She had been abandoned by the roadside as a child. No one had co looking for her, not even when her situation had been reported to the police. How could such a powerful family not have known? How could they have failed to find her all these years?
She had won countless awards, participated in competitions where her face had been displayed at her university, even been featured in interviews—yet they still hadn't found her?
How blind had they been?
Saying that Kisha wasn't feeling bitter about it would be a lie. Ever since she learned she was adopted, she had always wondered—why was she abandoned? And if she wasn't abandoned, then why did no one co looking for her?
To think that the family searching for her had been living in the sa city all along—how hard could it have been to find her?
To Kisha, the answer was clear. They had simply moved on. They had another daughter, built a new life, and only pretended to keep searching out of guilt. Finding her for real had never truly been their priority. At least, that's what Kisha believed.
A sarcastic smile spread across Kisha's lips as a cold glint flashed in her eyes. Seeing her expression, Mrs. Evans couldn't help but stamr, "M-My daughter has three little star birthmarks forming a triangle on her right jawline—just like yours. You also match her age, and when I was younger, I looked exactly like you and you also have uncanny similarities to my husband. It was easy for to tell… and I can feel that it's really you."
But instead of softening, Kisha let out a sharp, bitter laugh.
"You could recognize as your daughter with just a single look?" Kisha's voice was sharp, her gaze unwavering. "Then tell —if it was that easy, how did you fail to find all these years when I was living right under your noses?"
Her pointed question made Emma freeze, her mouth opening and closing as if searching for the right words. The rest of the Evans family paled, uneasy under Kisha's scrutiny.
Emma swallowed hard before attempting to explain. "We did search for you. After the kidnapping… when your father was on his way to exchange the ransom for you, we were told you escaped."
"The kidnappers claid that you fought back during transport and… ended up falling off a cliff near the mountain road. At first, they assud you hadn't survived. But when they went to retrieve your body, they only found bloodstains—no sign of you. That's why we believed soone must have saved you. You were only six years old back then…"
Her voice trailed off, but Kisha's expression remained cold, unyielding.
"Whenever we heard news about you, we rushed there ourselves as soon as possible, hoping to find you… we searched for so long… sob, sob…" Mrs. Evans' voice broke as she dissolved into pitiful sobs, overco by painful mories.
Seeing her unable to continue, Mr. Evans took a deep breath and picked up where she left off, though his face was ashen with sorrow. "At that ti, your four brothers were still young—Eric was only 11, Ethan was just 9, and the twins were a year younger. In our desperation to find you, we neglected them without realizing it."
"The twins fell into a coma due to a high fever, and the entire household was thrown into chaos. Amidst everything, I failed to notice that your mother was silently falling into depression, blaming herself for losing sight of you that day.
"anwhile, I was struggling to keep everything together—searching for you, taking care of the other children, and managing the company, which was under attack from all sides. If not for the Winters stepping in to support us, I don't know if we would have made it through those years."
His voice grew hoarse as he spoke, the weight of the past pressing heavily on him.
"I didn't realize that the entire burden of the family had fallen onto your mother's shoulders, deepening her depression. Losing you only made things worse. I was overwheld, unable to do anything."
"I thought that if I lost the company, I wouldn't even have the resources to continue the nationwide search for you. So while I sent out team after team to look for you, I was also struggling to keep the company afloat."
"By the ti I finally noticed how far gone your mother was, it was already too late. She had sunk so deep into her depression that she wouldn't eat, barely spoke, and spent her days talking to herself."
"The other children were affected as well. Eric tried his best to take care of his siblings, but there was only so much a child could do. I had no choice but to find a substitute—soone the sa age as you—to try and bring your mother back from the brink. That was also what her therapist suggested at the ti. We never ant to replace you," Mr. Evans explained, his voice heavy with guilt.
He knew, even without Kisha saying a word, that lody being raised as their pampered princess must have been a sore spot for her.
If she truly was their missing daughter, then seeing them lavish affection on another girl while claiming to have searched for her would feel like a slap in the face.
With his explanation, it beca clear that lody had been adopted not as a replacent, but as a desperate attempt to help Emma Evans recover from her depression.
The reason they treated lody so well wasn't just out of guilt or because she resembled their missing daughter, but because she had unknowingly played a role in Emma's healing. It took years for Emma to improve, and though she attended public events, looking glamorous and composed, behind closed doors, she was no different from a broken woman.
In private, she clung to a bundle of their missing daughter's clothes, treating it as if it were her child—a sight that shattered Edward Evans' heart every ti he witnessed it.
He had no other choice but to toughen up and find an alternative because if he didn't, their household would have crumbled like a house of cards.
He couldn't manage everything alone, and the weight of it all took a toll on him. The loss of their daughter had changed everything—their ho, once warm and lively, beca shrouded in sorrow, filled with tears and silence.
Even the children's personalities shifted, and as the head of the family, he bore the heaviest burden.
He admitted that he had taken the easiest way out, and for that, he was to bla. But if given another chance, he would still make the sa choices—because at that ti, it was the only way to keep his family from falling apart.
If he could turn back ti, he wouldn't hesitate to do everything in his power to prevent losing his daughter in the first place, sparing them all from the heartbreak. But there was no going back.
So he and his wife redirected all the parental love ant for their real daughter toward their adopted daughter. Even lody was unaware of her adoption, as she had no recollection of her early childhood.
Likewise, Kisha had lost all mories before the age of six and could only rember her life from the mont she was adopted by the Aldens. Perhaps her mory loss was a result of the accident Mr. Evans had ntioned.
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