of our many arguments about my husband, whom my brother doesn't accept because he says he doesn't deserve me and is hiding something, we ended up challenging each other, as always.

Before getting into the elevator that would take us to the party, Roy showed me images of an attractive woman in a red dress. This aroused my brother's interest—something unusual for him—and I saw Walter, whom I believed to be on a business trip. I had to swallow my surprise and confusion for a few seconds. However, I realized that I couldn't ask him to be completely honest when I wasn't being honest myself. I decided to trust him. Something must have happened; I wasn't going to judge him without talking to him first. Besides, I had to teach Arturo a lesson. I accepted his challenge, but I didn't expect him to let go of me and throw me off balance. I asked him to repeat what he said in case I had heard him wrong—another one of Arturo's manipulative techniques.

"Are you doing this on purpose, pretending to be deaf, blind, and mute?" Right, Wendy? Do you think that will make you happier?" My brother said this while avoiding my question and walking toward the elevator. I stood there without moving. I needed an immediate answer.

"I'm not in the mood for one of your mind games, Roy William Miller. Tell me what you just said is a joke,” I said, feeling my hands begin to sweat and my nerves make me restlessly fidget.

"You know I'm not one for jokes, especially if I don't benefit from them. Joking for the sake of joking is a waste of time and money. Don't you agree, dreamer Wendy?" That damn CEO was almost driving me crazy. How could two twins be so different?

"Do you really want me to get involved, Arturo? Remember how I deal with these cases," I said seriously.

"Of course, sister. London has changed you. You're much more boring than before. Is it this useless marriage you've blindly entered into?" he said, making me breathe heavily and clench my fists. He looked at me and knew I had reached my limit. “Hey, calm down, Wendy. You're going blind! Okay, I'll repeat it. I showed up at a meeting at your husband's company. I told the useless good-for-nothing that I was your twin brother. But don't worry. I used my middle name, and he didn't recognize me. That gave me an idea of how little he knows about the business world. Like I said, he's a good-for-nothing. Besides, I still have hope that you'll open your eyes and realize what a pig that Patel is," my brother said, making me want to kill him.

Until now, before Arturo showed up, I had been relatively calm, living in the Patel house and sometimes returning to the attic. Since getting married, I hadn't wanted Walter and his family to suspect that I wasn't who they thought I was or that my family background wasn't that of a normal, middle-class American family. Although I had told them about my brothers and parents, I had always downplayed my family's wealth, saying that we were a middle-class family with retired parents who owned a small lodging business. It was the same story I had told everyone when I arrived in London. My instinct told me that they shouldn't know that information yet. It wasn't premeditated, but that's how it turned out.

I still hid my life as an heiress from Walter, his family, and almost all of my London acquaintances. Roy and I owned two luxury penthouses in the two most expensive buildings on opposite sides of the Thames.

This was something my father, Norman Miller, couldn't prevent. He couldn't stop his two eldest offspring from moving more than five thousand kilometers away from him and his protection. In his imagination, they would suffer "hardship," even though the Millers had money coming out of our ears just by breathing. He gave us both penthouses, although I suspect that the proximity of my penthouse to my brother's was premeditated. For my obsessive father, nothing was enough when it came to the people he loved, not even overprotectiveness—especially if you were one of his "princesses." That's why I came to London alone, hiding my identity.

When I got married, I returned to the penthouse while Walter traveled and didn't want to go back to the country house—which the Patels call the family mansion—to endure my mother-in-law's criticism. She was never happy with anything I did. That's exactly what happened today.

Her treatment of me improved on the occasions when I handed over almost my entire salary to her son every month, using the card I had given Walter. I felt guilty and wanted to compensate him for not telling him the truth.

I felt guilty about that. Normally, my expenses were paid from the account my father opened for me when we reunited when I was a few months old. The group's profits were deposited there, as we were heirs to the Miller holding company.

For a long time, because she was my mother-in-law, I never told Walter who I was. I didn't mind giving him my entire, astronomical salary from my job as head of design and architecture at one of the group's two construction companies.

"If you ruin my life with my husband because of you, Roy William Miller, I won't forgive you. I assure you. And I'm going to tell Mom," I said furiously as I got into the elevator, which my brother held open for me to go first. Our parents' upbringing came out in all four of us, unconsciously.

"Don't worry, Wendy. Patel will mess things up all by himself. He's a creature of habit." I didn't understand his words, but I decided not to fall into my twin brother's manipulative traps. I had suffered at his hands my whole life and knew how to escape his manipulation when I wanted to.

Unfortunately, human beings usually only learn through hard knocks. When we're in love or blinded by stubbornness, we rarely listen to other people's advice and learn the hard way.